Welcome to ThinkQuest  2004 Home Page

Course Requirements

| American Mosaic | Classic | Online Textbooks | American Women | Course Description |

Course Policies and Requirements

• Attendance, Lateness(15%)
• Class/Group Participation(25%)
  • Cooperative efforts
  • Final project reflects each member's talents
• Oral Presentation (10%)
• Assignments or tests(25%)
• Final Group Project (25%)

Academic Dishonesty

• Plagiarism attacks the freedom and integrity of thought. Especially in a class that will depend to some extent on online research, you must know what constitutes plagiarism and avoid it.
• Students who plagiarize will receive 0 in the subject.
• Full acknowledgement for all information obtained from sources outside the classroom must be clearly stated in all written work submitted.
• All ideas, arguments, and direct phrasings taken from someone else's work must be identified and properly footnoted.
• Quotations from other sources must be clearly marked as distinct from your own work.

Grading Policies

• Originality in contents and forms
• Accuracy of the understanding of literary texts
• Quality of work
• Punctuality of work completion and submission

Course Final Project

• Group Message Board (Discussion Forum) that shows group members' discussion of listed reading materials on a consistent  basis plus other visitors' input.
• Web-Blog that demonstrates group members' intimate collaboration efforts such as raising questions about how to work as a team, what a part of reading materials mean, etc.( not shared by visitors; exclusively for group members).
• A group website based on the literature studied.

Course Description

For each marking period, you and your group members will select at least three pieces of literature from the listed categories to read and study .For example, your group might like to read a novel Time Square by Henry James or a play The Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, a short story "The Last of the Troubadours," and a poem "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost. You need to browse the authors' sites thoroughly and decide together which work to read. Here are some suggestions on how each group may work together to create a joint web project as a final project to present:

1. You need to agree on what to read. Yes, you may read online, but if you'll do all your reading in class, you'll never have enough time for your group discussions or any other group works , not to mention to work collaboratively to create a website to present what you have studied. Therefore, I recommend every member of the group go to the library to borrow a hard copy of the book you are reading together.

2. Write down your group members' phone numbers and email addresses for convenient communications.

3. Set up deadlines for your reading assignments. For example, if you decide to read a poem first, you may read together in class online and spend one period discussing the poem and another period putting up what you have agreed on in your group website. For longer works such as novels or plays, you may assign each group member a few chapters or scenes to read ;so when you come to the class the next day, you can meet together and share what you have read and put the jigsaw together. Again give yourself a deadline on when you need to accomplish.

4. Assign each group member a specific role for him/her to carry out some specific responsibilities. In other words, hold each member of the group accountable what he/she needs to do.

5. Don't wait until the end of each marking period to start your writing. As you are reading each work, keep  learning logs( such as double-entry journal), comments on characters, events or themes, etc.) to record your reflections, responses, or any thing else that comes to your mind that you'd like to share with your group members or your future audience. In this way, when you need to create a website on a specific work, all you need to do is to sit down together to decide what needs to be included, such as summary, character or theme analysis, or glossary, or image gallery of the characters, in your website. In any event, the website is your creative work and as long as it demonstrates your understanding and appreciation of the literature, it serves the purpose.

6. You need to be aware of your audiences who are your peers, teachers, your parents, friends, or even your future professors. The contents should be educational and interesting. The design needs to be navigationally easy, with some graphics, even sounds or video clips, and links.

7. For your final presentation, you could use one group member's website as your group site or make links from one member's site to all others'.

8. Who should write the essay? Most of you might like to ask this question. Let's say, you just finish reading the novel The Great Gatsby, you decide that each member will choose a specific aspect to write about such as writing about the characters, Gatsby, Daisy or Tom Buchanan, or themes, or symbolism, etc. Your may work together to work on an essay of your choice ,yet  it's always a good idea that everyone of you does the first draft, and when meeting, put ideas together to create the final draft. You may also assign each member to write an essay on a different aspect, and group edit the essays together.

9. I'll always be around working with each group in turns. Prepare your questions in advance and bring them in.

10. Everyday, each group might be working on its specific tasks. You may see one group reading together, another group discussing what they have read, the  other working on their website, which is all acceptable.

11. Keep all the handwritten notes, journals, essays as evidence of participation and preparation. Each week, to get 80 and above grade for participation and preparation, you need to show three pieces of writing based on your reading.

Deadlines for submitting your final group project of  each marking period:

The First Marking Period- March 8, 2004

The Second Marking Period- April 30, 2004

The Third Marking Period- June 7, 2004

American Mosaic

http://www.ncteamericancollection.org/ph_character_and_class.htm

 Classic

A great resource for classic: Perseus Digital Library