Week 8: Reading Diary Self-Assessment

I definitely like how the reading diaries work in the context of this class.  While I have no experience with the previous set up of quizzes, the reading diary lets me work at my own pace and allows for me to choose what interests me.  The only downside I have seen to this setup is that while some stories work out really well for commenting on your reactions from reading the stories, it sometimes gets very monotonous for stories that may be short or have a repetitive scheme.  After reading a couple stories such as Sindbad or the ghosts section from the Odyssey, I had a difficult time responding.  I know you put that we didn't have to comment if we didn't get anything from the story, but it still was frustrating leaving sections blank or just saying "ditto to the previous chapters."

Generally, I don't use what I read for the diary for the main project in here, the storybook, so I don't feel like I've been required to go back and look at my reading diary.  The one difficulty I've had so far is having no cohesion between my storybooks and my reading diary.  I like how the reading diary weeks are divided into groups, but that makes it a tad bit difficult if my storybook is mainly used from later weeks.  For example, I've mainly used or are planning to use stories primarily from British and European units for my storybook.  Unfortunately, By the time the un-textbook reading module rolls around for those, the introduction, 1st, and second stories will have all been added to the storybook with the third story being due quickly after.  I understand the need for structure of the class but if you aren't doing something from those first couple weeks you have to do a lot of outside reading to find what you want.  So while Aesop and Classical storybooks might have plenty of time to do their submissions, people who might want to do stories about Native American tricksters or European knights have to not only read the week they are in but also go ahead and find stories for their storybook.  The only way I could think of doing that would be have those grouped together, but you pick which ones you do each week.  For example, for weeks 2-3, I might go ahead and do Europe if I plan on doing a storybook from there, then 3-4 do British Isles, then weeks 5-6 maybe change the pace with Middle East and Asia, etc.  Essentially have those six reading modules we have to do, but align it how we plan on doing our storybooks.  I understand this might not work since you have to grade things and it would be annoying and hectic to have to look at hundreds and thousands of entries at random.

Since there were a lot of questions that can be addressed in step three, I'll try to answer the ones that I feel are applicable to me sentence by sentence and not make a whole question and response paragraph.  In regards to the coming second half of the semester, my main goal is to try and read the stories over the previous weekend.  While it is definitely enjoyable reading, it takes up a decent portion of time and is hard to complete within a short amount of time.  I usually stick to the same routine when doing the diary posts; I read through a section and then write about what stood out or my overall thoughts about the section.  My diary posts vary, but I usually write much shorter responses if the story is part of a larger section that has "cont." or "end."  Those stories are usually divided into very small parts and its hard to write on something that has 800 words or less.  I try to choose stories that I've heard of but never read, or something that is similar to something I like.  For example, I chose Son Wu Kung a couple weeks ago because Dragon Ball was based on it.  Also, I chose The Odyssey because while I've heard some of the stories from it, I've never looked at it all in one sitting.