English Language Arts Grade 9-10
Lesson Plans

Writing Standard 8

Gather relevant information from multiple authoritative print and digital sources, using advanced searches effectively; assess the usefulness of each source in answering the research question; integrate information into the text selectively to maintain the flow of ideas, avoiding plagiarism and following a standard format for citation.

• "Just the Facts, Ma'am": Evaluating Sources
  

  In the Library Learning Center, students will learn searching strategies to find valid and relevant articles in EBSCO, Gale and Google Scholar.

  • Using the 5 Ws of website evaluation (Who, What, When, Where and Why), students will evaluate 7 websites and complete a Website Evaluation graphic organizer.
  • Students will be given 8 resources about a common current event topic (in our case, the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union), and are required to evaluate and rank the websites according to credibility and write a short defense of the ranking. (The sources used are from Wikipedia, EBSCO, Google Scholar, Gale, Newspapers, Blog Posts).

  Note: This assignment is part of a weekly exercise done every Friday in an AP class.

• How to select sources: a vocabulary exercise
  Students will be introduced to vocabulary used to effectively evaluate print and digital sources.

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http://www.uen.org - in partnership with Utah State Board of Education (USBE) and Utah System of Higher Education (USHE).  Send questions or comments to USBE Specialist - Naomi  Watkins and see the Language Arts - Secondary website. For general questions about Utah's Core Standards contact the Director - Jennifer  Throndsen.

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