5.3: Canterbury Tales Group Assignment

The Overall Assignment: 

You and your group members will work on creating two items related to your assigned pilgrim’s prologue and tale in order to provide information for the rest of the class. 

1. A Canvas page with information about your pilgrim’s prologue and tale for the rest of the class who will not be assigned to read these texts
2. A discussion board question for the members of the other group who read the same prologue and tale as your group. 

Please note: I know that working with a group presents many challenges; however, it also offers many opportunities to increase your creativity, knowledge, and critical thinking skills, so please try to navigate the challenges of working with your team members.  If you find that some of your team members are not participating, do your best to reach out to them and see if they may need some encouragement to join in. You can also reach out to me if they don’t seem to be responding to your messages. 

Preparation for the Assignment:

Step 1—Expectations and Communications Discussion Board
Earlier you were given a discussion board assignment where you worked with your group to set-up the expectations and means of communication for the group throughout the semester.
Step 2—Individual Responsibilities
Please make sure to work together in order to evenly distribute the work for the assignment. It is your responsibility to work with your group to make sure that you have a job to do. At the end of the assignment, you will be asked to submit a reflection assignment that explains how you contributed to the assignment. If you did not contribute a relatively equal amount of work, it will affect your grade.
Step 3--Communication
Each group will decide the best way for the group to communicate. You might decide that the group would like to have Zoom video meetings, group texts, a group discussion board, a group collaboration in Google, etc. However, I would encourage you all to exchange phone numbers so that you have a way to quickly communicate when necessary.

Requirements for Your Canvas Page:

The purpose of your Canvas page is to provide information for the other groups who were not assigned to read your pilgrim’s prologue and tale. I have created a Canvas page for each group to edit as they build. 

Please take a moment to read through the Canvas help guide directions for editing a Canvas page: How do I edit a course page as a student?

These are the minimum requirements for your Canvas page. You are welcome to do more than this, but in order to receive full credit on the assignment, your page should have at least these items.

• A clear title that indicates which pilgrim’s prologue and tale is connected to the page.
• An overall summary of the prologue including any main characters involved.
• A short paragraph explaining the significance of the prologue and its connection to the overall Canterbury Tales.
• An overall summary of the pilgrim’s actual tale including any main characters involved.
• A short paragraph explaining the significance of the tale which may include any combination of the following:
  • themes
  • genre
  • connection to other literary works
  • etc.
• Three pictures related to the pilgrim and/or the tale told by your pilgrim along with a brief explanation of the significance of each picture.
• Two web links that provide additional connections to the ideas explored in your pilgrim’s prologue and/or tale. Along with the link, make sure to include a brief summary of the site as well as an explanation of how it connects to your pilgrim.
• Three significant quotations from the prologue and tale (at least one for each). Each quotation should also have an MLA-formatted in-text citation.

* You are welcome to include additional elements besides those listed above. However, these are the required elements.

Requirements for Your Discussion Board Question:

Since there will be two groups assigned to each of the three pilgrim’s prologues and tales, you will be working to create a discussion question for the other group who has been assigned the same pilgrim as your group.

• Create a question that encourages the other group to think deeply about some element/s of your pilgrim’s prologue or tale. It might be just one question or a series of related questions, or you might decide to give them several questions to choose from.
• Once your group has made a decision on their discussion board question, please decide on one person to post that question on the discussion board that I have created for this assignment. Please clearly title that post with the word “Question” so that the other group clearly sees it.
• You will also need to respond to the other group’s discussion board question just as they will be responding to yours. Your response to the other group’s discussion board question will count as your initial post for this discussion board.
• You will also be responsible for completing two replies to other students’ postings just as you are on all discussion boards. You may choose to respond to your group members’ postings or to the other group members’ postings. The goal here is for you to have an actual discussion, so it’s not important to whom you respond.