Group+Assignment


 * Team Brainstorm**

In this assignment, your team will be finding elements from your book which might be considered objectionable to some readers and making a judgment as to whether or not you believe these elements are worth defending.

Since all team members have read the same book, you will divide your book into equal sections based on how many team members you have, and each of you will take a section of the book to work on (for instance if your book has 300 pages and you have 5 team members, each section will consist of 60 pages).

The person who chooses the first section of the book will create a new Google doc and share it (giving editing privileges) with all team members, so that you can each work at your own pace. Each team member will then create a 5 x 5 table (see example below) under a heading which tells me what your section consists of. In your section of the book, note four elements which might be objectionable to a potential reader and list it in the Google doc. This can be a single word, it can be an event in the novel, a sentence, a theme, etc. For each objectionable element, list the element as it appears in the book in the first column of the table. The second column is for the page number(s) on which the element occurs. The third column is for the reason why this might be objectionable (profanity, explicit sexuality, violence, antisocial behavior, religious objections, poor example for young people, etc.). In the final column, you will explain why you think this element belongs in the book (necessary to plot or character development, realism, etc.), or you can write that you don’t think it’s necessary to include if you think this is the case.

The fifth column should be labeled “Peer Evaluation.” In this column, each team member will read the “judgment” column for the section right before the one he/she was responsible. The student who did the first section will evaluate the last section. For example, if Mary did the first section and Joe did the second, Joe will look at Mary’s judgments and in the fifth column for each element will write his own judgment on the questionable element in his own words.

Example of Mary’s table for section 1 of The Catcher in the Rye:


 * Mary Doe, Section 1 (Page 3-63)**
 * **Element** || **Page(s)** || **Reason(s)** || **Judgment** || **Peer Evaluation** ||
 * “I’m not going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography” || 3 || Religion objection, vulgar language || Important in showing Holden’s lack of religious values || Not needed in narration - gratuitous language ||
 * “They don’t do any damn more molding at Pencey than they do at any other school.” || 4 || Antisocial attitude || Important in establishing Holden’s negative attitude toward the establishment || Important in showing how Holden feels about school ||

Again, each team member needs to create and fill out the first four columns of a table that looks similar to the one above. After everyone completes his/her table, you will have three days to complete the peer evaluation in your appropriate teammate’s table.

Each team member needs to have four elements listed from his/her section, and these should be **four different elements** if possible (not four examples of vulgar language - try to find examples with different reasons for objection).

When the team is entirely finished with the document, including the peer evaluation, the person doing the last section of the book will share the document with the instructor - dorsam93@yahoo.com

Completed document must be submitted by Friday at midnight.