In November 2024, our Grade 8 students had a library and research skills session on the OPVL. The OPVL is a strategy for evaluating sources—specifically, historical sources. Nonetheless, it can also be used to analyze the validity and reliability of information and sources we encounter everyday. Focusing on Origin and Purpose, I asked my students to evaluate information from both online and print sources. I prepared a variety— books, magazines and journals, posters and calendars, labels of kits, games and the like. And of course, social media posts. Working in pairs, they were able to come up with a review of their assigned source. They took away valuable insights on the importance of source analysis, along with the skills necessary to understand historical documents, their context, and their reason for being.
I often tell students that documents are alive. And that history is something we make every day.
A week before the Holy Week break, I met them again to discuss Value and Limitation in the OPVL framework. To identify these aspects in historical sources, it was important that we reviewed primary and secondary sources. This is actually prerequisite knowledge for source analysis and information evaluation. In a time when fake news has become inevitable for consumption, knowing the kind of source, its origin, and its intent is crucial. Applying Value and Limitation is very much connected to Origin and Purpose.
The most interesting part of our session was deep diving into the context of historical documents. They were tasked to determine the Value and Limitation of excerpts from Anne Frank’s Diary and Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have A Dream speech. Their written output revealed a thoughtful approach to understanding the era in which these documents were written, and how the authors’ biases influenced their perspectives. Needless to say, the relevance of a source—as well as the truth it carries—is consequential to the reader.
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