Reading Diary Week 8: Review

For many of my Reading Diary posts I have taken small notes on each story so that I can remember each one. I think this strategy it has been beneficial when I am starting to think about the storytelling post because it provides me with a quick recap of the stories to choose from.  I have been writing the notes after I read each story to make sure I remember the details and what stood out to me for each plot, symbolism, or motif included. Most of the time the posts have been about the same length, obviously depending on how many stories were included in the reading unit. Recently, however, I have begun to just focus on specific stories in the unit. Usually this includes one for each half of the reading. So far I have done both halves of the reading for each unit so I have an A and B post for each unit. By just focusing on the one story per half reading unit, it has allowed me to really dive in deeper to the tales/stories of the unit. I will read all the stories included in the unit and then think about which one or two really stood out to me and focus on the details and depth of those. It is a different approach than when I started the reading diaries and I think it is beneficial. Both strategies are important and useful however. In the first unit I read, I read the tales of Ovid Greek mythology and it was useful to have a small summary of each story to see it all fit together. This last unit of Japanese fairy tales, included longer tales so it was more beneficial to focus on one story since it had so much more detail in its length. The dairy has helped me with my storybook posts because I read about Greek mythology in the first two units of the semester and am now having to write my storybook posts about goddesses. It is helpful to have the quick notes about the stories in order for me to use as a guide to find the specific tale I need to reference in my storybook post. I am glad that I choose to include quotes in my posts because many of them have significant meaning and is the reason they stood out to me. I enjoy the moral lessons included in many of the stories and the diary posts allow me to take a look back and be reminded of these important messages.