TEACHING COMPANION / NO ACCOUNT NEEDED
Hold the Headline
You have a headline. Do you have the evidence?
Evidence, state performance & causal claims · 45–55 min · planning estimate
Learning goals
- Distinguish a public claim from the evidence supporting it.
- Choose records that separate rival explanations.
- State what remains unknown after an investigation.
Before the activity
No advance reading required. All case records are in the activity.
Syllabus description
An unfinished bridge. A confident public claim. Two reporting slots. Choose what to investigate, challenge the rival explanations and decide what your newsroom can responsibly publish. Students produce evidence and revision report.
Discussion prompts
- Which reporting slot most changed your confidence, and why?
- What claim should the newsroom still refuse to publish?
What to assess
Assess evidence selection, the link from records to claims, and honest treatment of uncertainty and revision.
Limitations
Reporting choices occur in a designed fictional record. An unresolved question is a legitimate outcome.
Credit & permissions
Created by Yoav Duman. Free educational use, sharing and hosted embedding; software rights reserved. Software, artwork, branding and third-party materials are separate; see the full reuse information.
Suggested citation: Yoav Duman, “Hold the Headline: Teaching companion,” Possible States, https://possiblestates.com/teaching/hold-the-headline. Include your access date.
ASSESSMENT & SUBMISSION
Grade the explanation.
The interface has no opinion.
Set an endpoint, ask for the activity’s readable report, and use your existing LMS. Students can use Print / Save as PDF where a separate download is not offered. A progress backup is for restoring work, not grading it.
A suggested 10-point rubric
For each criterion: 0 = absent, 1 = partial, 2 = clear and supported. Adapt the weighting to your course; this is guidance, not automatic scoring.
- Concepts / 2
- Use the relevant political concept accurately.
- Evidence / 2
- Support a claim with a specific record or comparison.
- Mechanism / 2
- Explain how the rule or arrangement produces a consequence.
- Revision / 2
- Address a rival account or explain a change of mind.
- Limits / 2
- State what the model or evidence cannot establish.
Say this before they begin.
- Choose For class and follow the instructor’s endpoint.
- Save a progress backup before moving devices or changing website address.
- Open the readable report and check the required responses.
- Upload it to the course assignment. Check the LMS submission confirmation.
Switching from exploration keeps the current work, but skipped class responses may still need completing. A local report cannot establish authorship or make an activity tamper-proof.
Make it an assignment.
Edit this text, then copy it into your LMS. These edits stay in this tab.
Syllabus description & discussion prompts
Syllabus description
An unfinished bridge. A confident public claim. Two reporting slots. Choose what to investigate, challenge the rival explanations and decide what your newsroom can responsibly publish. Students produce evidence and revision report.
Questions for a discussion board or class debrief
- Which reporting slot most changed your confidence, and why?
- What claim should the newsroom still refuse to publish?