Lesson Plan:

Lesson Title: Cite the Site!
Creating Bibliographies with Proper Citations
A Middle School Lesson

Class Time Required: 45 minute period with additional time for practice and review

Overview and Purpose:

This lesson will demonstrate to students the need to properly cite work of others incorporated into their reports or presentations. It will detail how to create bibliographies with proper citations for the primary types of references middle students will use for projects such as text-based reports or multimedia projects and presentations. Students will also learn the process for using web graphics and properly citing their web address. An easy-to-use freeware application will also be introduced.

NETS for Students and California Content Standards (http://www.clrn.org/search/bystandard.cfm):

National Educational Technology Standards for Students - Connecting Curriculum and Technology published by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE ) and the U.S. Department of Education

NETS for Students:

2. Social, ethical, and human issues

Students understand the ethical, cultural, and societal issues related to technology.

Students practice responsible use of technology systems, information and software.

Students us technology to locate, evaluate, and collect information from a variety of sources.

Students evaluate and select new information resources and technological innovations based on the appropriateness to specific tasks.

NETS provides the following Performance Indicators for students by the end of Grade 8.

Exhibit legal and ethical behaviors when using information and technology, and discuss consequences of misuse. (Std. 2).

Reading/Language Arts Framework and Content Standards for California Public Schools,: Published by the California Department of Education, 1999.

English-Language Arts Content Standards - Seventh Grade: Writing:

1.5 Give credit for both quoted and paraphrased information in a bibliography by using a consistent and sanctioned format and methodology for citations.

2.3 d. Cite Reference sources appropriately.

General Goals:

Creating proper citations for classroom research projects that include creating trifold brochures, digital quilts of images expressing who you are in images alone, researching and reporting, illustrating, and presenting a multimedia hyperstudio project. This lesson provides information and skills that crosses curriculum areas. The information and skills presented in this lesson help my students prepare, research, document, and cite sources for their work in science as they do their annual science projects. It assists them in their work in the language arts framework.

Creating proper citations for classroom research projects that include creating tri-fold brochures, digital quilts of images expressing who you are in images alone, researching and reporting, illustrating, and presenting a multimedia HyperStudio project. This lesson provides information and skills that crosses curriculum areas. The information and skills presented in this lesson help my students prepare, research, document, and cite sources for their work in science as they do their annual science projects. It assists them in their work in the language arts framework.

Students will learn the value of research and using the work of others to complete their own projects and the proper way to give credit in the form of a proper citation to the author, illustrator, photographer, or researcher from whom they might use work.

Students will be able to properly cite work used from many sources including traditional materials such as books and newspapers and additionally electronic and web-based research sources. Students will be given all the information necessary to find the necessary details such as web page addresses and image addresses for material they choose to include in their projects.

Materials Needed:

Books, Periodicals, Newspapers, or other reference sources used
Computer with word processing and web viewing applications
Pencil and Paper
Student Bibliography Guidelines

Activities (step by step procedure):

1. Introduce the concept of Bibliographies and reasons for citations
2. Distribute Student Citation Guidelines
3. Practice several different citation form types including web-based resources on either a whiteboard or digital projector as a group/class activity
4. Have students cite several resource types you have provided for them
5. Independent practice - Give student information about other resources and ask students to complere the bibliotgaphy with the aid of the Biliographer application (Mac freeware)

Teaching Strategies

1. Use of network browser program digitally projected for class to see browser features needed to complete a citation.
2. Use of word processing program digitally projected for class to see citing rules.
3. Student peer-editing of completed bibliographies to find problems and discrepanancies.

Assessment/Evaluation

1. This lesson should be used as a tool for preparing students to cite and create bibliographies for an upcoming content specific report, multimedia project, or presentation.
2. It is a good idea to provide students with a number of preselected reference materials (book, magazine, web site, web image) for students to create a bibliography. If desired (Macintosh users), students can create, alphabetize, and print their bibliography using Bibliographer application.
3. Include a bibliography component in subsequently assigned rubrics for research projects and papers that includes points earned for proper and complete bibliographies or citations is a great follow-up assessment.

Adaptations/Extensions

1. Crosscurricular: This application is widely accepted at my school as the standard for all citation for student work and projects. Once students learn the importance of citing their work to acknowledge others work for an English report, creating citations in support of student science fair projects is a natural extention.

2. Learning Disabilities: Students can be given instructions to complete a bibliography but use a more basic method of recording.

Thought provoking questions

Discuss ways teachers or others can often tell or find out when students are not completing proer citations.

Resources and References (Web sites, books, etc.)

Please see the web site listing for resources including the the download site for the Macintosh freeware tool, Bibliographer.