Dear Classmates and Rising Freshman

  Well hey there, this is a sad but at the same time, very happy post!  I'm sad the year is over but I'm also REALLY happy because its almost summer! I'm writing a letter to my fellow classmates and to the rising 9th graders who may enjoy to know what high school is all about considering the fact that none of us never got anything like that.  This was such a fun year and I really do love high school but it was so much different than last year or any previous years.   In that sense, i'm talking about friendships, work ethic, amount of work to do, what is expected of you and the fact that now, it actually counts...  Last year (in 8th grade) I really didn't try very hard, I made horrible grades all year long except the first quarter.  I guess I just didn't have the motivation that I now have.  I mean, it didn't count for anything later on in life so I just didn't feel like I needed to try very hard.  That was a very big mistake...

  I don't know what happened over the summer, but I guess I had a reality check because the first day of high school I really had it set in my mind that I wanted to succeed in life, so in order to do that I needed to work my butt off!  English I was probably one of my favorite classes, I learned so much and I improved greatly from previous years.  I thought I was a good writer before, but now I actually do feel like I know how to write!  I mean, freshman, ya'll are going to learn a lot so be prepared.  Some things ya'll should know.  I recommend you get either one big binder or you get notebooks for every class and a binder for handouts; I say this because I got a different binder for every class and it took up so much space!  My backpack was so heavy every single day.  Also I am telling you now, do not throw anything away.  I never had any problems with this because I have always kept everything I have ever been given in class or have written in class; but I promise if you don't keep it, it will come back and bite you in the butt because you will need it for future things, if not then for sure for the exam.  Another thing ya'll are probably all worrying about is that you aren't going to get a school supplies list.  It's OK! I panicked too, but all you need is pencils, pens, paper and binders or notebooks.  Something else to keep in mind for english I next year, when Dr. D tells you to annotate, DO IT! When the test comes and you've forgotten chapters 1 and 2, if you've annotated then you can go back and look at your annotations and see what questions you had and what words you didn't understand or what connections you made.  I promise, it seems stupid now but it really does help.  Especially if she lets you use your book for part of the test, then you're really going to be glad you did it!

  Classmates, you guys this has been such a fun year!  I enjoyed so much being with yall and understanding how you work best.  It was fun teaching each other different study tricks and helping each other with homework or studying.  I got to know so many of you guys really well and it was super fun!  I will always love my block 2 english class(:  I hope we all have so more classes together next year when we're sophomores! ahhh thats so weird to say...

Participation In English Class This Year

General Procedure: I thought that my general participation was pretty good throughout the year.  I have never not brought any of the books we needed to class, such as Lord of the Flies, or Macbeth.  I've also always had my pens and pencils ready to go with plenty of paper to take notes with.  I also, rarely ever ask to leave class for bathroom or water breaks unless it is an absolute emergency.  I am very good about checking my email consistently so that wasn't a problem either!  So, overall I think I did very good in this category!

Lecture, announcements, and whole class discussion:  I've always been pretty good about staying focused and paying attention to the teacher without having side conversations so I did good with that, with a few exceptions here and there but nothing out of the ordinary!  I also try to always ask as many questions as I can, in order to get involved in the class.

Individual and Group Work:  This one is probably my worst category because I am not very good with group work, I am best with individual stuff; so I did good with that.  But I didn't do the best with my group work because its really hard for me to stay focused when I'm on my own without a teacher, so adding a bunch of other students just makes it worse...  But I at least tried to make myself and my group stay focused which is a big improvement from previous semesters.  I am a perfectionist so aiming beyond minimum came pretty easily to me.

Growth:  I think that I participated really well all year long but I definitely improved in the last semester.  I got much better with group work as I said, and I learned SO much! This was a great year in all my classes and I grew in so many ways, I couldn't even explain them all to year.  Thanks for an awesome year Dr. D!(:

Reading Reflection

wow, hard to believe the year is almost over...  We're almost sophomores guys!  In terms of reading, I have come pretty far.  I have read only a few books but i've learned how to read which is the important thing.  I have learned about theme and how to read between the lines and many other things.  A book that I have just finished was the Hunger Games.  It was extremely good and I plan to read the rest of the books soon then I want to read a few nicholas sparks books.

