The main focus of this exercise is on the use of historical sources. Pupils are presented with a problem in the murder of Becket. They are presented with a range of possible explanations and they are also presented with a range of sources. The aim is to use the sources to decide which of the explanations seems most plausible in the light of the available source material and to use the sources as evidence to substantiate this judgement.

The introductory page is designed to give the pupils some sort of grounding. Pupils may not have heard of Becket, and are also unlikely to be familiar with the concept of pilgrimage. It may be useful to discuss contemporary examples as a way to introduce the topic. Any high profile murder case in the news should raise the difficulty of determining motive and evidence. In addition, deaths of all kinds result in memorials of one kind or another. A good example of a relatively recent set of events like this is the Stephen Lawrence murder with its repercussions.

The next obvious point is the narrative telling the story of Henry's relationship with Becket. Pupils can always access this from whatever part of the resource they are studying. Teachers may want pupils to simply read through the text to get a feel for the story. They may want to read the text to pupils, or use class reading with a printed version of the story.

There are a number of signposts within the narrative which pupils need to look out for.

	Section 1 gets across the point that the church was powerful and that the church and state were integral parts of the same whole.
	Section 2 develops the point that Henry and Becket were friends, but that Henry had had his differences with the church.
	Section 3 charts the increasing tension between Henry and Becket. Pupils could be encouraged to look here for evidence to support one of the explanations put forward in the introduction.
	Section 4 describes the murder and the confusion surrounding it. Again, it is a good platform for some initial hypothesising about the views on Becket's murder.
	Section 5 assesses the impact of the murder on popular opinion. In doing so it again raises the opportunity to consider Becket's reputation and thereby the validity of the three views on his death.

From the narrative, pupils should study the sources. Teachers may want to divide the class into groups and allocate them one or two sources. Some are long and rather involved. The image sources in particular need a lot of careful 'decoding' to strip away the messages they are attempting to convey.

It may prove worthwhile to add in an additional activity in which each group gives a short presentation on their source. This presentation should describe what pupils learnt from it but also what reservations they may have about it. In the case of picture sources, they could use desktop publishing software to annotate a copy of the source. For the text sources, pupils could use word processing software to highlight sections of text which raise important points.

Whatever methods used, pupils need to consider issues such as:

	Date and context of the source
	The author and intended audience of the source
	The purpose of the source

Much good work has been done with sources in history classrooms by asking pupils to consider whether the most appropriate phrases to be used with a source are:

	The source tells me that …
	The source suggest that …
	From the source I can infer that …

From this platform the class could come together and complete the table in stage 1. Teacher guidance is important here in encouraging pupils to be brief and precise about the content of the source and its relevance to the main issue - the appropriateness or otherwise of the three views.

Stage 2 of the task sheet provides pupils with a pro forma 'writing frame' for pupils to write up their final conclusions. It should be stressed that this is merely a framework and should not be used without the preliminary work with the table in stage 1 and ideally the group discussions on the sources. There is a danger that writing frames without the extensive prior work can mask a lack of understanding in many pupils.

A final consideration which teachers may want to consider is that the exercise could be given a stronger focus on the issue of interpretations, particularly by concentrating on the date of the sources and the possible ways in which the accounts, when arranged chronologically, may have influenced each other. The images are very much post hoc accounts feeding the story of Becket as martyr, whereas the secondary source very much contradicts this view. The opportunity exists here to consider that issue as an introduction for pupils into the issue of historical interpretations.