Q4 Week 7 Comments

Liza J: Q4 Week 5 - hits and misses

Savannah Y: Anticipating Our Next Book

Thought Provoking Statements

The first statement I am tackling is, "everyone is capable of lying, betrayal, and violence, which are basic parts of human nature." I would strongly agree with this statement. In my life I have lied plenty of time. Too many times to count. My brother, my mother, and my father have all lied to me about minor things, but it is still lying. My brother and I get into fights all the time, wether it is physical or not. That satisfies both betrayal and violence. My friends have all lied to me before, all be it, very tiny, white lies. My life might be a special case, but I would say that since everybody does it then it is human nature.

My second arguable statement of the post will be, "women are more compassionate and less violent than men." I would neither agree or disagree with this statement. I have seen men that have no compassion and are very violent. I see men with one or the other. I see many violent women that can be compassionate. I see some women that are very compassionate and not violent at all. I think some people are compassionate and some are not. The same goes for the issue of violence. This is consistent across all sexes. For example, I am not too violent and very compassionate. My mother is not that violent, but can be compassionate to some and very harsh to others. From my observation of random sets of personalities, I conclude that it is and equal chance of men being less violent and more compassionate or women being less violent and more compassionate.

Hits and Misses

I think I have grown significantly in English throughout the course of the year. The one thing that I improved on the most was my papers that I have done. The first major piece of writing of the year was the Bean Trees Essay. This piece of writing was graded more on knowledge and was used as a baseline for our improvement in writing. I had many errors in that essay and Dr. D pointed them out. I worked on improving them and the problems started to disappear after my next three papers. The most recent paper that I had written in English was the Research Paper. This was hard for many students and it was also challenging for me too. I had to work very hard on that paper and my grade showed it. I had improved on many of the things I had gotten wrong in my first two papers and I think Dr. D appreciated that.

There are many pieces of writing that I do not like. The reoccurring English writing assignment know as blog post are one of the thing that I feel does not help me as much as I would like. I feel like they are just busy work and I would love an explanation on why they help me. If I could understand then I may be able to get more out of them. The second thing that I struggle with is the process of making a paper. For me, the work done before the actual paper is written is very hard and time consuming. It takes me about 3-4 hours to knock up a decent paper that needs tweaking, but it takes me about twice as long to do the outline, annotated bibliography, and so on. It is the worst part about writing a paper and the most time consuming. Although I understand the benefit of the pre-writing, it does not make it any easier. 

Q4 Week 5 Comments

Hayley G: New York Times Prompt

Griff S: Hoyt's Blog

Dealing with Purple Hibiscus

I am glad to say that Purple Hibiscus is a very good book and I am enjoying it very much. It is a very challenging book and it takes up a lot of my time, especially since I have baseball everyday after school. The main challenge that I am having is that it takes up some much of my time. I am reading about an hour a day and on top of my other school work it gets to be pretty intense. The main way I am coping is by dedicating my study hall to reading Purple Hibiscus for the next night. This allows me to get my reading out of the way so I can do other work later. The other hard part of this book is understanding it fully. They way I deal with this problem is through my annotations. I get to look in-depth at the book while I am reading it and it seems to help me understand it. From my understanding that is what the Bread and Butter assignments are supposed to accomplish.

Another challenge that I am facing with this book is the choice of the Post Colonial Menu provided by Dr. D. Many of the choices look appetizing and I can only chose one. I could do more of the options, but Baseball is cutting into my time at home so that throws extra assignments for fun out the window. The final challenge I am facing is suppressing the stereotypes of African society. I have so many preconceived notions about Africa and a lot of the contradict what I am seeing from the novel. One example is I though most everybody in Africa was very very poor. We see Kambili and Jaja living a rich life style and we see Aunty Ifeoma's family having electricity and running water, all be it only in the morning. All pos these challenges are welcome in my mind because if I am not being challenged then I am not learning anything and I am learning a lot for Purple Hibiscus.

Advice for Middle School and 9th Grade

I am almost finished with 9th grade. It seems like I just started high school a few weeks ago and it is almost over already. I have a lot of advice for kids going into middle school and some advice for 9th grade. Middle school can be really easy for some and really hard for others. This tip is just a generally good thing to do. The tip is to study. I do not mean study for 15 minutes and say you studied. You need to study for a few reasons. The first is that if you study and learn the material now, then exams will be so much easier. The second reason is that you think you know the information, but then you take the test and do not know anything. Do not just assume you know everything you need to know for a test, be safe and take the time to study.

