Practice Ranking Sources (Middle School)

Not all sources are created equal.  Imagine you are writing a paper on the problems of cliques in schools. Your teacher has encouraged you to use a balance of primary and secondary sources.  The following sources appear on your various result lists.  Rank them in terms of their relative value to your paper.  Consider which you could most easily defend if your teacher questioned their value. (For discussion: Would your rankings change depending on the type of project you were doing?)  There are no right or wrong answers.  The most important thing is to think seriously about the sources you use for research.

 

Description of Source Rank and Reason For whom was this site created? Primary (P) /Secondary(S)
"The Curse of Cliques" an article from Time Magazine 5/3/99

 
Cliques I Joined, an AOL page about online clubs created by a student

 
"Clique" definition Webster's New World Thesaurus, Third Edition

 
"How Peer Pressure Can Affect You," Current Health, 9/1/99

 
"Leaders of the pack - Kids' cliques hold sway with power of exclusion", Boston Herald, 03-11-2001

 
Transcript of a speech by the Secretary of Education relating cliques to school violence

 
Transcript of an ABC Good Morning America interview with a parenting expert and five middle school students.  The students discuss the impact of cliques on their schools.

 
Email from a middle school parent , concerned about her daughter, on the Question and Answer section of the ParentSoup web page

 
An encyclopedia article on cliques

 

 

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