Individual exercises to help test your understanding and knowledge of key areas of text. Complete them to see your strengths and weaknesses.

1. Find a news story about a local issue (an event, a change in policy, a new social program, a 'human interest' story) of at least 10‒12 paragraphs. Read the entire story.

2. Reading slowly through the piece several more times, identify 5‒6 descriptive codes, 2‒3 analytic codes, and at least one axial code. Make sure that if you generate a new codes toward the end of the article that you go back to the beginning to apply that code to any other relevant sections.

3. Bonus: find a second news article about the same or a similar topic and try applying your codes to that story. Consider how robust your codes are and make changes accordingly.