Research & Synthesis
To research something is to find information about it.
Sources are the people, books, articles, websites, and other places from which you get your information.
- You should use more than one source when researching a topic.
- If possible, use both primary and secondary sources.
- Primary Sources provide direct, firsthand information.
- historical documents
- information gathered from experiments
- original pieces of art or writing
- interviews of people with personal experience of the topic
- Secondary Sources provide secondhand information based on primary sources.
- textbook articles
- encyclopedia articles
- books about topics, written by people who researched them
- people who have themselves studied and researched primary sources
To synthesize is to combine ideas to form new understanding.
When researching a topic for a report, take notes about what you find. Always write down where you got the information, too. |
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After gathering all your information, think about how the facts are connected. Organize the information by combining the facts in ways that make sense to you. |
When you write, use your own words, not the original creative words of other authors. If you do use another person's exact words, always put them in quotation marks and say to whom the words belong. |
- bibliography
A bibliography is a list of the sources used in your report.
For a
book, include—
- Author's name, last name first.
- Title of the book.
- Publisher of the book.
- Year of publication.
Evans, Tom. World of Dinosaurs. World Book, 2016. |
For an article or chapter in a printed
encyclopedia, include—
- Author's name, last name first (if available).
- Title of the article or chapter.
- Name of the encyclopedia.
- Publisher of the encyclopedia.
- Year of publication.
Serra, Maria. "Digging Up Fossils." The Big Book of Dinosaurs, DK Children, 2016. |
For an
online article, include—
- Author's name, last name first (if available).
- Title of the article.
- Name of the website.
- Date of publication.
- URL of the webpage.
"Jurassic Dinosaurs." Active Wild, 6 December 2018, www.activewild.com/jurassic-dinosaurs. |
Brusatte, Stephen. "What Killed the Dinosaurs." Scientific
American, 1 Dec. 2015, pp. 38-47. |
Whatever the source of information you use in a report, include the name of the person who produced it (if available), its title, the date of publication, the publisher (if available), and/or the "container" in which it was found. The sources should be listed in alphabetical order. Use the format that your teacher wants you to follow for assembling your bibliography.
❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ Go to the next page to practice working with these ideas. |