Teacher Commentary
By this time, students have better understanding of the tasks we are asking them to do and more knowledge about the life of a serf. This is a good time to focus students on identifying new understandings and/or revising “old” ones. They can also notice the same or similar information in different texts.

This is a possible time to explain corroboration to students. What happens if two sources agree with each other? Does that make it more likely or less likely that the information is correct?

One way to explain is to give a short narration of how you use corroboration as a teacher in solving conflicts. Here is what you might say or write for students.

It looks like we have found more than one place in our texts that says the same (or almost the same) thing. Historians would say that one text corroborates the other. They call this corroboration. Corroboration is also something teachers do where there is a conflict in class.

For example, when Joey hits Tommy, Tommy comes and tells me. Now I have one source that this event has occurred. Lisa was sitting behind Tommy and told me she saw Joey hit Tommy. Now I have two sources that this event happened. Does that make it more likely or less likely that what Tommy is saying is true?