RJ Conferences

It's about that time--end of the 1st quarter!  That means you need to check over those RJs and be sure you have all of them completed (including the left hand side) and that you have some things to say about your critical reading skills.  The RJs you have for 1st quarter include your two summer books, your Nabokov re-read, and your Frost re-read.

Remember that any claims you make about yourself in a reading journal conference must be BACKED UP with evidence from your reading journal.  If you say you're great at noticing details, then show in your RJ where you picked up on important details.  If you say you reread a lot, then show what you were able to better understand after rereading.  If you say that you don't do a very good job with the dictionary, then show where you misread or misunderstood something in your RJ because you didn't know what a word meant in that context.

What to cover in your reading journal conference:

• Where you are as a critical reader according to Nabokov's rules.  Which rules are you following (your strengths)?  Which rules are you ignoring (your weaknesses)?  Show evidence from your RJ to back up these claims about yourself.
• How comfortable do you feel with poetry at this point?  Have you improved?  In what way?  Where are you still struggling?
• Set one or two specific goals for 2nd quarter to help you become a better critical reader.  These can be specific rules you're going to work on (i.e. rereading) or related areas (i.e. time-management).

How will I grade this?  If you sit down with me, have your RJ, cover what you need to thoroughly but concisely--showing evidence from your completed RJ--you get an A.  If you don't have much in the way of specific evidence, you'll get an A-.   If I have to prompt you to make sure you cover it all or have very little evidence, you'll get some type of B depending on how much prompting you require or how sparse the evidence is.  If you require prompting but can't even answer what I'm asking for OR you clearly don't have a completed RJ OR you just have absolutely no evidence for your claims, you'll end up in the C range.