Claim

I can make a specific, defensible claim.

A claim is a statement about an event, time period, or person that can be argued and supported using evidence. Your claim is your opinion about what is going on. The fun part about making claims as a historian is that, as long as you can support your claim with evidence from multiple sources, your claim is reasonable.

Sample Question

FOCUS QUESTION: What did the founding fathers intend for the role of the federal government to be?

SOURCE: Preamble of the Constitution of the United States of America. Created September 17, 1787 and ratified June 21, 1788. Written during the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The convention included delegates from all the states who had gathered to revise the Articles of Confederation but instead ended up writing the Constitution.

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Write a specific, defensible claim that answers the focus question for this source.

The founding fathers wanted the federal government to be responsible for needs of the whole country such as a combined military.