7 Science: Notetaking & Noodletools

Keep these three items TOGETHER in each note from a source:

• Source information (Name + Link to find it again!)
• Quote
• Paraphrase or Summary of the information (Use quotation marks for exact words!)
  • Optional but good to have: Your own comment about the information

An example of one note:

• SOURCE
  • National Geographic (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-dinosaurs-shrank-and-became-birds/)
• QUOTATION
  • "For decades, paleontologists’ only fossil link between birds and dinosaurs was archaeopteryx, a hybrid creature with feathered wings but with the teeth and long bony tail of a dinosaur."
• PARAPHRASE
  • It took many years for scientists to find more evidence of the link between the dinosaurs and birds. For a long time, all they had for evidence was a fossil of an animal that had wings and a dinosaur-like tail and teeth.
• COMMENT
  • ​​​​​​​This will fit into my background section and supports the idea that birds are related to dinosaurs.

Have more than one fact from a source? Keep adding new facts and your comments underneath the source - just make sure it's CLEAR where every fact is from!

Example from this source, written by Emily Singer

Quoted material:

• "For decades, paleontologists’ only fossil link between birds and dinosaurs was archaeopteryx, a hybrid creature with feathered wings but with the teeth and long bony tail of a dinosaur" (Singer).

Paraphrase:

• It took scientists many years to find more than one connection between dinosaurs and birds. For a long time, they only had one fossil of an animal with wings and a dinosaur-like teeth and tail (Singer).

Summary of the first section:

• After many years of study, scientists who have studied dinosaurs are discovering that small changes in evolution are the key to following the link between dinosaurs and current-day birds.

Works Cited Entry:

• On the last page of the project or essay, the full citation will appear as below
• We take the first word(s) of the entry (author or article title) and put it in parenthesis in the paper, right next to the information we are quoting or paraphrasing from that source

Singer, Emily. "How dinosaurs shrank and became birds." Quanta Magazine. 12 June 2015,  www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-dinosaurs-shrank-and-became-birds/.

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