How it works
Busted · Wednesday · The claim
“If doctors smoke them, cigarettes can’t be that bad for you.”
Students first say whether they agree or disagree. Then the evidence goes up: a study that followed about 40,000 British doctors.
Each morning starts with a recreated newspaper front page showing a claim that was once reported as true. Across the week, the stories cover sugar, a sleeping pill, cigarettes, leaded petrol and a new cooking fat. If you want to spend a whole lesson on one of these claims, Question the Headline turns them into five tutor time lessons.
Ask students to put their hands up if they agree, and then if they disagree, and ask two or three of them to explain why. Under the claim there are three questions to help them think it through: who is saying it, who gains, and what would you need to see first.
Next, a graph or a document goes up, along with where it came from. Ask the form what they think it shows before you say anything yourself.
The last slide shows what really happened, stamped Busted, along with the one question that would have caught the claim.
Tuesday’s story is about thalidomide and Wednesday’s is about smoking, so the resource pack asks you to keep both discussions on the claims and the evidence, and never to ask about anybody’s family. Every quote on a front page and every number on a graph is real, and the pack says where each one came from.
A look inside
Get the activity
There is nothing to print for the form. The resource pack is two pages for you to read: the teacher guide, and the five stories in full with their sources. Want to know when Volume Two goes up? Sign up here.
Busted slides
Twenty-three slides: five front pages, each followed by the argument, the evidence and the verdict.
Download Printable PDFTeacher resource pack
Two pages: the guide, then what each story shows and where the evidence came from.
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