All Teaching Materials

Toolkit

Keyword hot potato exercise

Students often struggle most with finding relevant sources on their topic because they are entering entire sentences into a database or are using terms that don’t match how authors would describe their topic. The purpose of this activity is to give students experience brainstorming keywords for a particular topic. It also helps to demonstrate that the initial terms they come up with to describe their topic may not necessarily be the terms authors will use to write about the topic.

Toolkit

Kinetic Boolean activity

Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) can help students to create a better-targeted search. This activity helps students understand what each Boolean operator does in a visual way.

Toolkit

MLA 9 Citation Samples

Helps students cite sources using the 9th edition of the Modern Language Association guidelines (MLA 9).

Toolkit

One Perfect Source?

Helps students think about how to refine a topic when they can't find any information on it. Highlights the idea that it may be impossible to find an all-in-one source that addresses a topic perfectly and the need to find a different approach.