Citation Expectations - High School History Classes
I’m the History Department head at my school and with the year soon to start, I’m just wondering what teachers expect from their students in terms of citation?
I am not debating whether students should cite their sources but rather how? At what to expect at each grade level?
For example, students learn MLA formatting for their ELA classes - do teaches allow student allow students to use this type of citation? Or do teachers make their students do Chicago Style?
Part of my hesitation with teaching it is how long it takes to do so. I know students can use websites to generate Reference Lists but they are often incorrectly cited. Plus, I think the in-text citation is more important and that doesn’t help them with that.
To speed up the citation process, in lower grade levels I will use a letter coding system. If the students are using the same set of sources, I will label them A, B, C, etc. Then when they cite them within the text, I just have them put the letter of the source in brackets (B). Obviously, it’s the not the correct format, but I’m more interested in the thinking behind it (learning how to cite a source within writing). Then in later grades, the students can learn the correct formatting.
Once again, I’m just wondering what different teachers do with this.