The Destinos bluebook assignment is different from your other writing assignments.  It is intended as a place for you to PRACTICE and to EXPERIMENT with new forms and things that are giving you trouble. It's your chance to guess at complicated forms with no penalty if you guess wrong.  The purpose of the bluebook is for you to show off what you can do AND figure out and demonstrate what you CAN’T do so that I can help you NOW, before you have to do the same types of things on an assignment in which you lose points for each mistake.  Each week you will look at the 312K page for the basic questions you need to address.  (You'll notice that they're designed to make you use the puntos clave, with emphasis on whichever punto we're studying most closely at the moment.)  However, don't just write one sentence for each point.  "Arturo es alto" doesn't really show me much about your ability to describe-- it's a Spanish 506 sentence.  Write as extensively as you can, and strive for originality.  Pretend I haven’t seen the video and write something that will help me understand it, OR try to point out things other people may not have noticed.  Write the most difficult sentences you can think of, and if you're not sure you've done something correctly, mark it and write a note about your thought processes so I can respond.  (For example, make a note in the margin that says, "I used imperfect here because....., but I thought about using preterite because....." and I'll tell you which time you were right.)

When you get your bluebook back, there will not be a grade on it.  Instead, there will be as many comments as I can make.  (The amount of feedback you get depends largely on how much you write!) You should then use those comments as a guide when writing your next entry.  You demonstrate improvement by correcting errors each week as they are marked, avoiding errors in subsequent entries, or both.  The entire bluebook will then be graded at the end of the semester.  Your grade will be based on evidence of effort, completeness, creativity, and improvement.

Since no grade is assigned until the last entry, you MUST keep all of your assignments together in a bluebook.  If you lose an assignment, you will not get credit for it, and you'll have less of a chance of getting all the points for improvement.  (If you ever find yourself unable to do an entry on time, go ahead and do it late.  I won't correct it, but you will get partial credit for it at the end.)

Last semester, this assignment correlated more closely with the final grade than anything else we did.  Students who took it seriously and did a good job got good grades in the class.  Those who did a fast, average job got average grades.  Interestingly enough, the few who didn't do it at all got D's and F's, even without taking into account the points they lost directly.  It's very possible that they didn't do the assignment because they were doing poorly in the class, rather than the other way around, but I think it's safe to say that doing the best job you can on this assignment and getting immediate, non-punitive feedback will help you tremendously in the rest of the class.

If for some reason you refuse to watch Destinos, do this assignment anyway.  Look at the basic questions and answer them based on some other television program or movie that you have seen.  (Remember that you'll have to give even more details since I will not have seen the program you're writing about.)  You will still be throwing away about 8% of your final grade for the class and you may encounter unexpected difficulties on the final exam, but at least you will get the benefits of this assignment.