Sample lesson plan for teaching citations

Sample lesson plan for introducing/practicing citations

Grades 6-8

Materials: SMARTBoard, laptops

Time Needed: Can be one 60 minute class, or can take several class sessions depending on how familiar students are with citations.

(Some students may have had practice with citing information, and others may be beginners.  Use the beginning discussion and final evaluation to get a feel for how much practice students have had or may still need. )

Discussion:

Start by discussing plagiarism and citations.  Ask students to describe plagiarism in their own words, and explain why plagiarizing is a problem.   Ask if they know what to do to avoid plagiarizing someone’s work.  Clear up any confusion that the students may have about the definition of plagiarism (copying someone else’s work without giving them credit).  Also remind students how to avoid plagiarism (not copying directly, citing resources, etc.)  Focus heavily on the fact that websites and internet information must be cited as well as print information, since students have 1:1 laptops and use these frequently for research and often don’t feel a need to cite the information they find online.

Group activity- “we do”

On the SMARTBoard, show students how to use Citation Machine (http://citationmachine.net/index2.php) to build a citation for a particular website.  Point out what information is needed for citing a website (author, title, date published, date retrieved, URL, etc.)  Look at a website tied to your curriculum and fill out the citation machine form as a class, having the students help you find the information needed for the citation.  Have students fill in the information on their laptops as you fill out the form on the SMARTBoard.  Have a discussion throughout this to clear up confusion.  Repeat this part of the lesson as many times as needed.

Partner activity- “you do”

Tell students that they will be working with partners to answer two questions.  Explain that one point will be given for each correct answer, and one point will be given for each correct citation.  Tell the students they will need to use Citation Machine to create their citations.  Give students two questions that are related to your curriculum that they can research on the internet.  Have students type their answers and the citations into a Word document.  Then have students print the document or email it to you for evaluation.  You can give a reward or recognition for highest scoring groups.  However, use this activity as a formative assessment to see if students get the idea or need more practice.

Evaluation: look at the students work to see if they can build a citation with citation machine.  Also observe partners to see if students are having difficulty or if one partner is doing all the work.

Note: The activity can be repeated to practice using other resources as well (print or nonprint.)