6th Form Research and Referencing advice

As the L6 IB students embark on their Extended Essays here’s some advice and information which we hope will be useful for all 6th formers, both A level and IB. How much do you know about the EE requirements? Try this quick Extended Essay quiz devised by Sarah Pavey, the Librarian at Boxhill School.

Research

  • Check the catalogue See what books are available in College.
  • Ask the librarians! We are here to help and can get articles and books from other libraries (e.g. British Library and London Library)
  • Use the e-library We subscribe to a large number of online resources. Try Questia as a starting point for e-books and articles on any subject and including international coverage.
  • NewsBank – For local and national newspaper articles indexed up to yesterday and going back to the 1980’s.
  • Google Scholar Get to the heart of the good stuff on Google. Find scholarly or academic articles, research and reports on Google Scholar. If it doesn’t give you full-text access, it is likely that we can track these down for you.
  • Make a note of the details of the sources you use as you go along, this makes it much easier to compile the Bibliography at the end.
  • More information about other online sources on the e-library here
  • Think about the keywords you are using to search for your subject – make a list of alternative words and synonyms to broaden and narrow your search results.
  • Read this excellent booklet: Using Sources – A Guide for Students: Find it – Check it – Credit it
  • For study tips – note-taking, organising your time etc See the Revision and Research Help page on this blog

More web sources:

Subject Portals Pinakes is a website hosted by Heriot Watt University. It provides a “Subject Launchpad”. Portals bring the best websites and collections of documents together in one place. Particularly useful and famous ones are:

  • Bized (for Business Studies and Economics)
  • Sci Central Gateway to the best Science News sources
  • Sapling  Architecture, Planning and Lanscape information gateway.
  • Physics World – News, views and information for the global physics community from the Institute of Physics
  • Philosophy around the Web Don’t be put off by the amateurish look of this website.The main purpose of this site is to act as a guide and a gateway to philosophy resources on the Internet.
  • PubMed Central PMC is a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM).

 

Avoiding Plagiarism

My favourite anti-plagiarism video comes from Bergen University Library. It’s based on Charles Dickens ‘Christmas Carol’ and is very funny.

Using images

Be sure to credit images you use. Here’s a useful website ‘5 good places for students to find public domain images‘ (these are images you can use to illustrate your work but you still need to cite the copyright holder)

Wikimedia Commons

This is an excellent initiative by the creators of wikipedia. People have donated their photos to be freely used by others. This is an excellent source of copyright free images.

 

Referencing

  • For more advice and information on Referencing and compiling your Bibliography see the Referencing & Research page of the intranet
  • Always list all your sources in your Bibliography (include people you interviewed, Tweets, Podcasts, TV documentaries, online sources and websites as well as the more obvious books, articles and newspapers)
  • Always state the date you accessed a website
  • To generate bibliographic references very easily try Cite This For Me
  • Be consistent – choose one style of referencing and stick to it. Harvard is a good one to adopt.

Twelve Words of Winter – Competition results and a Flash Fiction Challenge

Twelve Words of Winter

Thank you all for your imaginative, humorous, poetic  and sometimes sad entries to the ‘Twelve Words of Winter’ competition.  We had over 110 entries which kept us entertained throughout the day as your snippets arrived in our inbox. The idea was to write a 12 word story on the theme of winter.  Dr Joanna Seldon judged the competition (entries were anonymous) and she was very impressed with the quality of entries.

And the winners are…

3rd Form: ‘An old man travels through Winter, hoping to reach the other side.’ Ravi Parmar 9HI

4th Form: ‘The dead trees clench for revival.  Snow falls but there’s no survival.’ Kelsey Johnson 10C

5th Form: ‘Snow fell.  I saw her battle against Spring.  Her sacrifice brought Christmas.’ David Kim 11M

Lower 6th: ‘The pale cheeks of the land were turned white by winter’s breath.’ Harry Bentley 12T

Upper 6th: “Mum, for Christmas can I have -?”

“No.”

“But mum?”

“No.”

“Fine… dad?” Charlie Penny 13Hn

The overall pupil winner was Charlie Penny (U6)

This was the only entry to tell a story using dialogue, and I thought it was ambitious, brilliantly effective and very humorous.

