Tuesday, May 21, 2013
9th grade English students will apply the research and speaking skills developed throughout the year to an informative speech about the Time magazine top 100 people.
Due to some shortened periods and one missed day, period 7 will not present until Wednesday, May 22.
The assignment (including a link to the TIME slideshow) is attached:
/files/user/31/file/TIME%20Top%20100%20Research%20Presentation.doc
Resources:
For citation reminders, use your textbooks (there's an entire unit devoted to research skills) and Writers Inc. books, as well as Mrs. Barron's citation guides (provided in class).
Use your class time to explore databases/books available in the school:
- SIRS Discoverer has reliable content and can be set to look up only certain types of resources, like Newspaper articles or essays (you can access this at school; at home you'll need a public library card): http://www.powerlibrary.org/Interfac/POWER.asp?ID=pl2556
- You may also want to use the Contemporary Authors option if you are researching a writer, Business Source if you are researching a business CEO/COO, GreenFILE if researching a person in the health field, and EBSCO Host if researching a politician or researcher.
- There's a large selection of biographies in the library--use the OPAC to see if there is one for your person.
- World Book Web and Proquest are also good sources: http://www.worldbookonline.com/wb/products?ed=all&gr=Welcome+North+Clarion+Co+Jr+Sr+Hs%21; http://portal.bigchalk.com/portalweb/home.do
Credible/reliable websites are also allowed. Make sure there is a credible author/organization posting the content, that there aren't a bunch of ads on the page, and that they are using appropriate language/grammar (spelling and grammar errors tend to be signs of careless work).
- You may want to check a person's own website, such as http://www.paul.senate.gov/.
- Researching a person from a foreign country? Try http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world/. Just type in the person's name in the search bar at the top right of the screen.
- Try using nettrekker to help eliminate unreliable sources: http://school.nettrekker.com/goLogout?np=/sections/login/login.ftl&pp=/sections/login/login.ftl
TIPS:
Newspaper articles will have great information about a person's involvement in particular events, but will likely lack context/background information.
Spell the person's name properly.
Avoid any sources you know to be unreliable, such as wikipedia and ask.com.
Avoid blogs, comments, tweets, fan sites, etc.
If a page you go to have a list of other helpful links or resources that were used by the web site author, check them out.
Make sure your sources are fairly recent (past few years). After all, these are the top 100 people of 2013--find out what they've done in the past year to get on that list.
Focus on the important stuff. While it's interesting to learn about your person's dog or favorite color, it probably wasn't why they were chosen as one of the top 100 influential people. Focus your research so you're not wasting time on trivia and tangents.
Pictures are not needed for any part of this project. Therefore I should not see you looking through images AT ALL. Use your time wisely.
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