Hopefully you’ve been working on (or at least thinking about) your RAB (Reflective Annotated Bibliography) since we met last. Have you narrowed down your topic? Your RAB is due next Monday (I know some of you are still waiting for feedback to revise your Unit 1 Education Narrative first draft; I’ll try to provide feedback and comments to your drafts this week).

For the RAB, you need to do the research to locate three (3) sources, preferably from different places (academic database, online video, podcast, social media post, etc.) and complete the following steps that are outlined in this template:

  1. MLA Bibliographic Entry/Citation (remember the “Google Scholar shortcut” to generating a citation, or, if your source is a video, or podcast, or social media post or other website, look for a citation generator like Mybib.com and copy and paste the url web address into the search window, and viola!, you’ve got a citation).
  2. Author and Source Credibility/Background check: Where is your information about your topic coming from? How do you know your source is believable/credible? Convince the reader of your RAB (i.e. me, but maybe other readers too) that the information from your source is true, and believable.
  3. Summary/Précis: This section is not reflective and does not contain any of your opinions or thoughts on the topic, but rather summarizes the main ideas contained in your research source. What conclusion(s) does the author make? Let your reader know that you understand what the article or other source is about, what it means.
  4. Reflection/Rhetorical Analysis: This is the section (along with the introduction) for you to make your response(s) and ideas related to the article or source you’ve found. Try to go beyond just agreeing or disagreeing with the author and/or source, but indicate what you think about the topic, how effective the claims of the research in the article/source were, etc. This section requires some critical thinking on your part, as well as reflection.
  5. Quotes: Find significant quotes from your source, and note their significance or importance.