S1-S3 Humanities: street names as evidence, checking an AI's account of their origin
- StageS1-S3
- SubjectHistory
- Learning strandreflection on the application of AI
- Official documentsAI Literacy Learning Framework for Primary and Secondary Schools (Examples of Application Scenarios)
- Session timeOne lesson (60 min); add a homework slot for pupils to check the sources
Pupils pick a street they walk along every day, ask an AI where its name came from, then check the answer line by line: find the matching record in an official or first-hand source and sort each sentence into supported, contradicted or impossible to check.
- EquipmentProjector; printed worksheet; access to usable official sources when checking (the school library, an official online notice or a local publication)
- Version1.4
- Last updated2026-10-18
| Key learning area | Learning elements | Points to note when using AI |
|---|---|---|
| Personal, Social and Humanities Education | project learning, use of historical sources, fact-checking | Fact-check: however fluent the answer, no source means the typical shape of an AI hallucination; every sentence has to be checked against a first-hand or official record — human judgement first, the tool second, and no over-reliance on it. |
A street name looks like a fact. Ask an AI where it came from, though, and you usually get a fluent story with no source named. This worksheet teaches pupils to sort the answer: which sentence a record supports, which sentence a record contradicts, and which sentence cannot be checked at all.
What this solves
Pupils walk the same streets every day and rarely wonder how the names got there. Ask an AI “where did this street name come from?” and it answers at once with a complete, fluent story, complete with a year and a person - and no source for any of it.
An answer that fluent, that confident and that sourceless is what an AI hallucination looks like from the pupil’s side.
That makes it one of the best exercises in junior-secondary humanities. Pupils have to break a plausible-sounding answer into sentences they can check one at a time, then go and find a first-hand or official record and see which sentence holds. What they usually find is not that the AI was wholly wrong, but that some sentences are supported, some are stated far too confidently, and some cannot be traced at all - and telling those three apart is the whole point of the worksheet.
The worksheet uses a local-community inquiry, the kind that sits inside a junior-secondary Citizenship, Economics and Society topic; it fits the digital education part of a School Development Plan and the teaching and learning of junior-secondary Humanities, and it takes only one prompt and one answer before the checking starts, so that pupils practise asking where a claim comes from on a subject small enough to check themselves.
Learning objectives
Pupils will be able to:
- Break an AI’s account of a street name into sentences that can each be checked.
- Name what each sentence is claiming (an origin, a year, a person or an event, or the language it came from).
- Find the matching first-hand or official record for each sentence, and note the source and its year.
- Mark each sentence as supported by the record, contradicted by it, or impossible to check, and give a reason.
- Write a short account of what they found, naming the sentence most in need of caution.
Written for the junior-secondary stage, it covers the reflection on the application of AI strand of AI literacy and the values of critical discernment and technology for good, with human judgement first and the tool second: pupils fact-check a fluent claim instead of accepting it, so that they do not drift into over-reliance on the tool.
How to use it
One 60-minute lesson, in four segments.
- Choose a street and ask an AI (10 min) — each pupil or group picks a street they pass every day whose name they cannot explain, and writes it in the first column. ask it “where did this street name come from?” and copy the answer out word for word. The point: what is written down is the AI’s claim, not a fact.
- Split it up (20 min) — break the answer into 4-6 sentences and label what each one claims: an origin? a year? a person or an event? the language it came from (a translation, or a transliteration)?
- Find the record (20 min) — each group takes one or two sentences, looks them up in the sources the teacher has named, and fills in the checking table: sentence, record, source and year, judgement.
- Report and close (10 min) — each group reports in one sentence: “the claim we checked was … the record shows … so the AI’s statement is …”. Then compare across the class: did different groups judge the same street differently?
Sources the teacher may name (pupils look them up themselves and record the source and the year)
| What is being checked | Where pupils can look |
|---|---|
| The official name and the year | Government notices, such as a street-naming notice in the gazette; lands and district office street records |
| How the area changed | Library and archive holdings, local publications, old maps |
| What residents remember | A spoken account from an older resident (say clearly that it is spoken, and note who was asked and when) |
| Language and translation | Language references, old newspapers, the naming habit of other streets in the same district |
This worksheet deliberately prints no “correct answer” for any street. The record is the answer; a teaching resource that printed the conclusion would simply be one more unchecked copy of it. Pupils obtain the record themselves, and write down the source and the year.
If a sentence traces only to a spoken account, that is not a failure: mark it impossible to check, and write “spoken only, no official record” in the reason column. That is a full-credit answer.
Answer key and marking notes
What this worksheet checks is not “did the AI get it right”, but “can this sentence be checked at all”.
A typical AI answer shows the five problems below. Pupils meet the standard if they identify them and can explain each one:
| Kind of problem | What pupils should point out |
|---|---|
| No source given | Nothing in the passage says where any part of it came from. A claim with no source is already the first warning sign. |
| A story told as a fact | It states the person or event behind the name in a confident voice, without saying whether that account came from an official record or from a rumour. |
| Detail that is too complete | The year, the person and the pronunciation are all answered specifically, but none of it can be matched to a record. The more detail there is, the more of it needs checking. |
| The language origin confused | A transliteration is described as a translation, or the other way round, or another street’s naming habit is applied to this one. |
| The wrong street | The street was renamed, or there are two similarly named streets in the district, and the AI has answered with the other one’s history. |
Marking is process-based - every check needs a source:
| Check item | Meets the standard | Needs work |
|---|---|---|
| The copy | The AI’s answer copied word for word, not paraphrased | Only “the AI said …” |
| Splitting it up | Every sentence says what kind of claim it makes | Treating the whole answer as one claim |
| Source | Every sentence has a source name and a year; a spoken source names who was asked and when | “I found it online”, or another AI’s answer |
| Judgement | All three judgements are used, each with a reason | Everything marked “cannot tell”, or everything marked “wrong” |
| Conclusion | One sentence that says which claim most needs caution, and why | Restating the question |
The key judgement: “impossible to check” is a legitimate answer, and the one pupils skip. They tend to choose between right and wrong; this worksheet is about noticing that a missing source, a story that is only spoken, or detail that matches nothing already make a sentence uncheckable - which is exactly where an AI goes wrong without sounding wrong.
Extension, if time allows: ask the same question in a second language and compare the two answers. If they differ, that usually means the claim had no reliable source to begin with.
Files
Street-name origin checking worksheet (editable Word document)
Includes: teacher notes, the checking table (sentence / record / source and year / judgement), a page for copying the AI’s answer, a one-sentence conclusion field, and the answer key and marking notes.
Official documents
Every resource in this library is written to the AI Literacy Learning Framework for Primary and Secondary Schools and falls within the policy scope of the Blueprint for Digital Education Development in Primary and Secondary Schools.
This resource maps to:
- AI Literacy Learning Framework for Primary and Secondary Schools (Examples of Application Scenarios) (p.14): using a junior-secondary Citizenship, Economics and Society local-inquiry topic as its example, it asks pupils to question where an AI’s statement comes from and to check its output against reliable records.
Learning strand: reflection on the application of AI
Official documents page: https://www.edb.gov.hk/en/edu-system/primary-secondary/applicable-to-primary-secondary/it-in-edu/debp.html
This page is an independent Beets teaching resource, not an official EDB document.
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