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Phase 3 · Compare

What changes when we look from another perspective?

Compare the story from FIND with the perspective you investigated in CHECK. Different perspectives do not mean that anything goes: compare them using evidence.

Core time · About 45–50 minutesOptional UNDERSTAND · About 50 extra minutesOutcome · A defensible three-line claim

Lesson resources

Video

COMPARE walkthrough

Bring the same investigation forward

Bring the original story, your sources and your CHECK claims. Everyone completes this core before any extension. Here, “account” means a telling of the past, such as a text, image or video.

1. START · Same past, different story

Compare these examples:

  • “The city was successfully transformed through rapid industrial growth.”
  • “Factory workers faced long hours, dangerous conditions and overcrowded housing during the city’s industrial growth.”

These statements are for discussion, not evidence about your chosen place.

Can both statements be true? Why are the stories different? What does each account allow us to see?

2. PUT THEM SIDE BY SIDE

Use the two columns on the COMPARE sheet: THE STORY WE STARTED WITH and THE PERSPECTIVE WE FOUND. Answer the same four questions for each:

  1. Who is at the centre?
  2. What seems important?
  3. Who or what is missing?
  4. What evidence supports it?

Why might these stories be different?

They use different evidence / focus on different people / were made for different reasons / one knows something the other does not / something was left out / another reason.

3. FIND THE CHANGE
  • BEFORE: The story seemed to be about…
  • NOW: After looking at another perspective, I also see…
  • WHAT CHANGED? The biggest change in how I understand this history is…
4. DON’T STOP AT “THEY’RE DIFFERENT”

After comparing, return to the claims you already made:

  • WE KNOW: What can the evidence show us?
  • WE THINK: What does the evidence give us a good reason to think?
  • WE DON’T KNOW: What can’t we answer from the evidence we have?

Did the comparison change anything in these boxes? Update the same claims and keep the earlier wording visible if you change it.

5. BUILD YOUR CLAIM
  • After looking at the evidence, we think this story is also about…
  • The strongest evidence for this is…
  • But we still don’t know…

This is the idea your story needs to communicate. You can revise it when further evidence changes what you can say.

6. THE “SO WHAT?” QUESTION

Does adding this perspective change the history, or only add another person?

  • Does it change who seems important?
  • Does it change how we understand what happened?
  • Does it show a cost or consequence we could not see before?
  • Does it challenge something in the starting story?
  • Does it explain why people experienced the same event differently?

WHY DOES THIS PERSPECTIVE MATTER?
Without this perspective, we might think…
With this perspective, we can also see…

CHECKEnd of the core

You have not completely “recovered their story”. You found evidence, worked out what it could tell you, compared perspectives and identified what remains unknown. An untold story is not a gap filled with imagination. It is a perspective investigated with evidence.

Short route: go to the three-moment story plan. Extended route: keep this sheet and continue with UNDERSTAND first.

Optional extension · after the COMPARE core

UNDERSTAND · What was life like from where they stood?

What could this person know, do and experience in their own time? Bring the same starting story, CHECK evidence and completed COMPARE sheet. Use the contextual material provided. This deepens the comparison; it does not replace it.

Optional UNDERSTAND extension

Video

UNDERSTAND · Optional COMPARE extension

U1. START · Then, not now

What is wrong with “She decided to message her friend and search online for another job” if the story is set before those technologies existed? What is wrong with “She knew that the government would eventually change the law”?

Whose knowledge should the story use: ours, or what they could have known then?

U2. BUILD THEIR WORLD

Record the person/group, place and time. Complete four boxes, each with: What evidence helps us say this?

  • WHAT COULD THEY KNOW? What information could realistically reach them?
  • WHAT COULD THEY DO? What choices, work, movement, education or actions were realistically available?
  • WHAT COULD THEY NOT DO? What laws, money, technology, social rules or circumstances limited them?
  • WHAT WAS HAPPENING AROUND THEM? What events or conditions might have affected their lives?
U3. FROM CONTEXT TO PERSPECTIVE

Compare “She earned very little money” with “She was miserable because she earned very little money.” Evidence of a wage does not automatically establish an emotion.

  • WE KNOW: What can we establish about the situation?
  • WE THINK: What can we reasonably infer because of it?
  • WE DON’T KNOW: What can’t we know about personal experience?

Update the claims you already made. Context explains circumstances; it does not give access to someone’s mind.

U4. WHAT MIGHT MATTER TO THEM?

Consider money, family, work, religion, law, social expectations, safety, status, education, community, conflict, opportunity, discrimination or health. Choose up to three only where evidence and context give you a reason.

THIS MAY HAVE MATTERED BECAUSE… Evidence/reason…

Also record something that might have mattered but cannot be known from your evidence.

U5. FROM WHERE THEY STOOD

Use the situation or decision provided:

  • What choices were actually available?
  • What might make one choice easier or harder?
  • What could they know at the time?
  • What do we know now that they could not have known?
  • Would everyone in this situation make the same choice?

Do not ask “What would I do?” Ask “What could someone in their situation have known and done?”

U6. CHECK YOUR ASSUMPTIONS

Mark each test claim as supported / reasonable but uncertain / we don’t know: “They worked six days each week.” “They were probably physically tired after work.” “They hated their employer.” These are examples, not facts about your chosen group.

What evidence would move an unknown into a reasonable inference or supported claim?

CHECKReturn to your existing comparison

Update only what the context changes: the four-question comparison, your KNOW / THINK / DON’T KNOW claims and your three-line claim. Keep what still stands. Do not complete a second COMPARE lesson.

Optional · Challenge the machine’s context

Generate, then challenge
Describe an ordinary day for a [role] living in [place] in [year/period].

Do not copy the answer. Mark its details:

  • CAN VERIFY: evidence supports it.
  • NEEDS CHECKING: it might be true, but where did it come from?
  • AI FILLED THE GAP: the evidence cannot establish it.

Where did the AI move from historical context into storytelling?

LOW-AI ROUTEUse the same test without AI

Use a short reconstruction, textbook paragraph, museum description or teacher-written description. Ask what can be verified, what needs checking, what has been inferred and what the evidence cannot tell you.