Final Project Assignment

Paper Length: 4-5 Pages (~1000 words) + images or videos
Due: December 16, 2011

This assignment has been designed to help you gain experience in revising your work and synthesizing your ideas as you write a comprehensive review of your experiences at the Brooklyn Historical Society this semester.

Remember to give your post a title and to include a Works Cited list at the end of your post.

Learning Goals:

• Learn to use blogs to create engaging online posts;
• learn to integrate images effectively into your prose;
• learn to note similarities and differences between class readings and your own personal experiences;
• learn to center each paragraph around a specific subject;
• learn to start each paragraph with a topic sentence;
• learn to use transition statements to move the reader from topic to topic;
• learn to quote from and respond to our assigned readings;
• learn to cite quotations parenthetically according to MLA format;
• learn to write with clear, grammatically correct prose.

Assignment:

Put together an essay that combines the written work you have produced this semester, both in formal papers and on our blog, to create a final blog post that summarizes your experiences at the Brooklyn Historical Society. Although your essay can and should include bits and pieces of writing you have done earlier in the semester, the final essay you produce should be able to stand on its own as a unified piece of writing. Come up with a unifying theme and thesis for your essay — a red thread, as we discussed in class — and make sure that all parts of your essay relate to that thesis.

Requirements:

• Your essay must be a minimum of 1000 words.
• You must include images from our experience at BHS in your post, and those images must be cited according the BHS’s guidelines for image citations (http://safa.brooklynhistory.org/resources/citations/)
• Your essay must reference at least two secondary readings we have read this semester (especially those that explore the nature of archival work) and must include discussion of at least three primary sources we have explored at the BHS
• Your essay must include a reference to at least one related resource that you have found through the library catalog.
• Your discussions of both primary and secondary sources should use They Say/I Say templates to frame your points
• End your essay with some personal reflections on the overall meaning of our BHS visits for you this semester. You might attempt a conclusion that opens up new possibilities for the reader rather than simply summing up your previous points.
• Your essay must end with a list of Works Cited formatted in accordance with MLA style.
• Tag your post “finalproject”

When you tag your post “finalproject,” it will be republished on the BHS SAFA site (http://safa.brooklynhistory.org/gold-f11/) for our class.