Biblical Integration and Citing Sources
I am currently the 8th graders least favorite teacher because this week I introduced them to their new assignment which is a research paper. Most of them have written essays and short papers before, but the concept of citing your sources is completely new to almost all of them, and a bit terrifying. Also, I will be the first to say that citations and MLA format is about the most boring topic to discuss in class. But unfortunately, while boring it is also necessary and they need to know how to do it. I began today's class by writing the following question on the board: "What is citing a resource and why is it important?" We discussed what citing is and then as a class they gave me a few answers as to why it is important. As a group we decided on three reasons why citing our sources is necessary: 1. When thoughts are not our own, we need to cite the source so that we aren't plagiarizing. 2. Citing is helpful so that readers can do further research on a topic