Ask who wrote it before you read it

Wineburg (1991) watched historians and students read the same documents: the historians checked who wrote each one, when and why before touching the content, while students dove straight into the text. Sourcing is a habit of interrogation, not a box to tick, and it responds to explicit teaching. (Manning's sourcing-skill-builder skill builds this into a full novice-to-proficient progression with think-aloud scripts.) Thirty seconds of discipline before reading changes what students notice in every paragraph after it.

In practice

• Require three written answers before any content work: who made this, when, and for what purpose. No discussion of what the text says until those are down.
• Model the difference between mentioning and interrogating: 'a recruitment poster from 1915 will sell the war, so I will trust its mood more than its facts.'
• Ask for a prediction from the source line alone: what will this author emphasise, downplay or omit? Then read the document to test it.
• Check whether sourcing has become habitual by handing over a document you never flagged. Prompted sourcing is the developing stage; unprompted is the goal.