Literary Response Journal:

Guidelines

You will need a notebook for this class to be used as a literary response journal (LRJ).  It should be a 3-ring binder or some kind of folder from which the papers can be removed and replaced.  Do not use a spiral-bound notebook.  You will also need a paper folder for handouts—you will get many handouts that you will want to keep for future reference. 

Journals are designed to be used this year for a variety of writing activities, as well as to follow you through 11th and 12th grade.  You may even find some of the material helpful to keep and use in college.  Materials we cover this year re in many cases designed to be background for more advanced things you will do in 11th and 12th grade IB classes.  You will want to keep your notes!

Your journals will be periodically collected during the course.  This will be included in your grade. 

We will use journals for three main activities:

1.    Note-taking

This will be fairly casual, but I do expect you to take notes when I am giving you specific information not available in the texts.  This will include some historical and cultural background and various literary terms and devices we will encounter.

2.    Personal responses to literature

This will be done formally and informally as we are working on pieces of literature.  I will give you specific directions for these assignments.

3.    Specific writing assignments

Most of these will be analysis, focusing on a particular aspect of a work or in the form of a comparison/contrast essay.  They may be somewhat less structured than a formal paper but I do expect them to be well written and organized with a minimum of grammar and spelling errors.  You will be given specific assignments for these.  We will also do some creative writing exercises that will be done as LRJ entries.

 Literary Response Journal.doc