Week 8: Reading Diary Assessment

I usually write my notes as I read, highlighting things that I find that capture my attention or things I might want to include in the storytelling or storybook projects. For the Ramayana, I focused on Sita because her character is so captivating to me. I used bullet point form because it was easier for me to go back and look up different things. I used page number references also, which I was very glad I did because it made finding things a lot easier. I really recommend using page number references, because it made my reviewing notes later a lot easier for me. I started off writing my notes in an essay-like format, but I found it harder to review later and it also was very time consuming. As time went on, my notes shortened because I focused more and more on the things I wanted to make sure I remembered. I think it might be helpful if I lengthen my notes to include more of my responses to what I read instead of sentence summaries of things I want to remember. I think from now on, I’ll use more of my thoughts about the readings in addition to references to outside things (other stories, modern day parallels, ect.). This might help me expand my writing style and incorporated different point of views into my retellings. Nevertheless, the reading diary has been useful in helping me remember the readings more so than I usually do for my other classes because I write it then look over it again and again in order to do assignments. I’m usually not so great with remembering reading assignments, so I just take notes in class and work from there. Overall, I’m really happy with how my diary notes are going because they help me process the story and reference parts of the books later in order to use it for assignments.