Students will launch the inquiry by examining competing evidence about change from 1900 to 1910, take an initial evidence-based position on which shift most shaped the future of the United States, and begin tracking how historians use sources, questions, and revision to build stronger claims.

Students will analyze competing changes from 1900–1910, test early claims with evidence from stations and community-based artifacts, and commit to a defensible preliminary position about which change most shaped the future of the United States.

Students will collect and test evidence for their emerging historical claim by evaluating source credibility, sorting support and counterevidence, and refining their reasoning about how changes from 1900–1910 shaped the future of the United States. They will use primary and secondary sources, including place-based materials connected to the MAC’s 1903 house, to build an evidence log that distinguishes stronger from weaker proof and prepares them for argument drafting.

Students will turn their researched evidence into a defensible historical argument by organizing sub-claims, matching evidence to warrants, drafting counterarguments and rebuttals, revising timeline captions, and testing the strength of their reasoning through structured peer critique before a milestone draft check.

Students will tighten their historical arguments for the timeline exhibit, test their claims against peer and public questions, strengthen citation and source credibility moves, and complete a before-and-after historian self-assessment showing how their conclusions changed through evidence-based inquiry.

Students will present and defend their completed timeline exhibits to an authentic audience at the MAC, use visitor and peer feedback to identify how convincingly their evidence answers the essential question, and complete a final before-and-after historian self-assessment that compares their initial views with their evidence-based conclusions.