Busy Week Ahead

I like to post weekly, but all I have is a very short note. I saw a small group of 7th graders today. The assignment is a mini-research paper to correlate with their reading of the novel, Flush by Carl Hiaasen. I put together a set of 7 task cards for them to use to begin their research for this assignment. They were given specific resources both print and electronic to use to find information on water quality and water pollution. Once they found their sources of information, the students had to create a citation for each source in Easybib. I thought this would be simple for them. All of the students had experience with the databases and using Easybib. It did not go as well as I would have liked. First, the students did not follow the steps on the task cards. Not following directions is often a big problem with students. So I went back to my task cards and at a teacher's suggestion, I divided each task into steps. You can find my task cards here.