For instance, maybe your assignment is “Create a visual representation of the US Civil War. You can pick one battle, one idea, one speech, a defining moment, or focus on the war as a whole. Make sure to include relevant dates and people in your representation. " You can break this down into parts: 1) Make something visual about the Civil War. 2) Choose a focus. 3) Include relevant dates. 4) Include relevant people.
Try freewriting. Take out a sheet of paper. On the top, write down something such as “US Civil War Project. " Start writing about the project. Don’t stop yourself or censor ideas. Just let them come as they will. For instance, maybe you could start out by writing “For me, one of the defining points of the Civil War was the Gettysburg Address. It really made clear that the fight was about human equality. But now I must make that visual. Four-score and seven years ago. . . I could take individual lines, maybe? Connect ideas to defining parts of the war. . . “[3] X Trustworthy Source University of North Carolina Writing Center UNC’s on-campus and online instructional service that provides assistance to students, faculty, and others during the writing process Go to source Try a map. Start with a circle in the middle of the paper with “US Civil War Project” written in the middle of it. Draw a line from the center circle to another circle, and add a fact or idea. Just keep associating ideas together, not really thinking too deeply about it. As you go, group like ideas near each other. When you’re done, look at where the largest groupings are, and let that guide your focus. [4] X Trustworthy Source University of North Carolina Writing Center UNC’s on-campus and online instructional service that provides assistance to students, faculty, and others during the writing process Go to source
The best way to pick a topic is to choose what you focused on in your brainstorming. For instance, maybe you think the Gettysburg Address is a good focal point. However, if your topic is still too broad, such as “battles in the Civil War,” try picking one aspect within that topic. You could choose one battle you think is defining, or a particular aspect of the battles, such as battle fatigue in soldiers. Most public and university libraries have databases providing access to scholarly articles. You can always ask the librarian to help you find what you’re looking for
You can even think about doing something 3-dimensional instead of 2-dimensional. Maybe you could make a 3-D map of the battles, depicting the movement of troops. Alternatively, you could try sculpting out of papier-mâché. Maybe you could sculpt Abraham Lincoln and use scripts coming off his body to tell your story.
To make an outline, start with the main topic you are covering. Maybe you’re doing the Gettysburg Address. Write that at the top. Next, break down your project into sub-headings. Maybe your subheadings could be “Speech Background,” “Location of Speech,” and “Impact of Speech. " Under your subheadings, jot down the basic ideas of what you’ll need. For instance, under “Speech Background,” you might need the date, what battle preceded the speech, and the reason Lincoln gave the speech.
Assign time for each chunk, including deadlines. Work from the final deadline backward. For instance, if you have 4 weeks to complete your project, say you’ll spend the last week painting and putting the project together. The week before that, write out the text for your project. The week before that, research your project. In the first week, make your plan, and get your materials together. If needed, divide your project further. For instance, “researching the speech” may need to be divided into several days’ worth of work.
When using an article database, narrow the search engine to only relevant databases. For instance, platforms such as EBSCOhost carry a wide range of smaller databases, and you can narrow your search down to one relevant to your topic, such as a database focused on history. You can also research the archives of particular newspapers. While some newspapers offer free access to their archives, others might require you to pay.
You’ll need the author’s full name, the title of the book, the publisher, the edition, the date it was published, the city it was published in, the title and author of individual articles in the book if it has them, and the page number where you found the information. For articles, you’ll need the author’s full name, the title of the article and the journal, the volume and issue (if it has them), the page numbers of the article, the page number you found it, and the digital online identifier number (doi), which is usually on the description page in the catalog. [10] X Trustworthy Source Purdue Online Writing Lab Trusted resource for writing and citation guidelines Go to source
Your teacher should tell you how should cite your sources or what guidelines you should be using. If you don’t know how to write according to those guidelines, try an online resource such as Purdue’s Online Writing Lab. It covers the basics of the major citation styles. [12] X Research source
Before you turn it in, make sure you covered everything your teacher asked you to. If you skipped something, see if you can add it in, even if it’s last minute.
