Activity Description/Rationale                                                          

Students will discuss what goes into an introduction section, with a brief introduction to plagiarism. Further lessons on citation and plagiarism will follow, although this is main lesson on introduction so that is where the focus should lie. 

NYS/CCL Standards (Content Knowledge, IAD)

RST.11.12.1

RST.11.12.2

WHST.9.12.1

WHST.9.12.7

Goals: Process Skills (Basic & Integrated) and Attitudes/ (Enduring Understandings & Essential Questions)

Goals are to give students the tools necessary to write an introduction/background section while aware of what plagiarism and paraphrasing are.

Universal Design for Learning/Differentiation

Students will work together to determine characteristics of an introduction, so students who are unfamiliar will learn from those who have greater knowledge. Paraphrasing activity works for everyone regardless of their experience.

Materials

No materials besides PowerPoint necessary.

Estimated Length of Activity:

1 class period, 45-50 minutes.

Pre-Activity

Previous lab report activities may be beneficial.

Activity Instructions:

(5 minutes) Do Now: What goes into a background/information section of a lab report?

(10-20 minutes) Explain the next assignment will be to create the introduction/background section, using 2-3 sources. Look over ‘components of a lab report’ sheet previously handed out. Discuss:

Background information that is relevant to the study in this lab report.

What kinds of information should you include? Do you need to write a history of water and how it has aided human development? Do you need do discuss what water quality is? Discuss ideas of limiting the scope of their project, and how to confine their background information to what is relevant, rather than just a brain dump on water and water quality. Generally, a paragraph on water quality, and one that discusses the test(s) and a little background on them would be adequate. 

What is the purpose of the lab?

Why are they writing the lab. If the reader gets to the end of the introduction section and still doesn’t know what the point of the lab report is, then the student needs to fix/clarify this.

Hypothesis – one sentence

The hypothesis needs to be part of the introduction section as one sentence. The students need to understand how the sections flow, and how the hypothesis sets up the rest of the paper. Essentially the introduction section sets up the topic, and the hypothesis sets up the rest of the lab report.

(5-10 minutes) Explain what plagiarism is and briefly discuss the school’s policy.

(5-10 minutes) Do a class paraphrasing activity

Have students paraphrase this sentence:

Sentence: The elephant is the only mammal that cannot jump with all its legs off the ground.

Usually, the paraphrase ends up being ‘the only mammal that cannot jump with all it’s legs off the ground is the elephant’. Ask students if they agree with this, and point out that nothing is changed, the sentence is simply rearranged.

In order to paraphrase students must take a phrase and put it into their own words. Help them with this task.

• What word cannot be replaced?
• What words/phrases can be replaced?
  • Jump
  • Off the ground
  • Only mammal
• All animals, except for the elephant, can jump with all their legs in the air.

Short paragraph using nursery rhyme:

• Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, couldn’t put humpty back together again.

*Note: students will likely start reading this aloud. Tell them to do it silently so as to not distract other students.

• Paraphrase 1: While sitting on a wall one day, an egg had an accident which resulted in tragedy because no one in the kingdom could repair him.
• Paraphrase 2: The kingdom mourned the loss of Humpty because he was broken beyond repair when he fell from the wall.

Have students come up with their own paraphrases and critique them. For example, if you get something similar to paraphrase 1, ask them how they know it was a tragedy? Perhaps everyone rejoiced at humpty’s demise…use it to illustrate we want to use our own words, but not change the message of the whole sentence.

Assignments

Assignment is to write an introduction section, due in several days’ time.

Assessment and Reflection

Assessment is based on in class discussion and participation, particularly during the paraphrasing activity.

Instructor’s Notes:

This is a fun lesson, especially the paraphrasing portion. In order to not intimidate shyer students, encourage silence during paraphrasing moments and taking turns for responding. Feel free to use different sentences for paraphrasing as well, or to use the same sentence but only have them critique the paraphrasing. Goal is to get them comfortable so that they don’t plagiarize.