Multimodal Assignment and Reflection Paragraph

The goal of this project is to revise one of the shorter papers you wrote (not the one expanded into the longer essay) into a creative project. I want to be clear that you have a lot of freedom with this project. What you are doing is taking the central theme you explored in that paper and thinking about how to explore this in another medium like photography, creative writing, a drawing, or a short video. To that end, you are not doing a literary analysis in this piece. For instance, let’s say that in your first short essay you analyzed the theme of loneliness in Speak. For the creative part of the multimodal project, then, you might take 3 photos that represent different aspects of loneliness that you think relate to the themes in the book. I want to emphasize that this must be original. Students sometimes want to add several pieces of clip art to a page. The idea though is for you to construct this on your own. At the end of this assignment sheet, I’ve given you some ideas on the kinds of projects you can create. Note that I am not grading on the creative skill, though: in other words, if you write a creative writing response, I’m not hoping you’re a Pulitzer Prize-worthy writer. Instead, I am most interested in how well you demonstrate your understanding of the theme you’re illuminating in your work.

The reflective paragraph that accompanies this needs to explain the tie between your project and the original text on which you wrote your paper. There’s another handout that explains how to do this more fully in the module for this week, but it musthave the following components: 1) The first sentence needs to explain which paper you revised into this project. 2) Then explain what theme from that paper you chose to illuminate in that creative project 3) Explain, in some detail, why you chose that particular medium to explore this theme 4) Explain, in some detail, how the creative decisions you made (in color/tone/diction/imagery) in this project are reflected in the piece. Note that this reflection is not a description of whether you liked this project or how well you think you did and dwelling on these elements will detract from the quality of the reflection. Instead, this is a critical reflection that asks you to explain your choices in your project.

Possible Projects

This is by no means exhaustive, but it does give you an idea of the scope of this project and how “long” it needs to be. Note that if you turn in photos, please arrange them in the order you want them to appear in a google doc or other document because canvas will potentially reorder them if you upload them individually. The reflection sheet needs to be uploaded as a separate document with an MLA heading and a title. The kinds of projects you might create are as follows:

3 original photos

A short story or poem (2-3 double-spaced pages, max)

A short original film (3-5 minutes, max)

A short choreographed dance (3 minutes max)

A letter to the author that explains what this project made you consider or reconsider (2 double-spaced pages, max)

Rubric

A: The choices made within the creative project are crystal clear and very coherent and exactly connects to the text to which you responded. The medium you chose was an ideal choice for the theme you explored. The project is very original and demonstrates thoughtfulness.

The reflection paragraph very coherently explains how this project was revised into the creative project and defends very well the choices that you made. The ideas are fully developed and are solely analytical. The paragraph has a proper heading and title, and it has been proofread and has no errors.