Tips for A Great Final Project

1. Your introduction should be a page long.  It is basically the thesis of your entire project.  A summary of what the reader is about to view.
2. Your works cited page should include every source you used for every genre in your project not just the research/academic genre. For instance, if you wrote an annotated bibliography you will include all the sources you used in your bibliography as well as the sources you used to create your top 10 list or your graph or your letter to authority. Make sure it's properly formatted and remember the difference between a works cited list and an annotated bibliography is that a works cited list doesn't have annotations (brief description of source).
3. It should be easy to identify what each genre is.
4. Please use my feedback and follow whatever suggestions I gave you about your pieces. I'm telling you how to get an A.
5. Turn it in on time. December 15th Between noon and 4 in 914 Sprau.
6. PLEASE BRING PEER REVIEW SHEETS WITH YOU WHEN YOU TURN YOUR PAPER IN.

Course Recap for Wednesday, November 30

Research Quiz
In class you wrote out your thesis statements for Project 4 and then you wrote a citation for a source about your topic and a summary of that source using in-text citations.  You did this to show me that you have an understanding of what a thesis statement is, what a good source looks like, and how to use MLA format to document your research.  If you're looking for places to find good sources, look at the following links:

• Western Michigan Library Power Search  www.wmich.edu/library
• Google Scholar scholar.google.com
• Sirs sks.sirs.com (I just tried to use this site from my computer at home and it asked me for a password.  It's possible it only works on school computers or the school internet.)

Remember that you have to have at least 4 sources for this project.  4 is the minimum.  Use as many sources as it takes to document your entire project.  I didn't mention it in class but you can also use primary sources in this project.  That means that you can use research that you've gathered yourself through interviews or surveys of people you know or observations you made using different forms of research.  For instance, a student writing a paper about how necessary it is for people who work out to give their muscles a break took a survey of students at the rec asking them whether or not they exercised the same muscle group more than 3 days in a row.  He then used this data in his paper.  You'll have to have some sort of documentation of this research but it is an option.  At least 3 of your 4 sources though have to be secondary sources (sources from books, magazines, web pages, etc.)


Plan of Writing 
You need to write in a Word document the 3 genres you plan to write in, the information you hope to include in each genre, and which day you plan to have your rough draft of each genre.  There will be peer review of 2 genres on Monday and 1 genre on Wednesday.  Plan on having any genres that can't be sent electronically (poster boards, scrapbooks, drawings, etc) on Monday.  I will be holding you to your plan, so if you say you're going to have your research paper Monday, I expect to see the rough draft of that paper on Monday.  MAKE SURE THAT YOU INCLUDE THE PART ABOUT THE INFORMATION YOU HOPE TO DISPLAY IN THE GENRE.   People often skip that part and that's the most important part of the assignment.  I want to make sure that you've learned something about genre analysis and that you understand what types of genres are best suited for the various pieces of information you may want to communicate in this project.

Be creative, but still remember this is a research project and each genre that you use for this project should help either prove your point or answer the question posed in your thesis. 

Homework

• Plan of Writing Due Friday December 2nd by Midnight (via Google Docs)
• Rough Drafts of Your First Two Genres Due in class, Monday, December 5th