A DBQ asks students to build an argument from a set of documents. When you add pages from Maus I to that set, you give them something unusual: a personal account told in images, sitting next to maps, official records, or other historical material. The result can be a rich assignment for English and social studies classrooms, but only if the documents and the rubric are chosen with care.

Start with the question. A good prompt asks students to take a position and defend it, such as how personal testimony and official records each contribute to our understanding of life in occupied Poland. Avoid questions that can be answered with a list of facts.

Keep the document set small. Five to seven items is enough, and one or two should be pages from Maus I. Too many documents lead to shallow use of each one.

Choose sources that disagree or complicate each other. A personal memoir page and a formal historical document will not describe events in the same way, and that difference is what students should discuss. If every source says the same thing, there is no argument to make.

Score sourcing and evidence separately

DBQ rubrics usually track how well students use the documents, not just how much they know. That is a useful habit to keep. Students should say where evidence comes from and why it can be trusted.

• Thesis: a clear position that answers the question directly
• Document use: evidence pulled from most or all of the sources, not just one
• Sourcing: comments on who created a document and why that matters
• Outside context: relevant background that the documents do not supply
• Reasoning: an explanation of how the evidence supports the claim

Treat the Maus I pages as documents, not decoration

Students sometimes handle the comic pages differently from the other sources. They summarize the drawing but never ask who made it or when. Remind them that Maus I is a source with a creator, a purpose, and a point of view.

Ask them to consider what it means that the story was recorded decades later and shaped by a son's questions. That is a sourcing comment, and it belongs on the rubric. It also reinforces the idea that memoir is a form with its own strengths and limits.

Grade in a fixed order

DBQs are dense, and reading order matters. Read for the thesis first, then check each rubric row in sequence. You will find that most essays reveal their main weakness in the first two paragraphs.

AI grading tools like GraideMind can help by tallying which documents each essay cites and flagging missing sourcing comments, based on the rubric you provide. That gives you a quick map of what is present before you read closely. Your review of the reasoning is still the part that counts most.

Debrief with the class

After returning the essays, show the class a table of which documents were used most and least. Students are often surprised that they ignored a source entirely. That awareness improves their next DBQ more than a written comment would.

Ask students to revise one paragraph to include a source they skipped. It is a small task, and it teaches the habit of scanning the whole document set. Over time, that habit shows up in their scores.