Teacher Commentary
This is a really confusing prompt for students because the author is a journalist with an overarching argument who is using the historian’s claims to make her own interpretation. I purposely ask this prompt, even though I know it’s going to throw them a little, because it gives us a good opportunity to have an explicit conversation about how we can identify the author’s main claim in an article like this. It is necessary to clearly delineate which claims are made by Janet Johnson (historian), and which claims are made by Dawn Turner Trice (journalist). Furthermore, it is also necessary to consider the fact that Dawn Turner Trice ultimately was the one to decide what would be published and what would not be published in the article. She most likely included some of Janet Johnson’s words and chose not to include others. So, taking that into consideration, even Janet Johnson’s words can be seen as representing Dawn Turner Trice’s main claim.

Also, students usually notice that the author’s main claim – that ancient Egyptians’ lives were similar to ours – aligns with the types of claims they themselves are making from looking across sources and artifacts. If students don’t note this, I usually prompt them to compare the author’s claims to the claims they have collected in their charts.