Semester Test Review Project

Six days. Five-hundred forty minutes. Thirty-two thousand four hundred seconds. We must make those 32,400 seconds between now and Christmas break count–every single one of them. To that end, I’ve decided to combine our brain power, creative energies, and critical thinking skills to create tutorial videos to review the key skills we’ve learned this semester to prepare you for the semester exam.

Each of you will work with a group to create one video on a key concept. Here are the groups and topics we agreed on in class today:

Diction: What is it? How do you analyze an author’s diction? How do you write about diction? [Preston, Audrey, Halli, Kaitlin]

Syntax: What is it? How do you analyze an author’s syntax? How do you write about syntax? [JM, Price, Madison]

Coordination & Subordination: What’s the difference? What are the coordinators and subordinators? How do we punctuate them? What different sentence types (compound, complex, compound-complex) can we create?
[Clare, Amy, Tory]

Rhetorical Devices–Tropes: What are they? How do we identify them? Why/How do authors use them, for what effect?
[Lizzie, Amber, Grant]

Rhetorical Devices–Schemes: What are they? How do we identify them? Why/How do authors use them, for what effect?
[Daniel, Elizabeth, Shea]

Passive Voice: What is it? When is it appropriate to use active and passive voice? For what effect do authors purposely use it? How do we revise to make passive sentences active? [Drew, Jay, Kendra, Courtney]

Tone: What is it? How do we determine an author’s tone? How do we write about tone? [Megan, Rasheeq, Will]

Your video should be a tutorial—teaching your audience the concepts in a format that is easy to follow and easy to understand. For inspiration, check out Lee and Sachi Lefever’s “paperworks” (their name) videos that combine simplistic white board drawings and paper cut-outs with voice narration. (You’ll have to scroll to the bottom of the page for a list of their videos.) You should also check out the attached rubric. semester-test-review-video-project.doc

To begin, you need to brainstorm. Then, you’ll plan and organize—frame by frame—your ideas for your video. Use the storyboard template to map out the project. The storyboard is due Tuesday, December 4.

You can then divide the tasks among your team members to make certain you get the job finished on time. The finished video is due Wednesday, December 12.

In addition to time spent outside of class working on the project, you will have the following time in class to work on the project:

Friday, 11/30: 1 hour

Tuesday, 12/4: ½ period (45 minutes) **Storyboard due by end of period

Thursday: 12/6: ½ period (45 minutes)

Monday, 12/10: 1 hour

Wednesday, 12/12: 1 hour

For those of us who are keenly conscious of our time, that’s 4 ½ HOURS of class time! Use them wisely. For those of you who fervently tackle this project, the process—not just the end product—will be a valuable learning experience.