Research: Finding, Evaluating, and Using Sources: Reading Unit 8, Grade 9 (Letters & Devotion)

Description

Research: Finding, Evaluating, and Using Sources is Unit 8 of English 9: Reading and Writing the Human Story (Part 2) (Grade 9), the Letters & Devotion Reading course, complete in one printable PDF: 9 lessons, the unit check-up and the answer key, 80 pages.

• The criteria that make a research question researchable at this scope (arguable/explorable, bounded, not a single-fact lookup)
• Lateral reading as a credibility-checking strategy, contrasted with reading a site ‘vertically’ (judging it by its own claims/design)
• Credibility judgment of a specific, previously unseen digital source
• The boundary between acceptable paraphrase, patchwriting, and appropriate quotation
• MLA in-text citation and reference-list entry format across three source types
• Synthesis of multiple, partially conflicting sources into a single defensible claim
• The definition and scenario-based recognition of plagiarism
• Fitness of a source for a specific research question, as distinct from generic credibility
• Lateral reading as a transferable verification strategy across media, not a website-specific procedure

Every lesson is written for a parent with no teaching background: it opens with a short script to read aloud, names the specific wrong idea a student is likely to reach for and how to correct it, and closes with a practice sheet you may copy for your household. Scripture references are King James Version throughout. Black-and-white, 8.5 x 11 in. The whole year of this course is also in this store as a single book.

AI note: The written content of this resource was drafted with AI tools, then reviewed and edited by the author.