Summer Reading Project

Phase 1: Committee Formation (10%)  Today, you will be assigned committees to explore the claims and themes found in your summer reading assignment.  Your overarching goal is to introduce yourself to your group, briefly summarize the text, and begin to create some guiding questions for your project.  Think: what do you want to explore, research, and argue?

Phase 1: Committee Formation (10%)  Questions for your committee (take notes!):  What is the context (exigence) surrounding the text’s main argument?  Make a topic list and derive your themes/claims from those topics.  What does the committee want to research as a group?  What ideas spring from the summer reading that you’ve done?  HW: 1. As a group post one essential guiding question for the whole group on a Google Document. Share with me and all of your group members (make sure to give us all editing privileges!). 2. As an individual, post one supplementary question that you derived from your essential guiding question. 3. Due: September 3, 11:59 PM (10% of this assignment)

Phase 2: Rhetorical Précis (10%)  Your objective today is to find articles that support your research question.  Once you have chosen one that you want to use as support for or against (i.e. as an opportunity to include a concession and/or anticipate a counterargument) your argument, copy and paste the link on your Committee Meeting Document.  After you have modified your committee’s document, write a rhetorical précis over the article on a separate Google document.  Tomorrow, you will submit this document to me after we complete one more step related to your project (AP Questions). Although the document is not due until 11:59 PM Thursday, you may submit it today (via the AP English III Submission Form) and make changes tonight and tomorrow.  Friday, we will get back into our committees and you will discuss the articles, your AP questions, and how each supplemental question will help you formulate an answer to your group’s guiding question.

Phase 3: AP Style Question Creation (10%)  Today you will add AP style multiple choice questions to the document you created yesterday.  Under your rhetorical précis, you will be required to have 5 multiple choice questions, complete with answer choices (A-E), and a highlighted correct answer. Please keep this document limited to one page. If you need to adjust the font down to accommodate this request, please do so.  You will need to have one question per question stem section:  Rhetoric  Author’s Meaning and Purpose  Main Idea  Organization and Structure  Rhetorical Modes  Although we haven’t covered each of these sections in depth, I’d like you to do your best in order to discover what sections you know well and which you will likely need more help with over the course of the year. If you’d like to create your own question (without a question stem to guide you) feel free as long as you have 5 that fall within the aforementioned constraints.  Reminder: this document (précis and AP questions) will be due tonight at 11:59 PM via the AP English III Submission Form. I will not accept s for this assignment. There is no need to ensure that I can comment on this one. This is worth 20% of your test grade! EXAMPLE 1: In lines 13–17 (“Their religion... asthma”), the narrator draws attention to the Dodson sisters’ (a) devotion to certain rituals (b) untroubled complacency (c) deep religious conviction (d) disturbed consciences (e) sense of history and tradition EXAMPLE 2: Which of the following expressions most obviously suggests a satirical point of view? (a) “too specific” (line 2) (b) “have been reared and have flourished” (line 7) (c) “no heresy in it” (line 14) (d) “like asthma” (line 17) (e) “not a controversialist” (line 19) EXAMPLE 3: In the passage, the narrator is most concerned with (a) describing the values held by the Dodsons (b) contrasting different forms of British Protestantism (c) arguing for the importance of theological values as opposed to practical ones (d) lamenting the decline of religious values in the lives of people like the Dodsons (e) questioning the sincerity of the Dodsons

Phase 4: Synthesis Argument (50%)  You will be graded on the AP 9-point scale.  Tips for 1 st timed synthesis:  Write a strong, clear thesis statement (argument).  Include strong, correctly embedded quotes (min. 3) from the most amount of sources possible (min. 2)  Feel free to ignore the 5 paragraph structure and create your own pattern of organization.  Be concise. Don’t be wimpy. Write well.

1 st Timed Writing: Synthesis Directions: The following prompt is based on the sources you found in your research. This question requires you to integrate a variety of sources into a coherent, well-written essay. Refer to the sources to support your position; avoid mere paraphrase or summary. Your argument should be central; the sources should support this argument. Remember to attribute both direct and indirect citations. Assignment: in an essay that synthesizes at least two of your sources for support, take a position that defends, challenges, or qualifies a claim that you have discovered during your research. Refer to the sources by the author’s last name: Mr. Crocker required me to “integrate a variety of sources” in order to fulfill the requirements of the timed synthesis assignment (Crocker). If the author’s name is not revealed in the article, then feel free to shorten the article title: Mr. Crocker required me to “integrate a variety of sources” in order to fulfill the requirements of the timed synthesis assignment (1 st Timed Writing).

Phase 5: Synthesis Panel Discussion(20%) Tuesday, September 22 nd and Wednesday, September 23 rd  Your AP Committee will present your research in front of the class in the form of a panel discussion. There are three parts to this panel: 1. First, the Committee Chair will introduce the committee and the guiding question that your group decided on. 2. Second, each member of the panel will briefly discuss their method of research, stasis questions, synthesis argument, and their sources. 3. Third, there will be a Q&A session open to the entire class to ask questions related to your research.  This entire process should take no longer than 12 minutes. 1. <1 minute introductions 2. ~2 minutes per panelist minutes for Q&A  Each group should be prepared to be on a panel for BOTH dates. Groups will be randomly selected.

Phase 5: Synthesis Panel Discussion(20%)  You will be graded based on the following criteria:  As a panel member (10%) by:  Describing how you went about your research (stasis, articles, etc.)AND referencing a text or texts that you found in your research – 5%  Presenting your argument to the class AND referencing a text or texts that you used in your argument (synthesis argument, using articles, etc.) – 5%  As an audience member (10%) by:  Asking honest, high-level, academic questions during the panel Q&A – 10% (1 point per question without referencing a text; 2 points per question that references a text)  I will serve as the moderator for each panel discussion, providing transitions when necessary and moving on to the next panel when needed.