Anyone can write a checklist that sounds good. The test is whether somebody else can pick it up and use it without asking you what you meant.
Today your group designs a checklist card. Then it goes to another group, who take it to a real source with no help from you. Any check they cannot apply on their own gets struck out. What survives goes into the class checklist you will still be using in ten lessons' time.
A check only works if it is a question someone can answer from the source itself. The five areas you already use:
- Author: who made this, and what do we know about them?
- Purpose: why was it published (inform, persuade, sell, entertain)?
- Evidence: what claims does it make, and what backs them up?
- Currency: when was it made or last updated, and does that matter here?
- Cross-checking: can the same claim be found in other independent sources?
Struck out: Does it feel true? Nobody else can apply that.
Survives: Is the author's name and role stated on the page? Anyone can answer that yes, no or not sure by looking.
In your group, build the card. Five checks, one under each heading, each one a question a stranger could answer yes, no or not sure by looking at a source.
- Agree the wording out loud before anyone types it. If your group has to explain what a check means, it is not written yet.
- Put your group's name on it, so you know whose card comes back struck out.
- Leave space under each check. Some of them are getting covered over in a few minutes.
Your work saves as you go. Get the card finished, because in nine minutes it is being handed to a group who will not be able to ask you anything.
Your group's source-evaluation card
Cards move now. Your teacher will tell your group which card you are testing and where to find it, and you use that card on Source A below. You may not ask the group who wrote it anything. That is the test.
Harbour View Youth Blog, posted 3 March 2024, by "Team HV" (no real names). Headline: "New study proves phones destroy sleep for every teen." It says "scientists now agree" that any phone use after 8 p.m. ruins sleep, quotes "Dr M. Byrne, sleep expert" with no workplace and no link, and ends with a button: "Buy NightShield blue-light glasses, 20% off this week." No study title, no research date, nothing else linked. A note at the bottom says the post may include sponsored content.
- Work down the card. For each check, mark yes, no or not sure, and write one line of evidence from the source.
- If you cannot apply a check without asking what it means, strike it out. Cover it with a box on the card. Say what you would have needed it to say.
- Hand the card back with your strike-outs on it.
Every check on the card you tested has a yes, no or not sure with evidence, or a strike-out with a reason.
Now build the one list this class will actually use. Only checks that survived the swap are eligible.
- Under each heading, the class picks the surviving wording it likes best, from any group's card.
- If a heading lost every check to a strike-out, rewrite it now, together, using what the strike-out reasons said was missing.
- One strong check per heading is enough. A second is optional.
- Save it the class way. You will use this list again, so it has to still exist next week.
Our source-evaluation checklist
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