Referencing is an important skill not only for academic work, but also when writing reports for your workplace. A large number of employer provide standardised templates to ensure employees properly reference their work.

The most common form of referencing is known as the Harvard system and in the resources section there is an Excel spreadsheet for easy referencing.

• Author's name
• Place of publication
• Year of publication
• Edition (Date accessed)
• Publisher
• Title
• Web Address / ISBN

Lesson Idea

Before lesson
1. Print out a referencing sheet for each student
2. Bring a variety of books to class / tell the library that your students will be visiting

Lesson itself

1. Elicit students favourite subjects
2. Elicit how they would buy a book on their favourite subject
3. Write down example format of a book to reference on the board
4. Give each student a sheet
5. Ask them to go to the library and reference five books using the sheet. (Or use books in class) Perhaps make it a race if that isn't too disruptive.

This then leads into a piece of writing or a quiz on the harvard system.

 

Resources on This Website Plagiarism Lecture Notes (430KB PDF) Notes given to remind students of the consequences of Plagiarism and what they can do to properly reference material. Referencing Spreadsheet (16KB XLS) The excel spreadsheet has two tabs, one for typing into and one for printing, so that you can take it to the library and reference books you photocopy or read for reference. It is also compatible with Open Office.