Academic Writing Unit III
🎯 Stage 1 — Desired Results
A. Established Goals
Students will curate and create annotated bibliographies, demonstrating their ability to evaluate the validity, reliability, and bias of multiple diverse sources.
B. Transfer Goals
Students will independently use their learning to:
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transparently evaluate and share educational resources, fostering an engaging community of educators built on trustworthy research.
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act as critical consumers of information who can quickly identify bias and determine the reliability of literature before applying it to professional practice or training environments.
C. Meaning
Enduring Understandings (Students will understand that …)
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An annotated bibliography is not merely a list of summaries, but a rigorous, transparent vetting process that establishes the foundation for any credible academic argument.
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Every source carries inherent biases; recognizing and articulating these biases is essential for maintaining objective and reliable research.
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Curating high-quality literature requires deliberate criteria to filter out invalid or unreliable information from the broader academic conversation.
Essential Questions
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How does the process of curating an annotated bibliography make a researcher’s decision-making transparent to the wider academic community?
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What specific criteria separate a reliable, valid academic source from one that is structurally or ideologically flawed?
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How does acknowledging the bias of an author actually strengthen the integrity of one’s own research compilation?
D. Acquisition
Students will know …
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The designated purpose, necessary content, and standard format of an annotated bibliography.
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The specific criteria required for determining what constitutes valid, reliable, and unbiased academic references.
Students will be able to …
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Compile an annotated bibliography that includes a minimum of 10 references.
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Ensure all curated references meet the strict criteria for being valid, reliable, and unbiased.
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Format the entire bibliography and its annotations strictly according to standard academic guidelines.
🎯 Stage 2 — Evidence
A. Performance Task (GRASPS)
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Goal: Curate and construct an annotated bibliography comprising at least 10 references, rigorously evaluating each for validity, reliability, and bias.
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Role: Educational Researcher and Resource Curator.
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Audience: An engaging community of peers, educators, and the ELT Academy who rely on transparent, high-quality resource curation.
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Situation: In preparation for a comprehensive literature review, you must gather the foundational texts for your research. To make your research process transparent to your peers and learners, you are compiling an annotated bibliography that not only summarizes each text but explicitly evaluates its methodological reliability and potential biases.
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Product/Performance: An Annotated Bibliography containing a minimum of 10 valid, reliable, and unbiased references. To support UDL, students may utilize visual organizers or collaborative curation boards (like Capacities.io or Google Classroom) during the evaluation and prewriting phases before finalizing the written document.
Standards/Rubric (summary):
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Purpose & audience: Annotations clearly synthesize the sources while explicitly evaluating them for the target academic community.
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Organization & cohesion: The standard format of an annotated bibliography is followed, with logical transitions between the summary and the critical evaluation of each source.
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Detail & diction: Evaluations of validity, reliability, and bias are precise and utilize appropriate academic terminology.
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Language control (B2+): The use of English represents a 50% value of the grade, demonstrating B2+ CEFR proficiency in summarizing and evaluating complex texts.
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Process & integrity: The assignment strictly adheres to APA style guidelines. The work maintains an originality score between 90%-100%, demonstrating authentic evaluation without the use of translation software or generative AI.
B. Other Evidence
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Formative source-evaluation exercises where students work in flexible groupings to analyze a provided controversial text, identifying its biases and methodological flaws.
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Peer-assessment of draft annotations utilizing Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to provide written comments or audio memos on the clarity of the evaluation.
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A curated prewriting portfolio (e.g., visual maps or outlines) demonstrating the selection process used to arrive at the final 10 sources.