Making Source Citation a Habit

Marcia Dressel K-5 Library Teacher, Osceola

dressel@osceola.k12.wi.ustwitter.com/@marciadresselhttp://www.myteacherpages.com/webpages/MDressel/

3rd Grade

• Objectives: Finding “information about where you got your information” via the title page.

3rd Grade

Objectives - Students will be introduced to source information on the title page. Procedures - Message will remind students of the work they did to gather information about what an animal

eats. Explain that gathering information is called research and tell them that professional researchers share their facts and also tell where they got their information. “But they don’t just say ‘I learned it from a book’ they tell exactly WHICH book.” Tell students that today they’re going to learn to find the information that professional researchers use to tell where they got their information. Gather students near the easel – and display one of the Big Books.

Find the title page. Explain that we can find the title page by looking for a page that has (two or) three things on it: Title, Author

and Publisher. Have students repeat that two or three times while pointing to title (biggest words on the page) author (usually

under it – sometimes with “by” in front of it) and publisher (near the bottom of the page). Show another Big Book’s title page and have students find the Title, Author and Publisher. Explain that the publisher is a company or factory “that has trucks of paper driving in and trucks of books going

out” and make a list of the clues that can help us find the publisher; it sometimes has one of these words in it: Press, Publishing, Publisher, Co., Inc. etc. Sometimes it has a Big City’s Name near it. But sometimes we have to look for that Big City’s name on the back of the title page. It’s near the Publisher’s name or address. You may need to write out an address to show where the city, state is. Finally, professional researchers tell what year the book was made in. The publication, copyright date, or “book’s birthday” is often near a © or the word copyright.

Use other big books and have volunteers come up and find the title, author, publisher, city, and year.

The Princess and the PigAn early third grade lesson (with literature tie!)

Objectives - Students will find source information on the title page. Week One Procedures - Read the Princess and the Pig. Do not make overt

references to folktale names hidden in the illustrations but acknowledge similarities as students notice connections to other literature. Use book’s title page to review finding title, author, publisher, city and publication date. Use other big books and have volunteers come up and find the title, author, publisher, city, and year.

Week Two Procedures - Allow students time to read two or more of the fairy tales alluded to in the book. Then have them discuss the similarities and complete the worksheet with comparisons and source citation information.

4th Grade

• Objectives: Understand WHY. Get comfortable with how to.

Objectives – Students will identify the reasons for source citation: credibility and credit. Students will cite the source of their information.

Procedures - A “guest speaker” will share pumpkin facts with the class, and they will be coached to ask “How do you know that?” The speaker will tell the source of her information. Then ask students to tell which facts they believed and why they were more believable. Discuss credibility of sources. Tell a scenario of improper credit to the creator. Discuss the fairness and importance of giving the author or creator proper credit. Hand out Plagiarism article and have students read/listen in small groups. Tell students the way we are going to learn to avoid plagiarism this year is to use Simple Citation forms.

4th Grade

Citing Books and Encyclopedias4th Grade

Objectives - Students will recall how to avoid plagiarism. Procedures: Recall what happened in the book we read last week - When Marion

Copied. Briefly recall two ways to avoid plagiarism: summarizing when taking notes and citing sources. Show a (blue) book citation sheet and read the information needed for it. Pass out pre-selected books and practice finding the source information on the title page: author, title, publisher, place of publication and date of publication. While students are practicing that, choose one student from each table to get World Book encyclopedias for each student at the table. Get students’ attention and read a (pink) print encyclopedia citation sheet. Explain that encyclopedias aren’t written by one author – experts write articles about the topics. The authors’ names are in tiny print at the end of the articles. Have each student find an article title (this can be difficult because of subheadings) and then scan to the end of the article to find the authors name. Circulate to tables to make sure each has found it. Then get everyone’s attention and re-read the citation sheet. Point out that the other 3 items required to cite an encyclopedia article are easy. The article title (that’s usually what you looked up) the title of the encyclopedia “World Book encyclopedia” and the edition year (on the spine).

5th grade

• Practice• Practice• Practice

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