Reading Review Week

          I have enjoyed every reading unit that I have read and wrote a diary for. However, my favorite units thus far have been Aesop's Fables (Jacobs), South African Folktales, and Nigerian Folktales. I found these units the most entertaining because they are playful and give morals to the story. Even though every unit has meanings behind their stories, I found that the stories within these units were more bluntly and stated in an outgoing manner. I definitely use the reading diary as a source for my storytelling assignment. When I read the stories I usually know which story I will base my adaption off of. The most interesting thing I have noticed is that some stories parallel other units. For instance, the idea of the birds carrying a turtle by a stick is present in a few units. It was cool how this story was told in different ways by different cultures even though it had the same meaning.

          I do not do a lot of reading on the side of classwork. If I do read outside of class I do not read material like we have read in this class. So it is interesting to read something different that I have never really read before. When I was younger we had to read some of Aesop's Fables, but that is the only exposure I've had to this type of reading. It was interesting to look back at those fables now that I am older and can comprehend the meaning behind the morals.

          Honestly, I do not have any ideas on how to improve the reading content for this class. We are given quite a bit of options to choose from in each unit. Therefore, we are not stuck reading stories that we did not want to read in the first place. I like this idea a lot because it is different than any other class I have taken in college. In other classes we are kind of forced to read material that we have no interest in, but in this class we have a choice.

Aesop's Fables