Serendipity – a seeming gift for finding something good, accidentally
You know that feeling when you learn about a topic in one class and then you watch a blurb on TV or hear a song on the radio that makes you think about it again? You experience a temporary epiphany when the neurons in your brain connect the two subjects from different angles. This assignment is to encourage you to share those epiphanies.
Ideally, this assignment is NOT a research assignment. You’re not supposed to go out searching for a website or song that fits the criteria. You’re supposed to be alert to the connections inherent in everyday experiences; then, choose one connection to explore in a one-page response.
Unlike most assignments in English, this is an ongoing assignment that will be due near the end of each unit during the entire year. For each topic of discussion, you should find an artifact which expands your thinking on the topic. Your artifact can be written or visual but should offer an opinion on the message of our unit. The genre that you choose should vary each time you submit an artifact.
| Our Unit Topics | Possible Genres for artifacts |
|
Language & Thought Individual versus Society Reality: Perception or Deception Battle of the Sexes The American Dream Is the World Really Flat? (Globalization)
|
(not limited to, but
including) column, article, song speech, tv transcript, website, visual (political cartoon, chart, graph, photograph, advertisement, etc.)
|
Assignment:
After locating your artifact, briefly offer your personal thoughts on the topic
as a whole. Originally, what made you think that this artifact connected with
our topic? Did this hold true as you analyzed it? What ideas from the
topic/artifact were the most unique/shocking/valid to you? How does your
artifact extend your thinking about the topic? Does your artifact support the
theme or message about the topics we’ve discussed, or does it present a new
idea? (Answer the questions from each
Unit of Study.)
Please include a bibliographic citation for each artifact that you locate. (Follow MLA format.)
Applying our class discussions to the outside world and the outside world to our class discussions J
