On Wednesday night of last week, I assigned a reflection about what readings we’d discussed so far in class, asking students to draw their own connections between the texts. In addition, they were expected to use APA when they were citing a source, either a direct quote or a paraphrase. Before class on Monday, I read their reflections and noticed that they all could use some support with APA. So to get the class started on Monday, I showed them two examples of APA citations, one in-text and one as a reference. Then I asked them to find the errors, if there were any. This opened up some discussion about how to cite and why to cite. While I’m not expecting them to have now mastered APA, I feel strongly that since I’m introducing the expectations early in the semester, the students will have more opportunities to practice APA citation, instead of waiting until a final paper to see their first attempt at citations. This lesson took approximately 8 minutes, and I’m definitely going to do this again! I felt it immediately got us into an academic discussion about citations and also course expectations. This type of mini-lesson could be used for many types of skill building activities for reading and writing!
