Citation Search!

A WebQuest for 9th Grade (English Language Arts)

Designed by: Samantha Simmons
Samantha Simmons

Introduction | Learners | Standards | Process | Resources | Evaluation | Conclusion

| Credits | Student Page

Introduction
I designed this lesson for students to learn how to cite texts and create Works Cited
pages.
This lesson has students follow links to Owl Purdue and Citation Machine.
They will study these resources in order to gain an understanding of the
assignment. They then need to write a one page Essay on To Kill a
Mockingbird, using four quotes to support their claim. Two of the quotes will be from
the text, the other two quotes will be taken from online websites. The students will need
to properly cite all four quotes in their Essay. They need to include a Works Cited page.

Learners
This lesson is designed for a 9th grade English Language Arts class. It
revolves around citations and the novel To Kill a Mockingbird. The lesson is
geared towards 9th and 10th graders who are learning to use in-text citations and
Works Cited pages. Before this lesson, students will need to know how to come up with
a topic and write a novel on a specific essay.

Curriculum Standards
Students will learn how to cite evidence from the novel they are reading, as well as
outside sources. They will learn how to correctly use in-text citations and how to create
a Works Cited page.
Standard:
ELAGSE11-12RL1: Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of
what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including
determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.
The students will be applying, creating, and analyzing through this assignment.

Process
This lesson will take two class periods. The first class period to review the
resources and pick the topic and find quotes. The second class period is to
write the Essay and complete the works cited. Students will work alone on
this project. I will be walking around the room for any additional help the
students may need. This lesson is easy enough for a novice teacher, as long
as the teacher has a mastery of content on MLa citations. You can paste in the
process description given to students on the student page and then interleave the
additional details that a teacher might need.
Here is the Process the students are given:
To accomplish this task, you should complete the following steps:
1. Visit the following website: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/
2. Click on the Grades-7-12 Instructors and Students Tab.
3. Click on the Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing tab. Read through this page
and make sure you understand the difference between these three terms.
4. Next, you will visit the following website:
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/

5. Click on the MLA In-Text Citations: The Basics tab. Read through this page and make
sure you understand all of the rules for in-text citations.
6. Now you will click on the MLA Formatting Quotations tab and read through this page.
7. After reading through all of these resources, you will begin your paper. Write
your paper over any topic of your choosing from the first half of To Kill a
Mockingbird. It can be a character analysis, explanation of a theme, or discussion of
how the setting is important to the overall theme, etc. Once you have picked your topic,
you need to find two quotations from the book so support your claim.
8. Include your two quotations from the book, using the resources you used above to
properly include the in-text citations.
9. Now you are going to research your topic on the internet. Find two valid websites to pull
two quotes from that support your claim. Use the resources above to properly include
the texts from the internet.
10. After you finish writing your paper with the four quotations, you need to
start your Works Cited page. Visit the following web address:
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/05/
11. Read through this page to begin your Works Cited Page set up the format.
12. Go to the following website: http://www.citationmachine.net/apa/cite-abook
13. Click on the MLA tab.
14. Click on the Website tab.
15. Copy and paste the web address from the websites you used to find your quotes. Paste
it into the web adress and click Search Websites.
16. Click Select.
17. Click Final Step.
18. Add in any missing information and click Create Citation.
19. Finally, you will copy and paste the citation into your Works Cited page.

Resources Needed

Describe what's needed to implement this lesson. Some of the possibilities:

Class sets of To Kill a Mockingbird
Computer Lab or one to one classroom
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/677/01/ This website will teach
students about MLA citations and Works Cited pages.
http://www.citationmachine.net/apa/cite-a-book This website helps students cite
the websites they are required to use in their Essays.
Only one teacher is needed in this lesson, but it would be helpful to have a media
specialist in the room as well to help answer questions.

Evaluation

Students will have a detailed Rubric to understand how they will be evaluated on this
assignment. I will know this lesson was successful if a majority of the students score 4s
on the citation and Works Cited section of the rubric. I will be looking at students
Content, Citations, Works Cited, Grammar and Spelling, and Completion. I want to
make sure students understand how to cite quotes from the novel in order to support
their claims, but also how to use the citations correctly and complete a Works Cited.
The evaluation the students will see:

Conclusion
This lesson is extremely important because it teaches students how to use
in-text citations for novels and outside sources, as well as how to make a
Works Cited page. This keeps students from plagiarizing and helps them
write Essays with strong textual evidence. Students will need to know how to
do this throughout high school and college.

Credits & References

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/05/
http://www.citationmachine.net/apa/cite-a-book
https://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/c/citation.asp