The final grade will be based on students’ poems, critical writing, class participation, and attendance. Since voices are needed to generate a rich class discussion, class participation is an important component of your grade. If there are extenuating circumstances in any situation, students should contact the professor ahead of time. Grades will be updated each week on the course’s Canvas site (each assignment’s scale will be out of 100).

A breakdown of the student’s grade will be as follows:

Bi-Weekly Poems: 35%

Annotations of Workshop Poems and Reading Responses of Books: 35%

Class Participation: 20%

Final Portfolio of Poems: 10%

Grading Scale

Your final grade will be assigned as a letter grade according to the following scale:

A          90-100%

B          80-89%

C          70-79%

D          60-69%

F          0-59%

Grading Criteria

Poems will be graded based on effort shown toward the writing exercises.

Annotations of peer poems will be graded based on cohesiveness, insight, argument, detail, and effort. Annotations should also reflect student learning of poetry terms and concepts. Students are not allowed to use any form of AI for these annotations. If you use AI for annotations, you will receive a zero on the assignment.

Reading responses and responses to other books will be graded based on cohesiveness, insight, argument, detail, and effort. The response can be how the reading inspired your writing or thinking, what you learned from it, additional questions you might have on the reading, etc. (examples of annotations and reading responses are at the end of the syllabus). Responses to the P@T readings will be described below.

In order to create a vibrant and collaborative community within our class, students will be expected to attend every class. For each unexcused class (due to anything other than illness or other serious personal or family issues), students will have their attendance grade for that week reduced to a zero. 

If a student misses more than two unexcused classes, students risk failing the course. Students who need to miss class for any reason must contact the professor via email before class. Students must also attend all the Poetry@Tech readings and student readings (unless you have a class, job, or other obligation you have cleared ahead of time with the professor). Even if you have excused absences due to illnesses or other extenuating circumstances, you still need to complete the assignments for each week. If you miss three or more classes (excused or unexcused), you risk failing the class.

Class participation includes oral discussion of peers’ poems, thoughts on what is discussed in class on craft and form, and discussion of assigned readings. Students should try to participate at least once (if not much more) per class. The instructor may ask students to participate based on their annotations and reading responses.

Students will be expected to turn in all poems, annotations, and reading responses on time as stated in the syllabus. For each late poem, annotation, or reading response, students will see a grade reduction of 20 points (out of 100 for the assignment) for every day the assignment is late. 

Therefore, it is advised that students upload their assignments onto Canvas EARLY to avoid grade reductions, and to regularly check the syllabus. If students do not turn in a workshop poem according to the schedule below, students will receive a zero for the assignment (out of 100).