The Personal Legend: Summative Assessment

Name: / ______
Date: / ______
Class: / ______

The Prompt

Throughout this unit and our engagement with Paulo Coelho’s Alchemist, you’ve explored and shared with us your dreams, goals, sources of wisdom, and responsibilities, both to yourselves and to others—the very concerns with which we’ve observed Santiago grapple in achieving his Personal Legend. To bring this unit to a close, I want you to reflect on the concepts and texts we’ve discussed and how they connect with your lives.

Some points of focus could be (but are not limited to):

·  Explaining ways The Alchemist has made you rethink or revise your goals and desires, those of your past, present, and future.

·  Describing the psychological, emotional, and physical challenges you confront (or will confront) and how they relate to Santiago’s.

·  Applying one of novel’s many bold statements of wisdom to your life and illustrating its significance.

·  Distinguishing between the rewards (personal or material) you stand to gain by working toward your goals and those of Santiago, the crystal merchant, and/or the Englishman.

As all of these prompts imply, you must compare and contrast your own thoughts and experiences with Santiago’s, drawing support and evidence from the text itself and our discussions in class.

The Requirements

The following are the minimum requirements you must meet for this assignment:

·  This essay must be between 750-1,000 words in length.

·  It must be formatted according to MLA standards.

·  It must contain strong textual support: you should be looking back to the text frequently, recalling specific scenes or quotes that are most immediately relatable to your discussion.

ROUGH DRAFT DUE:

FINAL DRAFT DUE:

The rubric for this assignment is on the following page; on it, you will find more detailed information about how your essay will be assessed 

The Rubric

Developing
1 / Accomplished
2 / Exemplary
3
Topic / Focus strays to multiple topics; the main topic is not clear; and/or the topic has little relationship with the text. / Focus tends to be on a single subject or idea that is clearly stated, and connects to the text. / Focus remains on a definitively-stated topic with a clear connection to the text.
Examples / Minimal examples or vaguely-described beliefs are incorporated and/or these are sparsely related to the topic. / Several real-life examples and personal beliefs are incorporated; these are most often related to the topic. / Ample real-life examples and personal beliefs are incorporated; these are consistently related to the topic.
Textual Support / Little to no textual support and/or uneven distribution of personal and textual support. / Topic and examples are in dialogue with the text; personal and textual supports are maybe unevenly blended. / Topic and examples are in dialogue with the text; there’s an even focus on the personal and textual.
Mechanics / Fails to satisfy page length and/or format; and/or contains major grammatical errors. / Satisfies page length and format; some grammatical/structural mistakes. / Satisfies page length and format; no grammatical and structural mistakes.