Course Project

Students always ask, “When am I ever going to use this in real life?” The focus of this project will be to relate literature to literature with an emphasis on its applicability to the student’s world. Students must pick two books from a list and write a four to six page paper about the similarities, the differences and what the books teach about life. This paper will be the cumulative paper of the year, combining grammar, vocabulary, book analysis, and correct citations.

The introductory video will combine plot lines of different books into a funny, mad-lib like confusion, and then finish with a rhetorical question. Something like: “What do all these books have in common? It’s your job to find out.” Or “Do these books have anything in common? Time will tell.”

Over the course of my grade school education, I formed a pretty natural writing style for long term writing assignments, and I still rely on this process today. My personal background helped develop my ability, but I realize that every student I teach will not have a Mom to help her brainstorm ideas or an Honors English background. I want to create a website that will provide a step-by-step formula for thinking and writing a good paper that students can use on this assignment and perhaps in the future. I might make a video outlining the steps of picking out important characters and plot details, a podcast, in which I would like to record myself reading important excerpts from the books to help people who have a hard time reading or learn better by listening.

My grading rubric will outline the main portions of an essay as well as provide opportunities for all hard workers to make a good grade. One of my favorite English teachers used this rubric for our Junior Thesis, and I really appreciated it then and now:

· One grade for turning in all the materials

· One grade for following correct MLA documentation and formatting

· One grade for content and organization

· One grade for mechanics, usage, and style/voice

I want to also possibly include a database that will help students to access information about archetypes, define vocabulary words, literary terms, or some basic themes. This would be similar to the two databases that Miriam showed us, the slang dictionary and butterfly classification worksheet.