This next tips are for the rising 9th graders out there. You will find that you will have a lot of homework for all of your classes. I was very surprised of how much of it there was. The first week of school all of my classes had assigned me homework and it took 3 hours to do it. That is on the shorter end of the scale. Sometimes homework takes even longer, especially on the weekends. The tip is to use your tutorial and study hall times wisely, especially if you have after school activities. If you use you time wisely then your homework load at home will decrease dramatically. The second tip that I have is to plan out your night so that it is possible to get all of your work done and still have some free time. The third tip is not to procrastinate. You can get a lot of homework done on the weekend for the week ahead and this is especially helpful if you have after school activities. All of these tips should help you manage your work in a way that it is not overwhelming and you can still have some free time on the side.


Prompt: Coming of Age #19

Q4 Week 2 Comments

Griff S: Political Article Post

Savannah Y: Political Post

GOP Healthcare Problems

The article that I read on Fox News is a follow up of the failed GOP Healthcare Replacement. Joseph Weber mainly talks about what the Republicans are planning on doing to pass this legislation. His point is that the Republicans would make a new legislation rather than reform the current replacement plan. I would agree and disagree all at once. One side is the Republicans have worked hard on the replacement plan, but no one in congress wants to instate the plan even when the House of Representatives has a Republican majority. This leads to the other side where a totally new plan would help by being able to include some elements of what both parties want.

I do think that a replacement is in order. The current healthcare plan is supposedly not very good. I cannot comment on this very much because I do not know Obamacare well enough to determine if there are that many problems. There are many reasons that I chose this topic. I am old enough now to really dive deep into politics and I can understand politics better than previous years. I also like to be informed about what is going on in my country. The reason that I chose Fox News is because I always see CNN on my television and I wanted to experience something different. I also chose it because my parents read Fox News everyday and they recommended it to me.

Q4 Week 1 Comments

Griff S: Weddings and Funerals

Anders M: Free Post

Looking Back on Me

I have progressed dramatically as a writer, reader, and a student. There have been many hindrances in this process, but I still have gotten this far. The one thing that I have improved most upon is my writing. I have learned that I need to focus mainly on grammar and the way I connect my paper's elements. I have discovered that most of my arguments are sound and have very good evidence. I also found out how I work best. I need to be alone and have a quiet space. I also like to write the majority of my work in one sitting, so my thoughts can flow together and it allows me to remember everything I think about when I am writing.

I have improved as a reader as well. I have learned how to read for content and how to read for enjoyment all in the first 3 quarters of my Freshman year. I think that is pretty good. I have learned that I retain information very well and that makes me a very good test taker. These are some examples of my evolution as a first time high school student. I have improved in all of the above categories, but I have improved the most in writing and I think that is what Freshmen year English is all about. I would say I have passed the course and obtained the information I need for the rest of my English life in high school.

Baseball

I have been playing a lot of baseball recently. I have played 4 games in a week and I have also watch 4 collage baseball games in the same week. The 4 games I played in where good games, but we lost all of them. I even have another baseball game tomorrow. My team and I have learned something about baseball in our game played yesterday, the 18th of March. We learned that we could compete with the best.

We played Catholic High School and lost by a score of 11 to 9. This was very good for us. Catholic has one of the best baseball programs in the state. We played a 9 inning game instead of our usual 6 inning game and lost in the top of the 9th inning when they scored 2 runs. We were winning up until that point. Even though we lost, the team learned that we could hang with the best baseball program in the state. We could have won also. This gave us confidence that we will hopefully bring to the rest of our games this season.

Comments Q3 Week 7

Sydney S: Free Post

Hayley G: Free Post

My Video Games

I have a problem. I play to many video games. I play them for hours on end and just love them to bits. I usually stay up till 2 in the morning on weekends just to play video games. I play various games including Overwatch, For Honor, and Rocket League. These are all games that dominant my life and I really need to stop playing them. I need to ground myself with reality. I have the best fix to my problem. The answer is Virtual Reality. I will play my video games while being able to look around the game and thus, I will be immersed in the video game. On second thought, that would just get me more addicted.