The staff winners were:‘Winter has months to go before the milk flower of the snow.’ Dinah Ford

Two left feet on dance floor.  Strictly voted out in round four.’ Jim Dewes

The winner of the family category: ‘Serve the cake and chocolate log: Christmas turkey is in the dog.’ Marion Ogilvie (Grandmother of Jack Moore, 13Bn)

The Eagle House winner was:  ‘Santa accidentally put elves in the washing machine; they shrunk…a lot…’ Asya Janmohamed, Y7

74 schools entered the national competition. The winner was a student at Ashton on Mersey School with the following story:

‘The wind howled, the fire danced, the snowman stood, the children waited.’

Flash Fiction Competition – 50 Word Stories

If you still feel like writing very short stories why not try the Scottish Book Trust’s ‘Flash Fiction’ competition? Can you write a 50 word story set at a birthday party? Entries must be submitted by January 20th 2014 so time to get writing!

 

Festive Fun – Christmas reading lists, quizzes and more

Here’s a Christmas Animoto giving a flavour of what’s been happening in the Library this Michaelmas term.

I love the end of the year and the Christmas break for the plethora of themed booklists which spring up in all the papers. It’s a good opportunity to seek out the great books you’ve missed from earlier in the year.  It’s also the season of book quizzes.

Reading Times 2013

School librarians are excellent sharers of good ideas. Here’s a lovely idea from Helen Smith, Learning Resources Manager at Eckington School. She has compiled a wonderful booklet called Reading Times 2013 in which she lists all the Christmas TV and radio based on or relating to books. Helen has very generously shared it with all of us. It makes fascinating reading.

Hidden Books Quiz

Caboodle website has two great pictoral book quizzes. Work out the title of the famous books from the pictures. Almost impossible to leave until you’ve cracked all 20.

Teamwork tackling the hidden books quiz.

Teamwork tackling the hidden books quiz. 

The Guardian Children’s Book Website has a vast range of quick online book quizzes – from Elephants in Fiction to Graphic Novels and Comic books or banned books 

Our head of Maths Mr Sproat just reminded me about Sporcle. This is the perfect site for quiz and trivia fans. Try the book cover quiz (identify the book by a portion of its cover) or can you name the book titles given their loosely based antonyms? or name the book titles without vowels or spaces? In fact there are 1000 quizzes relating to books!

Best books of the Year

Here is The Guardian’s Best Fiction List of  2013

The Telegraph: Best Fiction of 2013 …’a vintage year for lengthy fiction’

 

 

12 Words of Winter Competition

Can you write a story in just 12 words?library snow

This year we’re taking part in the ’12 Words of Winter’ competition, which challenges people to write a story on the theme of winter in 12 words. The story doesn’t have to rhyme.

Last year’s winning story was:

‘Mr Snowman needed a cuddle, the sun agreed… now he’s a puddle.’

 

Think you can do better? Then email the library with your entry by midday on Thursday 5th December. There will be prizes for the best entries and the best overall pupil entry will then be entered into the national competition to compete against the winners from other schools across the country.

Here is a sample of our entries:

  A Thriller 

Winter killed autumn; autumn killed summer; summer killed spring; spring killed winter.’

 

‘Skating, dark surrounds, ice slicker than blades can stick. Snowflakes melt crimson.’

‘On snow covered earth, bullets fly, men fall, the war, began ending.’

‘Someone meddled with Santa’s minced pies, he fell asleep and later died’

Remember it doesn’t have to rhyme!

‘Putting the Library at the Heart of Your School’ – 18th November at Wellington College

HMC Professional Development Conference for Librarians – at Wellington College 18th Nov 2013

Tomorrow we look forward to welcoming around 50 fellow school librarians for an exciting day of sharing ideas, listening to speakers and discussing school library issues.

The theme of the conference is ‘Putting the library at the heart of your school’

We look forward to welcoming the following speakers:

  • Ann Harding, independent trainer with 15 years of library experience – Reading for pleasure: promoting reading in senior schools
  • Chris Powis, Head of Library and Learning Services, The University of Northampton – Teaching Skills for Librarians

Workshops in the Mallinson Library:

  • Nicola McNee, Kingswood School Librarian – Using social media in librarianship
  • Tom Wayman, Head of English, Wellington College – whole school reading project
  •  Lucy Atherton(that’s me) and my colleague Helen Dahlke, Wellington College Librarian, will be running a workshop on e-books and the e-library

You will also have the opportunity to talk to:

  • Joyce Martin, Director JCS Online Resources
  • Catherine Allen, from Touch Press educational apps
  • Lizzie Duffy, from Browns Books for Students – VLEbooks. Find out more about the VLEbooks e-book platform for schools.

Twitter

If you would like to Tweet on the day we are suggesting using the hashtag #HMClib13 so that I can storify tweets from the day – bringing together all your thoughts and ideas in an easily readable format.

