Hi @vandalenw 
Do they turn this in on paper or online? If the latter, then indeed you would have to set up an online submission type of assignment for each class period. If they turn it in on paper to you in a face-to-face class, you can then create, perhaps, a weekly assignment called something like Week One Daily Reading Summaries, make it worth xxx points (however many times you meet each week) and then grade with comments that way.
Another option to an online submission is to require a class-by-class submission but allow them to Re-submit to the same assignment for a week or (perhaps) even for an entire month. Students can always re-submit an assignment for an online assignment up until the "Until" date that has been set, as seen by the button shown on the last screen capture on this page. The downside is that if you use the Canvas DocViewer to add annotations to their online submission they will only see your comments on the most recent submission, since (to the student's eyes) a re-submission "overwrites" the previous submission...and your annotations. But it does not! You always have the ability to view prior submissions as the instructor, and you could always tell students they can download your annotated comments before they re-submit. This may be a bit tricky to execute/explain fully to students, but it's do-able and keeps you from entering a grade for each class period.
If none of the above sounds feasible, then indeed you will have to create an assignment for each class period. There ARE a few shortcuts to doing this, however. One is to create your first assignment and then simply make a duplicate of it as many times as necessary. You will, however, have to edit the title and due date for each one, as you will see after making the first couple of copies. Fortunately, fellow community member @James has programmed a neat utility for changing the due dates en masse that you can read about here: Adjust All Assignment Dates on One Page .
The bottom line is this all depends on your workflow, and just how many columns you will want to ultimately have in your gradebook.
I hope this helps a bit, Wendy.
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