Home Schooling Annotated Bibliography

TOPIC : Homeschooling
In our country, there are three options for pre-college education: public school, private school, and homeschooling. There are passionate proponents for all. Consider the homeschooling option. Evaluate the pros and cons and argue for or against homeschooling as a viable alternative to public or private education.

So what does it mean to annotate something though? Simply put, if you annotate something, you explain it more fully. It can involve analysis, summary, or commentary (or all three). That’s it. So an annotated bibliography is a collection of sources where you add an annotation to each of the sources. With that annotation, you will explain what the source says, what its strengths (and weaknesses) seem to be, and how you might use it in your research paper.

For your annotated bibliography, you’ll follow the following criteria:

This is probably obvious, but you’ll use MLA format for the document design and entry formatting. I don’t care if you use a resource like Easy Bib or the like. That’s fine. But the final product needs to be accurate. This isn’t rocket science. You just have to pay attention to details. All formatting styles, including MLA, have a precise way to format titles, for example, as well as how to list all the information about the source, such as the page numbers, publisher information, etc. The Purdue Online Writing Lab (or “OWL”) has some really helpful information about formatting sources for MLA. Again, though, I don’t mind if you use a site like Easy Bib or something similar.

Each entry needs to be between 100 – 150 words.

This is super important. Do not copy the information from the database’s description of the source or the source yourself. It needs to be in your own words. You’ll write a brief summary of the source (really, just a sentence or two) and offer a preliminary evaluation of the source’s value. You can also write about you might use it your paper.

The sources can come from your Working Bibliography, but they don’t have to if you want to keep looking for sources.

You need to have five sources for your annotated bibliography, and they need to fulfill the following criteria: at least three scholarly articles (peer-reviewed sources, not web pages); no more than two books (either print or ebook is fine), and no more than one quality web-based source (e.g., a web page from an .edu site – sites like Wikipedia, Spark Notes, or the like are not allowed). If you want, you can replace the web-based source with another scholarly article or quality book.

You will not be forced to use these exact sources for your paper, if you end up refining your idea. But just for the record, the final draft of your research paper must meet the criteria for sources mentioned in the previous step.

Annotated bibliographies need to be prepared with the same care you would a formal essay. Proofread your annotations carefully.