Worked example · History · Year 8
DCF: Producing → Sourcing, searching and planning digital content
A secure Year 8 response, annotated so you can see which success criterion each part meets. It doubles as the answer key. Part A: (b) date and place filters, 1,932 − 41 = 1,891 removed. Part B: R1, R2, R3, R4, R5 and R7 are primary; R6 and R8 are secondary. The strongest picks are R1 and R3; R4 or R6 is a sensible third. R5 and R7 are from the wrong period; R8 has no author, date or sources. Early finish: 1,932 ÷ 20 = 96.6, so 97 pages; door boy without quotation marks gives more results. Other sensible answers to Part C are fine as long as they are specific.
(a) “Coal” on its own matches every record that mentions coal from any date and any place, so it brings back 24,316 results. It says nothing about children or the 1840s, so the top results are about 1984, 1923 and 2019. One general word is far too broad for a question with a time, a place and a group of people in it.
(b) He added a date filter (1835–1850) and a place filter (Glamorgan and Monmouthshire). That removed 1,932 − 41 = 1,891 results, leaving only about 2% of what Search 2 found, and every one of the 41 is from the right time and place.
(c) He stopped using his own word, “children”, and used the names of the jobs that people used at the time: trapper, air-door and door boy, joined with OR. The records were written in the 1840s, so they describe children by their job. You have to search with their words, not yours.
(d) He searched in Welsh. Those six records are written in Welsh, so no English word can match them. Most people in the south Wales valleys in the 1840s spoke Welsh as their first language, so an English-only search would miss what families and chapels said in their own words and leave him with mostly the government’s view.
Every answer uses the numbers from the log, and each one names the technique — filters, words from the period, OR, a second language — rather than just saying the search “got better”. Evidences criteria 1, 2 and 3.
| Ref | Primary or secondary? | Useful? | Why | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| R1 | Primary | High | Children, parents and managers from south Wales describe the work in 1842 — ages, jobs, hours. | Welsh-speaking children’s answers were printed in English, so the words are the commissioner’s. |
| R2 | Primary | Medium | Shows what a trapper’s job looked like in 1842. | Drawn in an English coalfield, not in Wales. |
| R3 | Primary | High | Names, jobs and pay from one Welsh colliery in 1844, including eleven door boys. | Hard handwriting; tells us pay, not what the work felt like. |
| R4 | Primary | Medium | Shows what Welsh speakers thought about the 1842 law. | About the law and opinions, not daily working life. |
| R5 | Primary | Low | A miner’s own memories, in his own voice. | About 1919, nearly 80 years too late, and recorded 59 years after that. |
| R6 | Secondary | Medium | Written by museum staff, and its reading list points to the original documents. | A summary: use it to find sources, not as the evidence itself. |
| R7 | Primary | Low | Shows boys working at a pit. | About 1910, the wrong period: by then the law kept young children out of the pits, so it shows a different situation. |
| R8 | Secondary | Low | Only useful as a claim to test. | No author, no date, no sources, and a sweeping claim with no evidence. |
Primary and secondary are all correct, and usefulness is judged against Osian’s exact question — which is why two genuine primary sources, R5 and R7, still score Low. Evidences criterion 4.
| Reference number | Title and date | What it can tell Osian | What he must be careful about |
|---|---|---|---|
| CDI/GOV/1842/03 | Children’s Employment Commission, first report (mines), 1842 | The ages children started, the jobs they did and what adults said about it, from Glamorgan and Monmouthshire. | Written down in English by government officials, who chose what to print. |
| CDI/ABD/1844/01 | Colliery wage book, Aberdare, 1844 | How many door boys one pit employed and what they were paid compared with adults. | Only one colliery; says nothing about how the children felt. |
| CDI/NEWS/1842/58 | Report on the new Mines Act, Welsh-language weekly, August 1842 | What Welsh-speaking readers thought of taking young boys out of the pits. | A newspaper picks which opinions to print; I would need a translation to use it properly. |
The reference numbers are copied exactly, and each row has a specific use and a specific warning. The three records together give three different voices: the government, the employer and the Welsh-speaking public. Evidences criterion 5.
| My question | 1 — reactions to the Senghennydd explosion, October 1913 |
|---|---|
| Key words in English | Senghennydd, explosion, Universal Colliery, 1913 |
| Words people used at the time, and words that mean the same | explosion OR disaster; “relief fund”; funeral; the older spelling Senghenydd, with one “n” |
| Welsh words | tanchwa, glowyr |
| My first search | "Universal Colliery" OR Senghennydd OR Senghenydd |
| Filters | Date: 14 October to 31 December 1913 · Type: newspaper |
| Where first, and why | Welsh Newspapers at the National Library of Wales, because it holds Welsh newspapers up to 1919 in both languages, and newspapers are where reactions were printed week by week. |
| Too many results | Add “relief fund” or funeral, or cut the dates to the first two weeks. |
| Too few results | Run it again in Welsh: tanchwa Senghennydd. Remove the type filter to include photographs and chapel records on People’s Collection Wales. |
The search is written out exactly as it would be typed, uses OR for a spelling variant that a less careful searcher would miss, has a Welsh version, and has a plan for both too many and too few results. The choice of archive is justified by what it holds. Evidences criteria 2 and 3.