  Something that I have learned about myself as a reader is that I don't comprehend what I am reading very well unless it is very intriguing to me, therefore I have learned that I have to conciously remind myself to pay attention and stay focused; and when I am reading something with imagery, I picture the words that I am reading in my head as a scene like in a movie.  Or if I have seen the movie I picture the scene for that particular segment.  Something else I have learned is that you really have to think about what your reading in order to accomplish the goal of reading in between the lines which is what I have worked pretty hard on this year in my outside reading assignments.  I want to get better at that because I know that next year we will be doing a lot of reading in English class and I want to be able to understand the hidden meaning of the text.  In the end, I really do truly believe that I have come a long way in my reading because I have become a much better reader and I have increased my reading level.  But I plan to get better next year!

Macbeth's prospective

  Recently, we've been reading Macbeth, a shakspearian play.  It has really interested me!  I have really noticed a lot about Lady Macbeth and Macbeth.  But Macbeth has probably caught my attention a little more than Lady Macbeth has.  Lady Macbeth is just so rude and as a reader, I interpret her to be a mean, impatient rude person.  She has no patience for Macbeth and if he doesn't want to do something she wants, she says he's not a man.  Macbeth says I don't want to kill Duncan and Lady Macbeth tells him that he isn't a man.  I think that Macbeth is a little stubborn but he is also very cautious and I guess what you would say as, innocent.

  Macbeth has a sense of goodness to me.  As a character, I think he feels like he is pressured into doing things by Lady Macbeth and he feels like if he does not do as she says, something bad may happen to him or maybe even be killed.  I think that Macbeth is a patient, and cautious man.  From Macbeth's prospective, he probably feels like hes not even loved very much by lady Macbeth.  I predict that Lady Macbeth is going to try to kill Macbeth.  She is a bad woman and I think that she is bad to Macbeth and she doesn't treat him well.

Year Reflection

  This year has been a huge learning experience for me.  Besides all the different academic lessons I’ve learned, I also learned a lot socially and physically.  But what I would like to focus on more is the academic things.  The very first day of school when Dr. D told us everything we would be doing throughout the year and all of the different assignments we would be having, I knew this would be a tough class and that I was going to have a lot to handle for the school year, academic wise.  Especially when we wrote a paper the first week of school!  After writing that first paper I knew that from then on, I really needed to buckle down and make sure I paid attention every day in class and made sure that everything I wrote was to the best of my ability. 

  Ever since I was pretty young, I’ve always shown as my mom says “pretty impressive talent” in writing, and I’ve loved it even more.  But, I have to say that once we started writing the real hardcore papers this year and I actually learned how to write properly such as being formal in my writing, using correct grammar, using proper sentence structure and fluency ect. my liking for writing sort of decreased.  Certain papers were really difficult and learning how to write them was even more difficult. 

  One particular paper, the literary analysis… I’m sure we all remember that one.  That was probably the hardest challenge I was faced with this year.  I remember when we were assigned to pick a short story and I remember not taking the assignment very seriously.  Well, I kind of just picked a book off the shelf and I read only 2 stories before I found the one I wanted to do my analysis on.  I didn’t pick wisely because I wasn’t aware we would be using the story for something more important later on.  Well, then we began to start working on the analysis and I had no idea what the heck I was doing, I wrote and rewrote and rewrote again!  I even changed the viewpoint on my entire essay after I had already written the entire thing.  That was a big learning experience.  I learned how to manage my time and that I needed to take every assignment seriously and do it to the absolute best of my ability no matter how big or small.  I also learned that when writing, think of as many ideas as possible when brainstorming what topic to pick or what to write about so that you, as a writer can pick the best one and you can have a good paper.  I realized that I needed to not procrastinate my writing and that I needed to work on a little bit every day and that if I am ever confused, I need to go to a teacher.

Some things I noticed when going back and looking over my papers from the year was the amount of improvement I made this year.  On the first paper we wrote which was the Literacy Narrative, I got all 8.5’s and 9.5’s which was really good!  While looking through my other work, I noticed that on the literacy analysis I got a C in the organization but mostly A’s and a couple B’s in the other categories.  Then, in my Reaserch paper which was probably one of the best essays I have ever written by far I received an A in that category along with all the other categories except voice and conventions- citations/MLA format.  That didn’t really come as a surprise to me because I had a difficult time understanding that even after paying very close attention in class and going to see Dr. D outside of class!  Getting down the whole citation thing, weather it be a quote from the book (literary analysis) or a quote from a database (research paper), was really difficult for me this year and that was probably my lowest point.

