Put two disagreeing sources side by side

When Wineburg (1991) compared historians and students reading the same documents, corroboration (checking accounts against each other) was a signature expert move that students almost never made: they took each text on its own terms. Corroboration is also the hardest historical skill to teach, because the reasoning is comparative: it cannot be practised on one text. (Manning's corroboration-skill-builder skill wraps this in an I DO, WE DO, YOU DO comparison protocol.) The trick is to stop treating disagreement as a problem to resolve and start treating it as a clue that demands explanation.

In practice

You are helping me teach corroboration in history.
Topic: [topic]. Level: [year group].
Find or write two short primary-source extracts
(under 150 words each) that describe the same event
but disagree on a key point. Real sources preferred;
if you invent one for practice, label it INVENTED.
Then give me:
1. The point of agreement.
2. The point of contradiction.
3. Two plausible reasons the accounts differ,
   rooted in who wrote each one and why.

• Use a simple matrix: what does Source A say about X, what does Source B say, do they agree, and what might explain the difference?
• Model the reasoning aloud: 'A says the crowd was peaceful, B says it rioted. A is a protester's letter, B a police report. That gap is information.'
• Ban the question 'which one is right?' on the first pass. Ask instead what the existence of both accounts tells us about the event.
• Expect slow progress: in the largest classroom trial, corroboration was the skill that did not budge. Give it repeated practice, with pairs arguing different accounts before any synthesis.