Maybe I need to do more work. This could help me keep off of the video games. I need to do more school work. I need to play more baseball. I need to play more with my friends. I can always play video games on a rainy day. I just need to get out of the house more. I can do that by going to the movies, but that won't be nearly as fun as playing video games. I could play video games with my friend and do all other sorts of things in my games that I could not do in real life. I think I have made up my mind. I will not stop playing video games. I can be social over them and I could be transported to far away lands. That is certainly better than a 2 hour movie that cost $8.

Song Analysis

Umbrella by Rihanna is a song with some poetic devices embedded within it. One of these is rhyme. There is rhyme in every stanza. Some of the words rhyme when sung but not when spoken. For example, one such pair is entity and infinity. These words are similar, but really rhyme effectively when sung by Rihanna. A lot of the rhyme in this song is end rhyme, but internal rhyme can be found as well. One example is the line "You're part of my entity, here for infinity. There is more end rhyme to be found but let us keep on analyzing.

Another literary device is assonance. There is the repetition of the various e sounds. One example is the stanza, "Because when the sun shines, we'll shine together / Told you i'll be here forever / Said I'll always be your friend / Took an oath, I'ma stick it out to the end." The words when, together, forever, friend, and end contribute to one of the various e sounds in this song. 


Song name: Umbrella
Artists: Rihanna feat. JAY-Z
Lyrics: http://www.metrolyrics.com/umbrella-lyrics-rihanna.html

Q3 Week 6 Comments

Sydney S: Sickness

Savannah Y: Tick Tock

The Mansion that held me for Ransom

I stepped into the house,
I was a quiet as a mouse.
This was a hunted place,
and I carried my mace.
I walked through the mansion,
that held my life for ransom.

The house was cold,
then the house was hot.
It is like the respiratory system of an asthmatic runner.
I wanted to flee for freedom and never return,
but my days were numbered,
so I decided to slumber
in the mansion, that held my life for ransom.




Poetry Terms used
End Rhyme- throughout the poem
Alliteration- line 10
Metaphor- line 9

My Baseball Game

I love baseball and I love to play baseball games. I recently played a game and I know I could do better. I was playing first base and the ball came at me. It was a bunt and I ran to get it, but then I  though. I ran back the first base to let someone else get the ball. I could of made the play, but I did not. The sad part is it was the losing run that scored.

I patronized myself after if happened. My coach talked to me about what I should have done, but Coach was ok with it. He just wanted the team to learn. I determined that I had a lapse in my concentration because as soon as Coach told me what I did, I automatically knew it was right. I did not attempt to refute my coach, but I questioned myself for the rest of the night.





Vocabulary.com words:
Patronize
Lapse
Refute

Q3 Week 4 Comments

Ellen R: Research

Sydney S: ATDPTI- Response 2

The Learning Curve of Research

This research paper has been very challenging for me as an English and Social Studies student. I have learned a lot, but would also like to learn more about somethings too. I have learned about how to embed quotations into a sentence. I previously had a lot of trouble with this. A lot of my quotations did not flow right with the paper and were very clunky. I have since fixed a lot of this problems with practice for English class and Dr. D's help on the subject. The second thing I learned is how to find credible research. This is a very important thing because my paper needs to be as strong as it can be and credible research can help me with that. I learned that i should look up the author and look at his or her's credentials. This can be a very helpful thing to look at when determining the credibility of the article.

There are a lot of things that I have questions about in this process. There is one that stands out to me the more and more I think about this project. I am having trouble breaking some of my paragraphs into more concise and concentrated paragraphs. I have 2 paragraphs in my paper that are about 1 page long. That is not what I would have wanted! I keep thinking about how I could fix this problem. I just don't have an answer.

ATDPTI Response Week 2

I have now read through the required amount of pages and I am really liking it. I like the humor of the book. It bring this book to a whole other level. I now like the book because of the story and the humor. I also like the way the story is turning out. I think it will get even better as I progress through the book. It seems like Junior is finally making friends and I am really pleased with that.

I think this book could also take a turn for the worse. Junior might die or something bad will happen at school. I hope it doesn't happen, but it is a real possibility. I think the book might be just about over and then something goes terribly wrong. I am very curious to see if my prediction is correct. Some stuff is already deviating from the usual Indian path of life. Junior's sister just got married unexpectedly. That just shows how unpredictable this book can be.