  My grades were exceptionally good this year, which was not what I was expecting when the year began!  Every time I found out we were writing a new paper I got very nervous because even though I really enjoy writing, I always have a very difficult time beginning.  But once I get going, the ideas flow through me onto the computer naturally.  I wish it were that easy from the beginning.  It really shows if you look at all my work carefully because the opening paragraph for my every single one of my drafts is different from the final!  Something else I started realizing this year that I am having a hard time with is my vocabulary.  I am lacking voab skills big time…  And I was talking to one of my friend’s mom and she told me that I needed to read more and it would help me to bring up my reading level and it would help my vocabulary; so one of my goals for the end of this year and this summer is to read as much as I possibly can and bring my reading level up and learn a lot of new words.

  I have a lot of goals for the upcoming year considering the improvement I have made and the improvement I want to make.  Now that I realize the amount of improvement I can make in a year I know that I can make just as much improvement next year.  Next year, like I said before I want to bring my reading level up and increase my vocabulary.  I also would like to become a better writer, as most people probably aspire for also.  But when I say I want to become a better writer I mean that I want to be able to understand the assignment right away, or at least quicker than this year, and I want to be able to dive into some sort of writing process as soon as possible.  I noticed that in my work this year I would spend a lot of time figuring out what I was supposed to be doing and what kind of writing we were doing.  Another goal I have for next year is to maintain my ability to make an A because I’m pretty sure I held an A throughout the entire year!  Finally I would like to become a better reader and by that I mean I would like to improve in my reading comprehension because I find that I struggle with understanding what I am reading.  And sometimes even recognizing who is talking!  The final thing I wanted to talk about was my WRAP scores, which were fantastic! I got all 4.5's and 5's! I'm pretty sure that was an improvement from last year which is great.  That is just proof that if I sit down and focus on what I'm doing, I can do really good work.

  All in all, this has been a great year and I really did learn a lot inside and outside of English class!  I definitely think that my writing and reading skills improved a lot and that I became an even better writing that I was last year.  My reading has a little ways to go but I know that we are going to be doing a lot of work with that next year and I’m excited to become a better reader!  I’m hoping my teacher is good next year because Dr. D was great and she really knew her subject! 

Common Errors List:

*Use a hyphen in between a number and the word that the amount is being described.

-ex: 5-pages

*Missing comma.  Things can be misread.

-ex: You start off with someone holding on to you, but as you get more advanced and learn more and more, you no longer need the extra hand.

*Misspell Tis

-ex: Tis the season to be jolly!

*Italic the name of a company

-ex: “Securing Maternal Health through comprehensive Reproductive services”           

*Misspelling the word Research

-ex: We have a research paper due on next Monday.

Reading Log:  The Hunger Games 150 min-50 pages

The Hunger Games

  Over the spring break I went to the beach and while I was there I had plenty of time to lay out and read!  As those of you who follow my blog know, I've been reading the Hunger Games.  I'm nearly done but I still have a little ways to go before I finish. Currently I am at the part where Katniss and Peeta are together inside of the cave and she is helping him get well.  He has blood poisoning and Katniss is trying to help him get better.  The game makers have just made a change in the rules to where 2 tributes from the same district can win if they are the last ones in the game!  Well I am predicting Katniss wins but Petta dies very close to the end, like he is one of the last few left in the games.

  Also, since Petta betrayed Katniss in the beginning of the book, I kind of have a feeling in my gut that he is going to do it again, or do something detrimental to Katniss, but she will find a way out of it.  I'm really enjoying this book because it is so thrilling and full of action!! I can never put it down when I'm supposed to but at times I am sort of  forced to.  I really recommend it to anyone (girl or boy) looking to find a good book to read.  I think that by next week, I'll be posting my final blog about the Hunger Games and I can't wait to find out who wins and what happens next! I know I always say that but the urge to want to know what comes next in this book is just so great, I can't help it!  I love this book.

Reading Log:  The Hunger Games 150 minutes-68 pages