Creating Citations and a Bibliography

Last week, 4th grade practiced notetaking skills with the Social Studies teacher and me. The classes came down to the library so the teacher and I could go over the skills and have them practice. You can find that lesson on my blog.

This week, the students are continuing their research over an event from the Civil Rights Movement. Students have already chosen an event, so it is now time to choose our sources and start taking notes. I created a Destiny Collections with sources I had already viewed that students could use during their research. Students could use outside sources as well, however, the SS teacher wanted them to use the online encyclopedia and the sources I curated before using an outside source. We threw in a mini-lesson over reliable sources. SNEAKY :) 

Student looking through the Destiny Collections to find a good source. 

Citations 

One of my favorite features of our Britannica online encyclopedia is the citation is provided for the students. So, the students know how to copy and paste this citation onto their bibliography. Well, the websites that we had students using as their second source did not provide this citation. So, the teacher and I decided to use Citation Machine with the students to create the citations. We practiced this using the website, then the book they are using in class. 

In order for the students to easily find this, and not accidently type in citationmachine.com, which takes you to a different website all together 😲, I added the actual website into Google Classroom. To check for understanding, students had an assignment to paste one of their citations into a Google Form. 

S.S. teacher helps groups of students create their citations.

Students paste their citaiton into a Google Form so that the
teacher can check for understanding.

Bibliography

The following day.... YES, the classes came two days in a row to finish the lesson!! That is the BEAUTY of a flexible schedule. 

Classes can come two days in a row, and more, with a flexible schedule!! 

Anyway, the following day the classes came back to finish up their bibliography. They created a Google Doc, and titled it so that they would easily find it again. Then, they copied their citations for all 3 sources into their bibliography.  After this was complete, students were free to begin taking notes on their notecards. The second day went much smoother, since students had used Citation Machine the day before. 

My favorite part of the day was when the classroom teacher told them that this didn't exist when we were in school. We had to know the exact format each time we cited our sources. This was the look on their faces!