Teacher: Hannah Bouska Date: April 12th, 2022

School: Poudre High School Grade Level: 11th Content Area: English

Title: Using Academic Databases to Conduct Research

Content Standard(s) addressed by this lesson: (Write Content Standards directly from the standard)

Students can:

A. Gather relevant information from multiple authoritative print and digital sources, using advanced searches effectively; assess
the strengths and limitations of each source in terms of the task, purpose, and audience; integrate information into the text
selectively to maintain the flow of ideas, avoiding plagiarism and overreliance on any one source and following a standard
format for citation. (CCSS: W.11-12.8)
B. Document sources of quotations, paraphrases, and other information, using a style sheet, such as that of the Modern
Language Association (MLA) or the American Psychological Association (APA).

Understandings:

Students will navigate EBSCO to find sources to use in their research.

Students will develop critical thinking skills and practice finding sources by identifying relevant, reliable sources that apply to their
specific research question.

Inquiry Questions: How can I use academic databases to find and cite sources relevant to my research question?

How can I gather information from sources I found using EBSCO to help answer my research question?

How do I include my source in an annotated bibliography?

Evidence Outcomes: I can use academic databases to find and cite sources relevant to my research question.

List of Assessments: Students will be evaluated based on their ability to listen and then navigate EBSCO.

Students will be evaluated on the completion of their research notes document, including citations.

Planned Lesson Activities

Name and Purpose
of Lesson Using Academic Databases to Conduct Research

The purpose of my lesson is to introduce students to academic databases and the way they can be utilized
to conduct research. Students will observe me as I model how to use the database and then practice with it
to inform their research.

Approx. Time and I expect this lesson to last 40-45 minutes.

Materials Access to EBSCO
→ username: poudre_impalas
→ password: poudre2022!

Anticipatory Set “Okay, researchers. For the past few weeks, we’ve been thinking about research. How to create a rockin’
research question, how to identify strong sources, and how to analyze data so that it’s relevant to our
purpose. Today, I want to teach you all about a tool that will make our research process so much easier!
Have any of you ever used an academic database before? To put it simply, an academic database is
basically a huge digital library that we can use to find reliable sources to help us with research and writing,
which is our favorite thing in the world.”

Procedures ★ Using Online Databases Mini Lesson

○ Access the PHS Media Library Center website
○ Click “online databases”
○ Click EBSCO (“There are tons and tons of academic databases out there, but This is the only
one we’ll be using today.”) and log in using this information.
○ Once we’re in, select EBSCOhost Research Databases.
○ **reminder to pay attention, this is easy to miss** Be sure to select the box that says
“select/deselect all,” you should see it under the big yellow “continue” button. Now we can hit
“continue”
○ “So, when we see this search bar, are we going to type in our research question? No! And
why not?”
■ Our research questions are individual to us because WE CAME UP WITH THEM!
They are too specific to type into a search bar like this.
 ■ So what should we do instead? Right, we’ll be typing in KEY WORDS or phrases from
our research questions.
○ Let’s say my research question is about social media. I’m NOT going to search “What is
social media activism and what are its affects on activism as a whole?” because that is too
specific. Instead, I’ll try something like… “social media activism” or “slactivism” or “effects
of social media activism”
○ It looks like we got a ton of results here! That can be overwhelming, so here’s something we
can do to narrow down the selection a little. On the left side of your screen, go ahead and find
the “limit to” section, and we’re going to check the box that says “full text”.
○ If we want to narrow down our choices even more, we can adjust the bar to sort by date. This
is valuable to us! Remember, when we CRAAP test sources, one of the boxes we want to
check is that our source is recent.
○ Another hack we can do to make researching easier for us is to look at each source to see if
the text can be accessed in HTML or PDF. you’ll see that a bunch of the texts have both,
which is great! In the end, it doesn’t matter which one you click because it’s the same text
either way, but if you’re someone who benefits from text to speech features, you’ll want to
right click the HTML link. The pdf does not have Text to Speech. ALSO! Please be sure to
open these sources in a NEW TAB. This will also make our lives easier, so we can keep all of
our search results available while we look at individual sources.
○ When you find a source you like, go ahead and open in a new tab, and on the right hand side
of the page, you’ll see ANOTHER toolbar. This is pretty self explanatory-- if you like a source
and want to use it for your research, you can send it to your email or save it to your drive.
OKAY, this is extra extra important. Before you send it to yourself, be sure to select APA 7th
edition under the “citation format” option.
○ Also in this toolbar, you’ll see that there’s an option for you to cite the source, which is
amazing! The database will do all the citing work for you, which is great, because those can
take forever if you do it manually. When you find the citation, you can copy and paste it into
your research document, and then you don’t have to do anything else. Just take special care
to use the APA citation and not one of the others. You might have to scroll to find it.

★ ANNOTATED BIB: as we know, a bibliography is a document that lists all your sources in a specific
 format (MLA, APA, etc). An annotated bib is the same, plus a little information on the source itself.
Under each source, you’ll write a short paragraph (just a few sentences). Your paragraph will
respond to three prompts:
○ 2-3 sentence summary of what the source is about
○ CRAAP test evaluation, why does this pass the CRAAP test and why should you use this.
Think about the score you’d give it. What areas does it score well on and what areas does it
score poorly on
○ How do you think this source will help you answer your research question
★ Teacher will show models of student annotated bibliographies to show the quality of work that
students should aim for.

Differentiation The most structured part of this lesson is the basics of how to use and navigate EBSCO. The remainder of
the lesson focuses around research questions formed by student choice (within the theme of adolescent
mental health). Some articles on EBSCO have a lexile score, which indicates the difficulty of the article’s
text. Lexile scores from 900-1100 are easier, while those that range 1500-1590 are harder.