Professor Sharon

100 Day Project – Day 28  – 12:49 p.m.

First a word about the numbering of days:  For those of you who care, and frankly, I’m not sure anyone does, somehow I skipped from Day 22 to Day 28.  In my real life that was only 3 days – the weekend – since I last wrote.  But, who knows – somewhere the numbering got off.  But, not to worry, my calender – my lifeline – has been numbered in red, and with any luck, I’ll stay on task!!

Today, I’m thinking about reading.  I worked up a system of reading and reading responses this semester in my Introductory course that I’ve been really happy with.  First, I should mention that I did away with the textbook.  It shall remain unnamed; but part of the reasoning was expense.  $185.00 for  a textbook is outrageous.  Another reason is that I discovered that this textbook had three versions.  Our department has used this text, which is in its ninth edition, for almost ten years.  It’s a very reputable author who we’ve met at conferences and she actually works in our field.  But this past academic year, when I put a call into the publisher, I discovered that the publisher had created three versions of the text: one for Texas, one for Florida and one for the rest of us.  I could get sidetracked and winded discussing the politics of this; but I don’t think I need to, I suspect any readers I might have will get the reasons for the versions.

At any rate, gone is the textbook.  So I choose to assign my class online reading, as well as some material from sources that allow copying (I am obeying copyright laws.).   I also have been thinking about less is more.   So, I assign one to two articles for each topic in the introductory course and the students respond in writing to that material.  They also know that they will discuss their response with other classmates.

I was thrilled today to find this resource describing almost exactly what I had designed.  I’ve not done it as a Reading Log, but the instructions I created are very similar.  This is very satisfying in terms of my own teaching to know my design is confirmed.  The less is more has worked very well.  I’m getting more quality responses to the readings than I’ve ever gotten.  And, as I suspected, those who come unprepared get “caught” by their colleagues, not by me, for coming unprepared to discuss.  I set aside 15 – 20 minutes of each class, when a reading is due, to have Reading Talks.

I’m proud of myself and really excited that this is working out so well for my students.  Today I am thinking about reading.