HIT: Bibliography Lessons, Part 2

[Karin Gravina <gravina@LEVERETT.K14.MASS.EDU>]

Here's the rest of the responses:

Best way to make the instruction meaningful is to do it in connection with
a classroom asignment that requires a bibliography.  One alternative would
be to have the students select a topic to "research" but only locate
materials that contain relevant information and make a bibliography and
not actually do the research. You could set criteria for number of sources
to include and types to include.

Hi, I just got finished teaching it to 8th grade. For 6th I would say go
slow, maybe a book and a magazine to start. Show them citation format on
overhead. Have each one practice it with books and magazines at their
tables.

I find multiple copies of a book and place one on each table.  We do a
bibliographic citation for that book together--they in groups, me on the
whiteboard.  They seem to get the gist of it after completing one book, and
then I point out the difference between citations for books, magazines,
encyclopedias, and web sites.  I have them work in groups to do citations on
another book, a magazine article, a web site, and an encyclopedia article.
(I have three computers available, so they are able to use the computer when
it's their turn.  I ask a question that will be answered from our school's
home page.)  The whole lesson takes about 45 minutes, and they are busy the
whole time.

Try manipulative.  Write the citation on construction paper.  Cut it apart
by fields and punctuation.  Put the manipulatives in a paper bag and have
the students "build" the citation by using the title page of the book and a
MLA stylesheet.  I prepare about 15 different manipulative bags and then
allow the students to work together in pairs to "put together the puzzle".
Homework is then given for work on an individual basis.  It seems to be
working.

The best idea I've used with all levels is to make template slips for each
kind of citation (book = white, Internet site = pink, encyc = green, etc) so
they can fill in the info and then put the slips in order.  Your template
can provide the punctuation and show an example. I have usually done
examples on an overhead with everyone filling in the same ones at first.

Karin, if you turn it into an annotated bibliography and introduce it
as NOT A REPORT, you can probably carry them along. After all,
they will want to show some result of all of their work. Check
around with the classroom teachers. You might be able to work it
into a classroom project that is comtemplated. Just be careful with
some students who will want to write a standard report no matter
what. These may be the best students who have developed a
formula and will ignore all instructions until disaster strikes.

You could create a power point slide show for them. Have all the bells and
whistles illustrating the various entries for a book, an encyclopedia etc. I
did this with the card catalog.
They can then access it on the computers themselves.( if you have enough)
and look at it. Otherwise a large group presentation would work.  Then they
can possibly find their favorite non-fiction book and compose an entry.

When I taught this (as an English teacher) to 7th graders, I had them all
pretend that they were authors.  I handed out forms, 5 to each student. Each
was labeled,
1. Biography of your favorite person,
2. Autobiography,
3. Fiction Book,
4. Nonfiction Book,
5. Magazine Article on your favorite Topic.

Under each of the headings was a list they had to fill out

For the Books:
1. Your name:
2.  Title of the Book:
3. Publishing Company:
4. Year Book is Published:
5. City where it is published:

(I used the info of my English text as an example of how to find publisher,
year, & city, The kids could use that or any book they had on them, or make
up their own--most chose to "be creative.")

For the Article,

1. Your Name:
2.  Title of your Article:
3: Magazine it was in (I had a box of old magazines around so to help them
choose)
4. Volume & Issue Numbers:
5. Date:

    (Many just copied information on volume & issue numbers from the
magazines available, but many also made up their own.)

Then, I collected the forms, and redistributed them randomly.  Then we worked
on forms (MLA, APA).  They like the entire fantasy aspect of it, and we all
got a lot of laughs from some of the titles.

Go to NUEVASCHOOL.ORG and scroll to media center and then research.  They
have the most wonderful Bibliograph work sheet you fill out and it puts it
into the right format and you copy and paste. My 6th loves ait and they use
it all through middle school.  Good luck

Karin M. Gravina
Librarian
Leverett Elementary School
85 Montague Rd
Leverett, MA  01054
(413)548-9144
gravina@leverett.k14.mass.edu

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