Hobbit Mid-Term: The Road Goes Ever On…Unless You Stay in Class

Choose ONE of the following options for your Mid-Term Exam. Note that one is in-class and one is a take-home assignment! 

TEACHING OPTION (take home): I want you to design a unit for teaching The Hobbit to middle or high-school students (your choice) comprised of TWO activities or assignments. Each activity should be inspired from a passage of Culler’s Literary Theory (Chapters 1, 2 or 4) that acts as a ‘theory’ for that activities’ goals. Activities can range from various kinds of writing (analytical or creative), collaborative or individual art projects (making maps, etc.), interactive games (a riddle contest, etc.), or any kind of linguistic or textual analysis (tracing word origins, etc.), or anything related to genre (examining book covers, etc.). Be creative, and remember that you have to inspire these kids to not only read the book, but get something out of it! Each activity should contain the following: (a) the passage from Culler as a preface, cited with page number; (b) the activity itself, as you would present it to the students (don’t just tell me about it, actually design the assignment); and (c) a brief explanation of your goals for the assignment based on the passage from Culler. Think about what you want to teach these students about The Hobbit, reading literature, understanding genre, and thinking creatively/critically.

This Exam is due Thursday, October 10^th by 5pm (the beginning of Fall Break) 

LIT STUDY OPTION (in class): you will have a selection of three passages from Culler (from Chapters 1, 2, and 4) and you will have to apply them to a specific aspect of The Hobbit to explain how the theory in question applies to some passage, idea, or character in the book. The exam will ask you to briefly explain the Culler quotes before using them to ‘read’ The Hobbit. Be specific and quote from the book to show how it applies (or can be read through) Culler’s theories. You are also free to use other parts of Culler for support or analysis (OR, you can combine more than one passage into a larger analysis). But remember, this is an in-class essay, so you must bring both books and prepare to write! Of course, I won’t expect as much from this paper as I would the above essay, since you have much less time to write it. The goal is that you can make educated and creative connections from one text to the other, which shows that you have no only read the material, but can interact with it.

This Exam is taken in-class next Tuesday, October 8^th. You will have the entire class to finish it, and of course you can use both books to help you (Culler and Tolkien).