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Common Core LiteracyGrades 11–12History & Social Studies

RH.11-12.9: One Account from Many Sources

Also written as CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.9 · Cluster: Integration of Knowledge and Ideas.

All 29 Grades 11–12 Literacy Standards

The Official Wording

Integrate information from diverse sources, both primary and secondary, into a coherent understanding of an idea or event, noting discrepancies among sources.

Common Core State Standards, Grades 11-12, Reading: History & Social Studies · Read it at the source · Checked October 14, 2026

What RH.11-12.9 Means in Plain English

Juniors and seniors weave documents from the time and later histories into one account of an event, and say where the sources disagree. Soldiers’ letters about the Christmas truce of 1914 agree that men met between the trenches but disagree about the football.

Ninth and tenth grade (RH.9-10.9) set sources side by side and noted where they agreed and differed. Grades 11-12 must then build one account that a reader can trust. This is the last band of the line, the kind of synthesis college and career readiness demands.

RH.11-12.9 I Can Statements

  • I can combine primary and secondary sources into one account.
  • I can point out where sources about the same event disagree.
  • I can explain which version the evidence supports, and why.

RH.11-12.9 Worked Example

The three documents and the historian are invented for this page and set around December 1914; what they describe is drawn from the well-established record of the truce.

Read the Story
Source A, an invented letter from a British private, printed in his hometown paper in January 1915: “On Christmas Eve the Germans put little trees with candles along their trench and sang carols. In the morning we met them halfway, swapped tobacco for sausage, and had a game of football with a tin can. Not a shot all day.”Source B, an invented diary of a German lieutenant, December 25, 1914: “The English came out with empty hands and we met them. We used the quiet hours to bury the dead who had lain between the lines since November. There was no football on our stretch; the ground was all shell holes and wire.”Source C, an invented entry in a British battalion’s official war diary, December 25, 1914: “Quiet day. Enemy did not fire. Burial parties at work.”Source D, an invented passage from a modern history of the war: “The truce was real but uneven. Along many stretches of the British line men met and talked, but elsewhere snipers kept shooting through Christmas Day. Reports of football are scattered and often secondhand, and the next year commanders ordered that no such truce happen again.”
A short passage written for this page.
Question: Using all four sources, write a short account of what happened on Christmas 1914 and note where the sources disagree.
Not Yet“On Christmas 1914 the whole war stopped. The British and Germans met between the trenches and played football, as Source A says.”It turns one soldier’s experience into the whole front, ignores the diary that says there was no football and the historian’s note that shooting went on elsewhere, and never mentions that the sources disagree.
Meets the Standard“On Christmas 1914, along parts of the line, British and German soldiers stopped fighting, met between the trenches and traded food and tobacco. Sources A, B and C agree on a day without shooting, and B and C both record the burial of the dead. The sources disagree about football: the British private describes a game with a tin can, while the German officer saw ‘no football on our stretch.’ Both can be true, since the historian notes that the truce was uneven and that football reports are ‘scattered and often secondhand.’ The official war diary’s silence about meeting the enemy may reflect what an officer was willing to put on record. The truce was real, local and brief, and commanders ordered that it not happen again.”It builds one account on what the sources share, treats the football disagreement as local variation that the historian supports, explains the official silence instead of ignoring it, and keeps the scale of the claim small.
Question Stems to Use
What do all the sources agree on?Where do two sources contradict each other, and can both be true?Who wrote each source, when, and for whom?What does the secondary source explain that the primary sources cannot?What does your account claim, and what does it leave open?

Common Mistakes with RH.11-12.9

Generalizing from one source

“The whole war stopped for Christmas.”

Try this: Have students mark which claims in their account rest on one source and which on two or more, and soften the single-source ones.

Hiding the disagreement

An account that mentions the football game and leaves out the diary that denies it

Try this: Require a sentence in every account that names a discrepancy between sources and explains what might account for it.

Letting the historian replace the documents

“The historian says it was uneven, so the letters don’t matter.”

Try this: Ask students to test the secondary source against the primary ones, quoting at least one document that supports each claim it makes.

Where RH.11-12.9 Fits

Comes BeforeRH.9-10.9Compare several primary and secondary sources on one topic, noting where they agree and differ.
AlongsideRST.11-12.9Synthesize information from several science sources into a coherent understanding, resolving conflicts where possible.WHST.11-12.8Gather information from multiple sources, assess each one’s strengths and limits, and integrate it selectively.
Comes NextWHST.11-12.2Write an informative account of a historical event that draws on several sources.WHST.11-12.7Conduct research projects that synthesize multiple sources on a question.

Practice RH.11-12.9

Quick Check

  1. What do Sources A, B and C agree on?
  2. Where do Sources A and B contradict each other, and how can both be true?
  3. What does the official war diary leave out, and why might it?

RH.11-12.9: Other Names

RH.11-12.9CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.9

Common Core State Standards © Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved. Official wording from the Common Core State Standards PDFs at corestandards.org, last checked October 14, 2026. The explanation, I can statements, example, mistakes and practice on this page are EMStudio’s own, written beside the official wording. They are not part of the standard.