Research Paper: Notebook for the Research Project

Begin by connecting to the class One Note section in ClassNotes

Notebook requirements:

¨ You will maintain a research paper notebook in One Note for this project.

¨ It should include six divided sections to store your information, assignments, journal entries, etc.

¨ The sections must remain labeled in the order below.

Section One: Handouts, general information, assignments.

In this section you should have all handouts and general notes from discussion and activities for this project (notes on MLA, etc.). Also include in section one the RP1, RP2, RP3, etc. assignments. The first page in this notebook will be the grading and timeline sheet.

Section Two: Working Bibliography & Notes and Quotes

In this section you will store the bibliographic information and all notes and direct quotes as you do your research. This will allow you to have what you need, organized and ready, when the time comes to write your citations. This section will include all the works you found, helpful or not.

All notes that lead up to the draft copies of your paper must be included here. LInks, copies of articles, etc. may go here, but they will not count in the required number of notes pages.

Each entry will begin with a bibliographic form that will contain all the information that you will need for citations. (The blank form can be found on the S drive.) This is followed by all of your notes from that source.

This will be the most important section of your notebook as you move through the process of gathering and organizing information. It is important that you do not cut corners here. You will be graded down on the final paper if the information you use in the paper is not documented here.

Section Three: Working Outline

This is an outline of your paper that will change as you move towards your final draft. Thesis and paragraph topics (as well as placement of evidence) in outline form is appropriate for this section.

Section Four: Flashes of Brilliance/First Draft

This is where you begin writing the body of your paper. You may have ideas for one section (the introduction perhaps) or even a single paragraph, and can store them here as you continue your research. We recommend that you spend ten minutes or so free writing on your subject at the end of the period.

Section Five: Daily Process Log

This section is a log of your daily progress towards your final paper. It will help you to look back on the progress of your research and writing, in order to help you make changes when doing future papers. This section (as well as the others) should be complete and well written. Consider this a journal of your process work on this project.

Section Six: Working drafts

This is where you will place your working drafts and the final draft of the paper when you turn it in.

Final Paper Format:

We will use the MLA format for this research paper. We will discuss this in detail as we move through the process of writing the paper.