Cover lesson · History · Year 9 · Intermediate

Analysing historical bias online

DCF: Producing → Evaluating and improving digital content

Name: Class: Date:

Cover teacher — you need no subject knowledge

Print: this sheet and the stimulus sheet “Two websites, one rising: Merthyr, June 1831”, one of each per pupil. No computers are needed. If computers are available, pupils may check the three links listed on the stimulus sheet in step 5.

Run: 5 min — read the “Facts both sites agree on” box aloud · 10 min — pupils read both extracts and underline any word that carries a judgement · 15 min — fill the bias audit table · 12 min — write the verdict paragraph · 5 min — swap and check against the criteria · 3 min — ask two pupils which extract they trusted more and why.

Collect: this sheet, with the table and the verdict paragraph completed. There is no “correct” extract — both are biased. A pupil who says so and proves it with quotations has done the task.

What you are doing

Two websites describe the same six days in Merthyr Tydfil in June 1831. They agree on almost every fact and disagree completely on what those facts mean. You are going to audit both of them for bias, quoting the exact words that give each writer away, and then decide which is more useful to a historian and why.

Bias is not the same as lying. A page can be entirely accurate and still be biased, because bias lives in word choice, in what is left out, and in who is allowed to be a person.

Step by step

5 min — Read the “Facts both sites agree on” box on the stimulus sheet. These are your fixed points.
10 min — Read Extract A and Extract B. Underline every word that carries a judgement rather than a fact: “heroic”, “mob”, “greedy”, “mercifully”, and so on.
15 min — Complete the bias audit table below. You must quote, not summarise.
12 min — Write your verdict paragraph in the space provided.
5 min — Swap with a partner. Tick their work against the success criteria and tell them one quotation they should have used.
3 min — Be ready to say out loud which extract you would cite in an essay, and what you would have to say about it when you cited it.

Bias audit table

Question	Extract A — Valleys Heritage Voices	Extract B — britishindustry.info
Who wrote it, and how do you know?
What is the site for? (quote the About page)
Loaded word 1 — quote it, then say what it is doing
Loaded word 2 — quote it, then say what it is doing
One claim you could check against the agreed facts
One fact the extract leaves out
Who is named as a person, and who is just a crowd?

Spot the difference

These three pairs describe exactly the same thing. Write down what changes when the words change.

Extract A says	Extract B says	What the change does to the reader
“a peaceful crowd”	“a drunken mob”
“the martyr Dic Penderyn”	“the ringleader Richard Lewis”
“twenty-four innocent people were slaughtered”	“sixteen soldiers were injured by the thugs”

Your verdict

Write one paragraph of 120–180 words. Name the more useful extract, quote evidence from both, and say what a historian would have to warn the reader about before using it.

Success criteria

I quote at least two loaded words from each extract and explain what each one is doing to the reader.
I use the agreed facts to test a claim, instead of just saying which extract I prefer.
I identify something each extract leaves out, and say why leaving it out matters.
I judge the sources on who wrote them and why, not only on what they say.
My verdict says how the source could still be used, with a warning attached.

If you finish early

Rewrite the Castle Inn paragraph a third time, using only words from the agreed-facts box. How long is it compared with the two extracts, and what has gone missing?
Both extracts hide their author and their date. Write the three lines you would add to the bottom of each page to make it usable in a school essay.
“Ianto Parker later confessed to the crime on his deathbed.” Explain why a confession made decades later is difficult evidence, even when it points the way you want it to.