Q3 Week 3 Comments

Mary Francis S: Reading Response

Maia A: 15 going on 16

My Usual Day

I have a very busy day to some people, but to others I have a schedule that they would dream of. My day consist of me waking up at 6:00 A.M and then getting dressed and ready for school and then I go to school. That is the easiest part of my day. Then school ends and I have Baseball practice. I practice a variety of things on different days. Some days I catch and some days I pitch. There are even the days were I do both. After various combinations of catching and pitching, I must go condition. This is usually something like running the bases a few times or running a mile. Then I get to go home.

You might think that my day is pretty much over, but that would be incorrect. I then get home at about 6:30 P.M and must do my home work. My homework load stretches from around 2 minutes to 2 hours. I usually cannot plan for homework on the weekends because I do not know half of my homework for the week. It is really frustrating. After I finish my homework, I eat dinner play some video games and then go to bed to do the same exact thing the next day.

ATDPTI Response

I must say, I am really liking this book. It is funny, but yet sad at the same time. The book has taken a turn for the worst when Junior is going to a new school and his best friend Rowdy hates him after he makes the announcement. Junior wants to do something better with his life and is trying to accomplish that by moving schools. I find this a very interesting concept to the book. I like it a lot, but the idea of hope is a very strong idea and could make a very powerful story.

I suspect Junior's Geometry teacher might pop up in the book a few more times. He is the person with wisdom that some books have. I like Mr. P because he is very funny in a way. It is almost like someone is controlling him. He acts very nice to Junior even though he hit Mr. P with his 30 year old geometry textbook. Mr. P just forgives him and tells Junior that he has hope and he needs to do something with it. I am really hopeful for the rest of this book and I am itching to read more!

Q3 Week 2 Comments

Sydney S: Time Management

Hayley G: About my research topic

Importance of my Research

My research topic is a good one for me because it is the one I am interested in. My question that I am researching around is, What was the Quality of Life in Nazi Germany? This question is very interesting because when people thing about the Nazis they think about how they killed the Jews. The truth is that they killed many other groups and treated certain groups terribly.

This is significant because I want people to focus on all the bad things the Nazis did to their peoples and not just the Jews. One of my pieces of evidence is from the story of a Jewish woman named Isabella Leitner. She was rounded up and put into the concentration camp known as Auschwitz. She describes many of Jews, including herself, being deported and were almost bound for certain death. Another piece of evidence is a picture of some Polish children at Auschwitz. These children were not Jewish. The Nazis were also treating the Polish people the same way. This just a few of my findings that can shed some light on the whole story and not just the headline.

Learning Last Semester

I had a great time last semester. I found out what High School is like and also how to cope with some of the stresses of it. I learned that High School is not that the material is harder than 8th grade, but that it is the quantity of work that High School teachers dish out. My least work in high school so far is Social Studies. We have the occasional readings, but they do not take too long.

The way I am going to use this information is that I need to understand that High School is just more work. I think once I wrap my head around it then it will be much easier to complete and handle. I also  am going to make this semester better by spacing my workload more evenly. This way I do not have tons of homework on one day and none on the next. This is the best solution I can come up with from my 1st semester experience in High School.

Comments Q3 Week 1

Sydney S: Winter Break

Griff S: Research Update

Winter Break

I had a great break for the holidays. I played video games and I played baseball. The best part of my break was Christmas. It is not why you might think. I like it because I got to see family. The presents were just extra. There was a a lot happening on Christmas day. I woke up and opened gifts from the immediate family. Then I went to my grandmother's house and did Christmas with my dad's side of the family. We had so much fun an I got to see my cousins that are in collage.

The next day I went to Vacherie. This is where my mom's side of the family resides. They are also really fun to be around. I got to see my 4 cousins and my only 2nd cousin. We opened gifts and we played the yearly game. This "yearly game" is something that my grandfather comes up with. It is different every year and your have to do so crazy stuff for a cash prize. This year we had to hold a candy cane in our mouth and pick other candy canes out of a bowl with the candy cane that was in  our mouth. This was fun to participate in, but it was even more fun to see my family do this. We all looked like a bunch of fish out of water.

Research Update

My research is going pretty good. I have just finished my annotated bibliography. I feel like I have just enough information to make the paper work. I might collect some more over the process. I think the notecards are a good idea. I can have all my information organized into one place so when I write my paper then it will be ready to go.

I feel like I might need help with getting my topics together. I have 2 solid topics, but I think I need about 3 or 4. I think this will just take some time to come up with some interesting topics to fit with my research question. I do think that I will have a good first research paper experience. I hope that everything goes smoothly from here on out.