Proof: teacher key

How to Check If Something Is True, grade 4 edition, written for 4th grade. Learn how to check a claim with sources and tests, from a fake skull to the Moon hoax and Pluto.

Read the book. Print this page for the key.

Questions and answers

1. What is a primary source?
   • A first-hand record (answer)
   • A news story about a story
   • A kind of test
2. What showed the Piltdown jaw was an ape's?
   • Tests in 1953 (answer)
   • A newspaper
   • A diary
3. What happens to a claim with no clear source?
   • Trust it
   • Find the same fact elsewhere (answer)
   • Ignore it forever
4. What did later writers find about the 1938 panic?
   • It was bigger
   • It was much smaller (answer)
   • There was none at all
5. Why was Pluto moved out of the planet group?
   • New evidence changed the answer (answer)
   • Someone's opinion
   • It got lost
6. Why were the 1912 skull's believers fooled?
   • It matched what scientists hoped to find (answer)
   • It was loud
   • It was old

Words

• claim: a thing said
• primary: first-hand
• secondary: second-hand
• evidence: facts that show
• exaggerate: make bigger