Mark Strand, "Keeping Things Whole"

At the Foundation.

This week: Anthology revision and book reviews.

The Anthology
Friday, the final drafts of our anthology notes are due.  I would like you to submit them to me electronically, in my homework folder, as an essay.  Please make your filename your last name. Your artifacts I would like attached at the end of that document.  If you have links to videos, include them there.  If you have images, the same.  If for some reason, you have included an artifact that you cannot attach electronically, be sure to hand in a physical copy.

So, most importantly, this week should be about revising your anthology notes so that they sound authoritative and are full of specific, well-articulated judgment about the pieces you have included.  Those judgments, as we have practiced all semester, should be both observational and inferential.  Evaluative judgment is for our last remaining assignment of the semester before our end of course presentations: the book reviews.

Book reviews
If you will recall, you have a choice in how to satisfy this requirement: (a) compose two brief reviews of books you read this semester, or (b) compose one review plus one video, either a book trailer or a poem video.  The handouts I provide you today will give you more guidance, but you can also revisit Teenreads for examples, too.

Peer-review drafts of written book reviews will be next Wednesday. If you make a book trailer or poem video, it will not be due until your semester presentation, which will come the last week of class.


This week, then, you have a short menu of options in class: (1) revise your anthology, (2) compose your reviews, or (3) work on a video.