TEACHSOC: Re: Newspaper journals in classes

[Stephen Sweet]

Hi Anna- I assign journals in my classes sometimes (with great success last semester in an upper division class).  To handle the grading problem, I do the following.... 1. I offer very specific guidelines of what I expect in each entry (e.g. - state the author's thesis, link it to your life and perspectives on the issue, reflect on policy, etc.) 2. Collect a journal entry in the second week of class and provide feedback, collect another as needed. 3. Assign a couple of students (ahead of time) each class to read (verbatim) their entry at the beginning of class. 4. Collect journals midway through the course to look at overall quality, etc. 5. At the end of the semester, I have students mark with post-its 5 entries, spread throughout the semester, that they believe represents their best work. 6. I also have students tally their entries on the submission day and identify entries that they did not do.  This alleviates a need to survey all entries and count missing components (a big time saver). Steps 1 and 2 result in good entries Steps 3 & 4 keep them on track Steps 5 and 6 minimize the grading time.  Hope this helps. -steve [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello folks: I quite recently was informed that my Intro course/s students will be given free access to the NY Times for the semester.  I am planning on incorporating the paper into the course thru a journal and I have started an outline for a hand-out (classes begin on Monday, wish I had the appropriate emoticon here).  However, it looks like I'm gonna work myself into a hole over the semester (3 sections at 40 students per section...); as for the students, well, the amount of work is ok since I was planning on doing only this and a final exam (with a two page set of cheat notes to make things a bit lighter and the transition in testing formats smoother.)     Now, I know that there was a discussion on Journal writing on this list a while back but of course I didn't pay attention to it (hm!) and now I wish I had!!!  ughghg!!!    So, how have people incorporated a newspaper into the course work?  If in a journal format, then what were students asked to record in this journal?   What were your experiences when doing this?    Thanks in advance, and I'll be more than happy to share what I have done so far for those who are interested--the price of course is feedback, lol, lol, lol.    Anna Karpathakis   --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Teaching Sociology" group. To post to this group, send email to teachsoc@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/teachsoc -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---