W EDNESDAY N OVEMBER 19 TH

A GENDA Bell Ringer Project Discussion Project Corrections PowerPoint

B ELL R INGER Today I want you to write about what you found to be the most difficult aspect of the research project. Why was it hard for you? What could I do next year to help the students understand better?

R ESEARCH P ROJECTS Summary/ Reflection Page 1 FULL page, typed, 12 font Thesis Statement Parenthetical Citations Works Cited

T HESIS S TATEMENT : tells the reader how you will interpret the significance of the subject matter under discussion. is a road map for the paper; in other words, it tells the reader what to expect from the rest of the paper. makes a claim that others might dispute. is usually a single sentence somewhere in your first paragraph that presents your argument to the reader. The rest of the paper, the body of the essay, gathers and organizes evidence that will persuade the reader of the logic of your interpretation.

T HESIS S TATEMENT : Do I answer the question? Re-reading the question prompt after constructing a working thesis can help you fix an argument that misses the focus of the question. Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? If your thesis simply states facts that no one would, or even could, disagree with, it’s possible that you are simply providing a summary, rather than making an argument. Is my thesis statement specific enough? Thesis statements that are too vague often do not have a strong argument. If your thesis contains words like “good” or “successful,” see if you could be more specific: why is something “good”; what specifically makes something “successful”? Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? If a reader’s first response is, “So what?” then you need to clarify, to forge a relationship, or to connect to a larger issue.

P ARENTHETICAL C ITATIONS This is where you give credit where credit is due. If you added ANY info from a source to your project (or paper), you must cite either the author (if there is one listed), the article title, or publication. When do you cite? You cite a source any time you use information that didn’t come directly from your own head.

P ARENTHETICAL C ITATIONS Examples: Article Without an Author: “Carbon pollution is the main reason our planet is getting hotter, increasing the chances of weather disasters, drought and flood and hurting our health” (“Extreme… change”). Article With an Author: “In Spokane, the period from July 1 through Aug. 26 was the warmest on record” (Prager).

W ORKS C ITED ProQuest did this for most of you at the bottom of your articles. However, if you used information from a source or sources outside of ProQuest, you then had to generate a MLA formatted works cited credit on your own. The best resource for completing this is Simply click on the “MLA” option at the top, then fill in as much information from your webpage, or book, or journal article as you can find. Then click “Generate Citation”, and copy/paste to your slide.