 

Five Books and Tweeting Manatees

Five Books

I’ve just discovered this fantastic book recommendation site. Five Books asks authors and experts to recommend the best books in their subject. In an interview they then discuss why the books are important and what they are about. You can browse by topic or interview or search for a particular book or author/expert. It covers a huge range of subjects range from Espionage to The Mind and Comedy to How to Be Good.

Try Tom Holland on Ancient Rome, Jo Nesbo on Norwegian Crime Writing or Marcus du Sautoy on The Beauty of Maths. There’s a whole section on Being a Parent and plenty of Fiction suggestions too. Definitely something for everyone on this very attractive website.

Follow @tweetingmanatee on Twitter for updates on interviews and authors.

If you would like the Library to order any of the books you discover or want to check stock email library@wellingoncollege.org.uk  or drop into the library.

Extreme Reading Photo Competition – The Winners

Pupil winner - Extreme Reading in Lanzarote

Congratulations to our Pupil Winner – Extreme Reading in Lanzarote.  Pictured reading ’17 Equations that Changed the World’ by Ian Stewart”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2nd Prize - Underwater Extreme Reading!

2nd Prize – Underwater Extreme Reading!

3rd Prize for our trampolinist reading 'The Fall' by Robert Muchamore

3rd Prize for our trampolinist reading ‘The Fall’ by Robert Muchamore

 

 

4th Prize to our Scottish mountain Extreme Reader. Pictured reading '101 Ideas that Changed the World'

4th Prize to our Scottish mountain Extreme Reader. Pictured reading ‘101 Ideas that Changed the World’

 

Man Booker Shadowing Group takes off

booker books

Mrs Macgregor has set the 6th form a challenge – to read all six shortlisted Man Booker Prize titles in time to cast their vote when the winner is announced on 15th October. This is no mean feat as the first book ‘The Luminaries’ by Eleanor Catton is 832 pages long. However, 12 tenacious 6th form students have taken up the challenge and will be meeting each week to discuss one of the books.

Mrs Macgregor writes:

There was a wonderful interview with the author of The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour which should provide a good introduction to the novel.  As we meet on Thursday 26th September you have a good 11 days to read this tome.

Additional Man Booker links:

NoViolet Bulawayo, Zimbabwean author interview on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour.

Guardian article claiming this is the best shortlist for a decade.

Does Man-Booker-shortlisted novelist Jhumpa Lahiri’s real skill lie in short stories?   Review of ‘The Lowland’ (Guardian 12th September 2013)

Guardian Books Blog – Video in which Richard Lea argues that Ruth Ozeki’s ‘A Tale for the Time Being’ should win this year’s Man Booker Prize. “The shortlisted novel begins with the discovery of a Hello Kitty lunchbox containing the diary of a young Japanese girl washed up on the shore in British Columbia.”

The librarians are attempting to keep pace with the reading and join in the discussions but we also have potential Carnegie longlist contenders to read for a discussion day on 9th October!

The library has copies of the shortlisted books if anyone else wants to join in the reading.

3rd Form reading kicks off in the library with the Picton boys

This morning we welcomed the Picton 3rd form tutor group to the library for an informal discussion about the book “In the Sea there are Crocodiles”. Each year the librarians agonise over the choice of book to send to all new 3rd form pupils. We search for a book to suit both boys and girls, something readable and interesting as well as thought-provoking and memorable. We have  a lot of reading  to get through to find something we are happy with. Last year’s book ‘Trash’ proved very popular with its incredible plot and fast pace. This year’s book may have been a slow starter but it rapidly became an involving and inspiring story.3rd form reading Pn

‘In the Sea there are Crocodiles’ is the account of Enaiatollah’s life from the age of 10 to 15. It is based on his recollections of the perilous journey he made from his home in Afghanistan all the way to Italy as a child and teenager without any family support. He is amazingly resilient and recounts his life story to Fabio Geda, the Italian author who wrote the book.in-the-sea-there-are-crocodiles

Here are some of the 3rd form comments on the book:

“Exhilarating, tense, funny and moving”

“I loved the calmness of the book and the good moments I enjoyed”

“…extremely inspirational and it really made me think about the world”

“….very interesting and enjoyable. My Mum read it too!”

“I loved the book. It has opened my mind. It has made me more aware of how tough and how unfair people’s lives can be and makes me feel very privileged.”

….very moving and a good demonstration of what the world is like in some places”

We are looking forward to more book chat sessions with other tutor groups in the coming weeks.