Using Sources

Direct Quotation

Incorporating Supporting Material

• You should always use other people’s ideas to SUPPORT your own ideas.

• Other people’s ideas should NOT be used in place of your own.

• They should only SUPPORT your ideas because they illustrate a point you have made.

3-part plan for incorporating material

• Most important is that you have a point expressed and you have explained the point using detail of your own.

• Supporting material must incorporated correctly, either by using direct quote, summary, or paraphrase.

• HOW you are using the material must be absolutely clear to the reader.

• You follow your use of the material with a comment that shows how the point being made in the borrowed material supports the idea you are using it to support.

4-stage rubric

• Your idea

• Your explanation of the idea

• Correctly incorporated borrowed material.

• Comment showing relationship of the material to your point.

Direct quote using a signal phrase.

• Using a signal phrase with a named author:According to Gatto, “Boredom is the common

condition of schoolteachers” (33).

• Using a signal phrase with author unnamed:

According to one writer, “Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers” (Gatto 33).

Direct quote run into the text

• Author named in-text:John Gatto believes that “boredom is the

common condition of schoolteachers” (33).

Author not named in-textThe author believes that “boredom is the

common condition of schoolteachers” (Gatto 33).

Correctly incorporated material

John Gatto’s most poignant writing occurs when he speaks from personal experience. (Idea of paragraph)

This may be because his long years in the teaching profession have given him enormous insight into the problems teachers face. (Explains my point)

As he notes in one section, “Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers” (Gatto 33).

The fact that he states this so categorically and so early in the essay attests to his long personal relationship to the life of educators in America. (Comment connects the quoted material to the topic sentence idea

It would look like thisJohn Gatto’s most poignant writing occurs when

he speaks from personal experience. This may be because his long years in the teaching profession have given him enormous insight into the problems teachers face. As he notes in one section, “Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers” (Gatto 33). The fact that he states this so categorically and so early in the essay attests to his long personal relationship to the life of educators in America.

It should NOT look like this

• John Gatto’s most poignant writing occurs when he speaks from personal experience. This may be because his long years in the teaching profession have given him enormous insight into the problems teachers face. “Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers” (Gatto 33).

It REALLY should NOT look like this

• John Gatto’s most poignant writing occurs when he speaks from personal experience. This may be because his long years in the teaching profession have given him enormous insight into the problems teachers face. “Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers” (Gatto).

Or like this

• John Gatto’s most poignant writing occurs when he speaks from personal experience. This may be because his long years in the teaching profession have given him enormous insight into the problems teachers face. “Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers”.

Or like this

• John Gatto’s most poignant writing occurs when he speaks from personal experience. This may be because his long years in the teaching profession have given him enormous insight into the problems teachers face. Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers. Personnel are trapped inside structures even more rigid than those imposed on children (Gatto).