The British Author Projects

 

There are four parts of this assignment:

 

  1. The Padlet Timeline (1st Quarter)
  2. The Revision Paper (1st Quarter)
  3. The APA Annotated Bibliography (2nd Quarter)
  4. The Speech (think of it more like a one sided conversation) (2nd Quarter)

 

Now, first things first! We need to pick an author. This is the author you will use for the entire year,so pick a good one! (Actually I will have you pick from a hat, but if you have an author you really want, I might be persuaded to give him or her to you...)

 

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The List of Authors

Geoffrey Chaucer

George Orwell

George Eliot

Sir Thomas Malory

C. S. Lewis

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

J. R. R. Tolkien

Jonathan Swift

William Shakespeare

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Sir Philip Sydney

Alexander Pope

Robert Browning

Edmund Spenser

Samuel Johnson

Emily Bronte

Christopher Marlowe

William Blake

William Golding

Sir Walter Raleigh

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Dante Rossetti

John Donne

William Wordsworth

Christina Rossetti

Ben Jonson

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Lewis Carroll

Aldous Huxley

H. G. Wells

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Herrick

George Gordon, Lord Byron

Oscar Wilde

Andrew Marvell

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ruyard Kipling

John Milton

John Keats

H. Rider Haggard

Sir John Suckling

Mary Shelley

William Butler Yeats

Jane Austen

Bram Stoker

James Joyce

J. K. Rowling

Roald Dahl

Mark Haddon

Ian Fleming

Stephen Moffat

Alan Moore

Virginia Woolf

Agatha Christie

George Bernard Shaw

Beatrix Potter

 

Is there another British writer you would like to do that is not on this list? Run it by Lord Alford first and he'll probably approve it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Padlet Timeline Assignment

Just as the name suggests, we are going to make a timeline. The entire class will input on the timeline, so when we are done, you will have a good idea of which authors wrote when.

First, you'll need a Padlet account. You may have an email with a link ready to go, if not, go to padlet.com and sign up using your school email address. Make sure you put in your actual name so that I'll know who to give those points to! That was easy!

DO NOT MAKE A NEW PADLET. You are going to use the one I created for this class. Link for that is below.

Now you need to research information about your author. You will make 5 entries on the timeline. They will include:

Birthday, death (if the author is dead), published works, major life events

You will also include one historical event that is somewhere around your author's lifespan.

For those of you low on math skills - that's 6 posts total (9 total if you want the highest grade possible).

Here is the grading breakdown:

Each author post is worth 10 points. (50 Points Total)

The history post is worth 15 points (15 Points Total)

Each post that has an appropriate picture, video, or web page attached to it will get an additional 5 points (30 Points Total). Do not duplicate the same image for multiple posts.

Total - 95 points

Bonus points - You may create up to 3 more author or history posts (these extra history posts do not need to be within your author's lifespans). These must have pictures, videos, or web pages attached. You will earn an additional 5 points each for these. Total points possible for this assignment - 110 points. This counts as a double test grade.

Here is how you do it -

I did the Edgar Rice Burroughs posts. Please note below:

1. Find the column that the event happened on the timeline. Click the + button to open a new post.

2. Fill in the post with this information:

3. For the history post, follow the same format above, but start the Write Something section with the word HISTORY.

REMEMBER - the History post is NOT about your author - it is only about something that happened in the world while your author was alive.

 

You will post on the Padlet that matches your class:

Second Period - https://padlet.com/lordalford/umfaq0nzg7wi2d5z

Third Period - https://padlet.com/lordalford/1dgizxd3kq0ye4ug

DO NOT CREATE A NEW PADLET

 

Finshed? - No you're not. Run it through this check list to insure you have a 100.

 

DUE - Thursday, Feb. 24th

 

 

 

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The Revision Paper

You get the opportunity to write about a two page paper on your author. The purpose of this assignment is to practice your revision skills and avoiding plagiarism.

On a Google doc, you will write a 950 word (about one and a half pages) paper about your author. It can be anything about your author - their life, some scandal in their life, their books, their characters, movie adaptations of their works, etc. You will title the document: NAME - Revision Paper (example: Lord Alford - Revision Paper).

Next, run your paper through paperrater.com. Paper Rater will give you suggestions for improvement. It is not perfect by any means, but it will find some errors in your writing. It will also give you a grade.

