Fall semester 2016: I'm beginning my fourth year at Clark State Community College and my first at Sinclair Community College.
Every semester at CSCC, I've tried to integrate projects and activities for my students to do outside of the classroom, that break the normal molds of "read this, read that." My go to projects usually involve improving grammar and everyday communication mixed with projects like "Pay it Forward" and traditional book reports.
This semester I've decided to challenge my students to read more and blog about what they read (how the piece impacts them, what they like about it, so on).
A basis I use for my courses involves students understanding the concepts of why we read and why we write: to be or to entertain, to evoke emotion, to educate, and to be or to enlighten. This concept then builds further into the beginning stages of analyzing what we read beyond just memorizing something; address your response to something you read then determine what the writer did to make you feel that. The better we can analyze a writer's motives when we are in the role of reader, the easier it then becomes to emulate motives in our own writing.
Why this project? Why make them read? Why make them blog?
