Reading Diary Assessment

When I first began the reading diary, I thought I had to read every single story in the unit and take notes on each story as well.  This process took me a very long time to get through the reading diary assignments.  It was hard for me to read and enjoy the story because I was trying to read and take notes as fast as I could.  After viewing other students’ reading diaries and the instructions, I realized I did not have to take notes on all the stories in the unit.  I then began to read the stories in the unit and pick the ones I thought were interesting or could see myself using as my storytelling story for the next assignment.  This cut down a lot of the time I was spending taking notes.  For my notes, I just simply right a summary of events that happened in the story and if there is a lesson to be taught I will write that down as well.  Although you do not have to take notes on each story, it is still important to read each story in the unit.  In a lot of the units, the stories are consecutive and tie in with each other.  If you skip a couple of stories, read one, then skip some and read another one they won’t make a lot of sense.  It is also helpful to read all of the stories in the unit even if they are not consecutive because there is usually a reoccurring theme for that unit.  This helps me determine what types of stories are usually told and how they are written for specific countries, religions, or other topics.  It is very helpful when writing the story for the storytelling assignment to look back on my reading diary.  This helps refresh my memory but also including the links to the stories is very helpful.  Sometimes I need more detail then what I put in my notes.  The links are included in the reading diary and this makes it easy to refer back to the whole story itself.