Citing Sources
It seems so easy, but can be so hard for students...
This week I’ve got another resource that focuses on research skills. It’s a good follow-up to last week’s evaluating sources resource, so if you didn’t get a chance to check that one out, you can do so here.
Teaching students how to properly cite sources is a challenge for a few reasons.
With all the resources out there, it seems like it should be easy (EasyBib, Purdue OWL, the vast expanse of the internet…)
There isn’t a lot to “teach” about it—you can show them how to properly do it, and they’ll either do it right or lazily do it wrong
Basically, you can lead a student to a million MLA examples and resources…but you can’t make them cite.
Here’s an activity which provides students with an opportunity practice putting parenthetical citations in their writing or citing by mentioning the author’s name in the lead-in. It doesn’t cover every single citing situation, but it’ll give you a start to having them practice using resources to help them properly cite. It’ll also reinforce the lessons they have learned on evaluating sources, as they determine if each one is scholarly or popular, primary or secondary, and if it would be a reliable source for a school project.
Click here for the resource, and feel free to change up as needed to make it work for you and your students!
