assignments ENGL303 Writing Our Heritages:
FINAL PROJECT/PRESENTATION
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Overview: This semester you’ve worked on five mini-assignments:
Different students have different relationships to this class. By that I mean that some of you are very into it, and others of you are less so. And that’s totally okay. You get to decide how you connect and perform in our class. Thus, the final project for this class gives you several options for how to complete the course. You can decide the kind of time, energy, and creativity you want to give to it.
DETAILS: For the B Grade
To earn some form of the B grade, you can collect your mini assignments, make modest revision based on feedback, and turn that material in with an introduction that explains, ultimately, what you’ve inherited. You need to select at least four of the five mini-assignments. Which means you can decide which of the five projects we’ve done this semester best tell your story. Part of your evaluation will be on the thoughtfulness of what you’ve selected.
Essentially, the introduction, which should be 750 words, double-spaced, and typed, will trace that inheritance through the different mini assignments, explaining how the focus of each tells us something about you. The difference between the B- and the B+ will be how seriously you take that selection, how seriously you take my encouragement to take the creative leap to say something other than “I inherited a lot from my family.” A sentence like that does not tell me anything about what you inherit. It tells me that you inherited something. Try your hardest to avoid cliche.
NOTE: I reserve the right to award the A grade to a student whose introduction is so strong in the ways I describe above that it exceeds the requirements of the B grade.
DETAILS: For the A Grade
To earn some form of the A grade, you will reinvent your project from the material that you’ve drafted in the five mini assignments. Again, you have the option to include the material from all but one of the mini assignments; the one you leave out is of your own choosing.
Rather than simply assembling past work, however, you will need to rethink the organization, format, and reflections. You have free range to think about how the entire piece will look, including changing the modality entirely–making a video, making a powerpoint, making a scrapbook, creating a poster/visual of a family tree. You are free to add information, almost like creating your own mini-assignments, that you feel would add to the story you are telling. You are free to expand any of the mini-assignments to include more of what that assignment was about (for instance, I could envision, for myself, including a lot of family recipes and almost reshaping the the entire project around a kind of heritage cook book.
Whatever the end product looks like you should include the same kind of 750 word, double-spaced, typed introduction–a “preface” if you will to your work as described above for the B grade.
Further: you should consider, as you put your final piece together, the feedback you got this semester. I should see that you took this feedback seriously as your put together this final piece. I reserve the right to award a plus or minus grade based on what you turn in and how you consider revision.
In order to earn either the A or B grade
- Artifact Description
- What’s in a Name
- Your Life if Pictures
- You Are What you Eat
- You’re in the System
Different students have different relationships to this class. By that I mean that some of you are very into it, and others of you are less so. And that’s totally okay. You get to decide how you connect and perform in our class. Thus, the final project for this class gives you several options for how to complete the course. You can decide the kind of time, energy, and creativity you want to give to it.
DETAILS: For the B Grade
To earn some form of the B grade, you can collect your mini assignments, make modest revision based on feedback, and turn that material in with an introduction that explains, ultimately, what you’ve inherited. You need to select at least four of the five mini-assignments. Which means you can decide which of the five projects we’ve done this semester best tell your story. Part of your evaluation will be on the thoughtfulness of what you’ve selected.
Essentially, the introduction, which should be 750 words, double-spaced, and typed, will trace that inheritance through the different mini assignments, explaining how the focus of each tells us something about you. The difference between the B- and the B+ will be how seriously you take that selection, how seriously you take my encouragement to take the creative leap to say something other than “I inherited a lot from my family.” A sentence like that does not tell me anything about what you inherit. It tells me that you inherited something. Try your hardest to avoid cliche.
NOTE: I reserve the right to award the A grade to a student whose introduction is so strong in the ways I describe above that it exceeds the requirements of the B grade.
DETAILS: For the A Grade
To earn some form of the A grade, you will reinvent your project from the material that you’ve drafted in the five mini assignments. Again, you have the option to include the material from all but one of the mini assignments; the one you leave out is of your own choosing.
Rather than simply assembling past work, however, you will need to rethink the organization, format, and reflections. You have free range to think about how the entire piece will look, including changing the modality entirely–making a video, making a powerpoint, making a scrapbook, creating a poster/visual of a family tree. You are free to add information, almost like creating your own mini-assignments, that you feel would add to the story you are telling. You are free to expand any of the mini-assignments to include more of what that assignment was about (for instance, I could envision, for myself, including a lot of family recipes and almost reshaping the the entire project around a kind of heritage cook book.
Whatever the end product looks like you should include the same kind of 750 word, double-spaced, typed introduction–a “preface” if you will to your work as described above for the B grade.
Further: you should consider, as you put your final piece together, the feedback you got this semester. I should see that you took this feedback seriously as your put together this final piece. I reserve the right to award a plus or minus grade based on what you turn in and how you consider revision.
In order to earn either the A or B grade
- Beyond what is described above, everyone must also due to things in order to earn the grade as described.
- Students must attend a conference between now and the 8th when our exam takes place. Sign up for these conferences using this google doc linked here.
- Students must attend the final exam on the 8th, 11 to 1:00, in our same classroom. You will be expected to talk about your final takeaways and make your final project available to the class to see during a 5 to 7 minute presentation on that day. If it is easiest to read your introduction, that’s fine. But you can also simply talk us through what you did in your project and what you discovered about your inheritance.
- Students should include the drafts of the mini-projects they included in their final project with the final material. I'll give you a manilla envelope during the exam period for you to put that material together to turn in to me.