Reading journal requirements
You will need to include 10 entries in your reading journal. Your entries will be based on specific incidents in your novel as well as interpretations on your novel as a whole.
For three of the 10 entries, you will have the choice of what to do. Your choices will depend on what you are discovering and are curious about in your novel.
The remaining 7 entries will be based on the prompts provided.
Ten journal entries: requirements checklist
Item No. 1
Create a reading schedule.
Item No. 2
A short, written reflection about why you chose your novel.
Item No. 3
Notes about character development in three parts.
- What have you learned about the main character(s) from the first third of the novel?
- How have the main character(s) changed, grown, or revealed themselves in the second third?
- How have the main character(s) changed, grown, or revealed themselves in the final third?
Item No. 4
Explanation of your novel’s biographical and historical context based on your research on
- the life of the author
- the time in which the author was writing
- the novel’s setting/time period
Item No. 5
Notes on resilience in response to the following questions:
- How do the characters demonstrate resilience?
- How is the concept of resilience linked to themes in the novel?
- What is the author saying about the role of resilience in people’s lives?
Include significant quotations. You may need to reference other journal entries.
Item No. 6
Analysis of novel using literary lenses
Examine how one or more of the following literary lenses informs your interpretation of the novel:
- contextual lens
- psychological lens
- gender lens
- socio-economic lens
- archetypal lens
Item No. 7
Notes on text-to-text connections
Make ongoing comparisons between your novel and other texts or media that you are familiar with, such as:
- films or television shows
- texts you have read in this course (short stories, personal essays, poems, songs)
- other novels you have read
Items No. 8 to 10
No. 8: Your choice from the list of prompts Group A “Sentence starters…”
No. 9: Your choice from the list of prompts Group B: “Questions to consider...
No. 10: Your choice from the list of prompts Group C: “Alternative responses…”
Your reading journal entries will vary in length and composition and will be a mix of text and multimedia. Your entries may include:
- images from the setting or time period of the novel (for example, fabric, wallpaper, art, other pop culture artifacts)
- images of what the protagonist might look like, things that might be in their home, and so on.
- images inspired by themes in your novel
- references to other media or texts (for example, song lyrics and poems)
- links to videos that provide added context and perspective for your interpretations
- links to videos or audio recordings you have created
- reflections and explanations based on textual evidence from the novel You can decide how your own reading journal will look, but keep in mind that you will be graded on the visual (scrapbook) aspect of it.