What do I do with all of the sources I’ve

collected?!?

Note-Taking & Analyzing Sources

Gathering & Recording Information

• Paraphrasing

• Quoting

• Summarizing

These are the three most common types of note-taking!

When you find an important piece of information in one of your sources, decide if you should paraphrase, summarize or quote it in your notes. No matter which approach you choose, you must

cite your sources in your bibliography!

• Paraphrasing- Put the information into your own words- Make it about the same length as the original- Don’t change the meaning

• Summarizing- Put the information into your own words- Make it significantly shorter than the original- Don’t change the meaning

• Quoting- Use it when there is inspiring and meaningful wording- Use it with statistics not considered common knowledge- Put the exact wording from the source inside quotation marks- Use … to show when you have left out part of the original words

Analyze your sources—they are your evidence

Analyze for

Time periodAuthor

AudienceContextPurpose

IssueImpact

Significance

Make connections between the primary and secondary sources

  Just like a historian, keep these things in mind when making decisions about what is important enough to include in the story:

 – Causes and effects– What changed over time?– Why and how did events develop as they did?– So what? -- Why did this person/idea/event

make an impact in history?– How does this topic connect to the “big

picture”?

Once you’ve formed a historical question and conducted research,

you will be able to write your “working thesis.”

A strong thesis:

• Makes a specific argument or interpretation*

• Has a narrow focus

• Based on & can be “proven” with evidence

• Can be communicated in one or two

sentences

* You know you have a thesis if someone else could make a different argument!

In other words…

What’s your

point?

Step 1 = Answer your HISTORICAL QUESTION using all the “notes” you’ve taken!

Which is a good thesis and which is a bad thesis?

Pesticides kill thousands of farmworkers and must be stopped.

The Juvenile Court system was established to remove children from the adult criminal justice system and help them reform, but over the years it became a source of punishment and imprisonment.

 

Just like a historian, you will need to synthesize—or, connect

all of your sources and information to make your historical intepretation (your argument).  

 

Homework

• CIA website: notes & bibliography

• 3 books: notes & bibliography

• Introduction pgh. with thesis statement (typed: one per group)

• MORE RESEARCH: more books, newspapers, websites, journals, images, etc. By now you have to know your country’s “story” of becoming independent!!!