Agenda: Monday, 3/18 & Wednesday, 3/20

Before class on Monday, students will…

Decide on your overall Research Question. Write it down and be ready to share your finished question.
- Rewatch City Tech Library’s Guide to Developing a Research Question if you’re having trouble moving from topic to question.
- Review “Reflective Annotated Bibliography” Power Point by Laura Westengard if you need a refresher on the different parts of an RAB.
If you missed class last week, definitely watch the above video and PowerPoint AND take a look at the U2 documents that help with brainstorming, how to write an entry for the Reflective Annotated Bibliography, and a partial example of an RAB.
- Otherwise you will be quite lost in our class activities and discussions on Monday and Wednesday!

Review/Revise

Take out the Research Question we started working on last week. We’re going to do some self-review before we share them.
Try to think critically about your question. Here’s some things to consider:
A research question pinpoints exactly what you want to find out in your work. All research questions should be:
- Focused on a single problem or issue
- Researchable using primary (for example, an interview) and/or secondary sources (for example, an article that uses the interview as a source)
- Feasible to answer within the timeframe and practical constraints
- Specific enough to answer thoroughly
- Complex enough to develop the answer over the space of the project

Library Visit Prep

After we’ve done revision of Research Question, we’ll start thinking about keywords to aid you in your research work.
What’s a keyword?
- Let’s say you’re on Google, and you want to eat at a restaurant in a particular neighborhood, instead of writing the question, you just type in “restaurants Flushing.”
- If you’re vegetarian, you want to know restaurants that are vegetarian-friendly, so then you’d type “vegetarian restaurants Flushing.”
Obviously, you can use keywords from your question, but you can also use synonyms of the words or words that are related to those words.
- Why? Because library databases are really picky—they’ll only look for words you enter in the search. They won’t look for related words or synonyms!
- So, maybe a synonym of the word you used in your question is used, but not the actual word you chose.
- That means you might miss out on some great sources!
Next, you’ll trade your card with a partner.
- Look at their question. Do you have any suggestions for revision?
- Think about the focus and specificity of the question. Is it too broad (think immigration) or too narrow (think immigration in Sunnyside)?
- Now look at the keywords they’ve written on the other side. Do you have any suggestions for additional keywords?
- If you don’t, pull out your phone and check for synonyms or related words.

Write

Spend the assigned time answering the following prompts on the worksheet.
- State your research question.
- How or why did you get interested in your research question?
- What answers and information do you expect to find in response to your research question?
Hand this to me before you leave for low-stakes writing credit! I’ll return it soon! I promise!

Before class on Wednesday, students will…

Start researching today! Find sources online NOW! We’ll talk about how to decide if an online source is credible next week.

During class on Wednesday, we will…

We are not meeting in the classroom on Wednesday! We will meet in front of the library on the 4^th floor.
Please be on time! The librarian will show us around the main floor for a few minutes, but most of the time we’ll be in the computer lab on the 2^nd floor of the library.
- If you’re late, go up the stairs and turn right. You’ll see the computer lab eventually.
The session will only be 60 minutes long, so if you are late, you’ll miss out on a big chunk of the explanation!
Bring your card with your questions and keywords on it! This will give you a boost with the session!

Spend a lot of time searching the library databases for sources this weekend. Remember, you need to find at least one peer-reviewed source! (When I say “a lot of time,” I mean 2-4 hours, depending on how good you are at navigating the library’s databases.)
Once you’ve found some likely sources, spend time reading them. (Again, this will be at least 3-4 hours worth of reading.) This will help you decide whether you’ve found good, bad, or so-so sources.
By Monday, have at least one (preferably two) sources that answer your Research Question. Print them out. Annotate the heck out of them (highlight/underline/write questions on the margin).
Bring it to class. We’ll spend a part of the time talking about evaluating sources we find online, but most of the time will be devoted to you creating your first entry (Citing, Summarizing, Reflecting, and Quoting).