The Blogging Assignment

KHerzGender:

The Scarlett Letter: Sarah’s Gender Blog

Once you have completed each reading, you will have opportunities to review your notes and to express your reactions to various aspects of the text on our blog (KHerzGender). You will be responsible for writing one post published on the blog for each day our class meets.  These written posts may also be used to generate ideas for more in-depth analytical papers that will go through the entire writing process or may simply extend the discourse beyond your independent reading. In the blog post, push past the summary of plot to get to the deeper ideas. Instead, you should reflect on some of the ideas, observations and analyses you may have noted during your reading of the book. I will also be providing you some supplemental materials to read for comparison and to think further, and these will need posts as well.

Think of your audience as the class, not just me. While I will not be able to read every single blog and comment that you post, I will be picking blogs to read at random and will assess these throughout the unit. Since the assessment will be at random, be sure each blog is your best. Of course, you should approach this task with academic seriousness and maturity. I look forward to reading your blog posts and entering into the discourse of The Scarlett Letter.

An excellent written blog:

• Reveals the viewer’s steady, thoughtful awareness of the reading
• Reveals the viewer’s mind at work while viewing, asking questions, making observations, drawing conclusions
• Ends with a thought-provoking question that can be used as a springboard in your writing or next post
• Employs specific literary devices and techniques at work,to support ideas
• Pushes past merely discussing plot or regurgitating class discussion
• Incorporates text to support ideas
• Makes connections to supplemental reading from the course and/or other films (ie, Easy A, which you will watch at the end of your reading)
• Cites and quotes any research included in the blog; I would prefer your do your own thinking, not simply repeat what you find online, but you are more than welcome to grab ideas you find to further your thinking - I will giving you some ideas to look up as well.
• Is free of mechanical and grammatical errors

The Reading:

Because this is going to be more of an independent study, you will be creating your own reading schedule. In fact, your first post should be deciding what that schedule will be. It will take the same amount of time as our study of Bell Jar, which is as follows:

			Fri, Sept 12 Cht 1 and 2
Mon, Sept 15 3 and 4	Tues, Sept 16 5 and 6	Thurs, Sept 18 7 and 8	Fri, Sept 19 9 and 10
Mon, Sept 22 11 and 12	Tues, Sept 23 13 and 14	Thurs, Sept 25 No School - Rosh Hashanah	Fri, Sept 26 15 and 16
Mon, Sept 29 17 and 18	Tues, Sept 30 19 and 20	Thurs, Oct 2 Foreword and Bio Note	*This is when you will begin the film - more on that later!

We will have a once-a-week meeting time; be sure to sign up each week. During this time, you may have some mini-quizzes (open notes!), and we will also discuss your readings and findings thus far. These meetings will be the normal conference time, and as always, any time you want to stop by to ask any questions or review, feel free.