Assignment

Per the syllabus, you will sign up for one day when you will lead class discussion on the assigned reading for 15 minutes. Depending upon our learning targets for a given day, you may work with a partner and double the presentation requirements. We’ll also collate all of these Commonplace Book Presentations into a single GoogleSlides document that everyone may use as a study guide for mid-term and final exams.

This assignment offers you an ideal opportunity to indulge your curiosity, conduct scholarly and popular research on a given day’s reading, and develop 2-3 additional slides for your commonplace book. I encourage you to be creative and move beyond collecting research to engage in analysis. Once you’ve created your slides, you may choose to:

  • Use the Folger Shakespeare Library databases to find an image or object that sparks new questions about the day’s reading.
  • Create a list of text-based discussion questions. You may choose topics that pique your curiosity. Why did author X spend so much time describing Y? Does that really help us better understand the text? How? 
  • Walk the class through your Commonplace Book entries and then test the class’s knowledge with a Kahoot! 
  • Research modern/pop-culture adaptations of the day’s reading and discuss the shared points of contact between those and the source text(s). If you choose this option, you must offer textual evidence from your primary source to support the connections you’re making.

Please do not simply summarize the assigned text!

Your goal is to bring outside materials to help the rest of us generate new insights about what we have read.

You don’t have to provide “the answers” regarding your chosen topic, but may instead use your research to pose new questions for us to consider as a group.

Feel free to be creative and pitch an idea to me! My goal is for you not only to practice your research skills and demonstrate your mastery of the subject at hand, but also to help you discover elements of these works that interest you.

Grading

On the day of your presentation, you must submit your slides to the Class Presentations Commonplace Book, and a document on Blackboard that contains:

  1. A one-paragraph summary of what you discovered through your research. 
  2. A one-paragraph reflection about what you learned about your own best practices to help you use research to grapple with difficult texts.
  3. An annotated bibliography that includes 3-5 sources consulted for your presentation; at least one must be a scholarly source.

Writing

All formal writing assignments will follow the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 8th ed., and must be typed, double-spaced, with one-inch margins.  For MLA guidelines, you may consult the Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL). If you use OWL, please remember to cite it in your Works Cited.  The format for doing so appears at the bottom of the top page of the OWL site. You may also consult the Rams Write: LibGuide. This resource has been created by students of mine in other classes and will give you a great idea of what I am looking far in the context of thesis statements, active voice, topic sentences, and more!

Looking for a great example?

Creative Commons License

Please note that all of the foregoing teaching resources have been authored and should be cited accordingly. The Kit Marlowe Project by Kristen Abbott Bennett is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

CPB Presentations