You can do better! Go back to your Google doc and make the corrections it suggests until you get the grade you want. You can do this as many times as you want to (after all, this project is all about revision). Paper Rater not giving the suggestions you need? Try any one of these online proofreaders found on our research paper site.

Once you get the grade you want, take a screen shot and paste the grade onto your Google doc.

This is your base grade.

How to use Paperater.com - https://youtu.be/HJy8GG8b1Qg

Now run your paper through turnitin.com. Check your email for enrollment key and class id. Here is the presentation on how to use Turn It In. Submit your paper. What's the similarity percentage? That will affect your base grade:

0% = +10
1-10% = +5
11-15% = -5
16-20% = -10
21-25% = -20
26-30% = -40
30-40% = -60
41-100% = -100

Don't like you percentage? Change what is marked and run it again - however, Turn It In may take up to 24 hours to give you a new percentage. If you make changes, run it through Paper Rater again. If the grade changes, take another screen shot.

Turnitin class id: 31838965 enrollment key: lordalford

How to sign up for TurnItIn.com - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVk6ss3_9y8
How to use TurnItIn.com - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQAnQ8zGc0U

Take a screen shot of the Turn It In and paste it below the Paper Rater screen shot. Papers WITHOUT BOTH SCREEN SHOTS will get a zero grade.

The next thing to affect your base score is your word count. You can see how many words you wrote by clicking TOOLS and choosing WORD COUNT or hitting CTRL+SHIFT+C.

1000 words = +10
999-960 words = +5
950-959 words = +0
949-900 words = -10
899-850 words = -15
849-800 words = -20
799-750 words = -25
749-700 words = -30
699-650 words = -35
649-600 words = -40
599-500 words = -50
499-400 words = -60
399-0 words = -100

Once you are pleased with your grade, share it with me. If you are really good with your time management skills and get it in by the early turn in date (Friday, March 17th), get an additional +10.

DUE - Friday, March 25th

 

 

 

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The APA Annotated Bibliography


An annotated bibliography is much like an MLA works cited page, except that it does not accompany a paper, gives information from the the source, and is done using APA format instead of MLA. Your professors might require you to source your paper using APA format. It is not too much different from MLA, but it is some, and I want you to be familiar with it, just in case. The biggest difference is the lack of capitals in APA titles. You will need to use 6 different sources. One must be a web site. One must be a book. The other four can be anything (more books, more web sites, a personal interview, a magazine, an Internet database, etc.). You will get extra credit if you use four different types of sources. There is a guide sheet that you will complete online for this assignment.

If you cannot find a book on your author, then ANY BOOK on ANY TOPIC will do.

You will also include about 3-5 lines of text (using Times New Roman 12 point font) detailing some of the information you found about that author from that source.

You will also include how to in-text that source if you were writing a research paper.

Bibliography is due: Fri. May 27th.

How do I do APA?

Here is the document you will do your project on:
APA ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Share only when you are ready for me to grade it.

Sample Paper

 

 

 

 

 

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The Author Speech

The speech will be 2-3 minutes long. You will give good information about that author to the class. You will be graded on the following:

  • time
  • good information
  • ability to capture interest
  • good speaking skills (i.e. not looking at notes entire time, not saying “um…” or other speech breaks, annunciation, confidence, etc.)

You may include a visual presentation. This is not required, but it is an effective way of both keeping track of your information and keeping your reader’s interest. It is suggested that you use Google slides to insure that we can access it for the SmartBoard. This would be a supplement - do not post your speech on it.

The speech will be given Wednesday, Jan 15 and Tuesday, Jan. 16. I will take volunteers first and then turn to the container of kismet to get the rest of you. be prepared for the first day.

 

What information should I give in my speech? Well, consider any of the following:

  • basic life details (born, died, etc.)
  • what style of writing was he or she known for?
  • give titles or characters that they are famous for creating
  • any scandals or interesting life happenings?
    - one of the male names is really a female in disguise
    - many were drug addicts
    - some were homosexuals and aetheists during times that you could be killed for that
    - two of the names on this list are possibly the real author of Shakespeare's works
    - one author dug up his dead wife just so he could get some poems he buried with her to publish
    - one became famous for writing a book as a challenge from his brother
    - one kept her husband's heart on her shelf for over ten years
    -one really loved his sister - I mean really loved
    -one is guilty of attempted rape
    -some were artists who wrote poetry on the side (visuals would be great for these guys)
  • were they popular during their own time?


Nervous? Try these tips: http://www.aresearchguide.com/3tips.html