The Reading Lunch

 The reading lunch was a great way to bring our classmates together to talk about something we usually don't have conversations about. I am very glad that Dr.d started this because not only did we talk about great books and have fun we also got bonus points, something I was definitely in need of. In the first quarter I led a discussion on The Great Escape, even tho there weren't to many people in attendence my group had a great time discussing the book. At the second lunch I led a very large group on The Hunger Games, we had a blast talking about the book, especially the parts in the book that weren't in the movie but in the book and vice versa. The reading lunch was great and I hope next years freshman take advantage of it and have fun like we did!

Last Post of the year thanks for viewing!

Evaluation

 This quarter I feel like I have done better in many categories such as preparation and participation. During the quarter I can only remember one time I was not prepared for class which was a great improvement to last quarter. I have never been tardy to class either and I have worked to get better at checking my email and assignments. One thing I struggled this quarter on was turning assignments on time, this brought my grade down and I hope I can learn from this mistake.

During the class period I am always participating with relevant comments and questions to the topic being issued. Although I had some side conversations, I didn't have nearly as much as last quarter. Also another area I improved in was taking good notes, I found it very helpful in preparing for tests and my grades reflected it. When we do group work in class I have found that it helps me dramatically if I engage in the topic with my peers especially in writing situations. I try hard to stay on topic during group work because I want to help others like they help me.

In the beginning of the year I did not participate correctly, for example I engaged in numerous side conversations and didn't contribute to the class discussion. As the year went on and participating in class became very important I rose to the occasion. I have dramatically changed for the best in participating, this quarter I was even able to sit with Cody and not get distracted.

                     

Letter to English 1

  Dear Classmates,
       
        I think we can all agree this year in English has been very challenging; but I believe we all got better at the different aspects of english we covered in class. From writing research papers to reading about a bunch of kids going crazy on an island I'd say we had a fun but diffcult year. For me this year writing my research paper was the hardest for me because of all of the sythesizing research and incorporating qoutes into a paper. The thing that kept me going in writing this paper was my intrest in my topic which was the Black Market weapons sold to Mexican Drug Cartels from the U.S.

     Our class this year was very fun as a whole and with limited interruptions from our fellow classmates we were able to explore different parts of literature. I believe this year has improved my writing in many areas and I look forward to taking what I learned this year to my English class for next year. It has been a great year and I hope most of us will get to be in a class together next year!


                                                                                                    Sincerely,
                                                                                                                    Daniel R.

Reading Reflection

  Over the course of the year I have been expanding my reading limits and I believe I have become a better reader. Although I am excited about moving on to be a sophmore it makes me sad to believe my freshman days are coming to an end. My reading greatly developed from reading Harry Potter to the Godfather which was a true challenge.

     I believe I have been able to discover more in books better after learning about theme and other devices in literature which I carried over into outside reading. For example I really didn't know how to identify theme in a piece of literature and now after learning about it in class I can easily find theme in any work. I am not sure what I will read next, right now I have been reading Newspapers and Magazines.

    25 mins ESPN the magazine/ 30 minutes the Advocate Sports section May 6/ 30 mins Sports Illustrated April/ 35 mins The advocate May 7

Through the eyes of Macbeth post

  Wow, what a time I have had so far, from killing the undeserving Duncan to becoming the King of Scotland. My wife has proved to become a true monster and I wonder what will happen between us; she forced me to kill Duncan. I could not believe I actually killed him and know that I have become King I realized that the witches prophesy has come true.

   Ever since then my mind has been all over the place; I cannot ever reveal to anyone why I am acting weird. Since I have become King it ha become even harder to live with my dangerous, crazy spouse. She convinced me to kill Duncan just so that she could be Queen; I am starting to wonder if she even loves me for me or just for the monarchy. Its been quite difficult and according to the prophesy more pain will come.
       


          -Macbeth-

Writing Wrap up

Writing Wrap Up

            Over the course of the year my knowledge in writing has increased thanks to my classmates and Dr. D. In each writing assignment my classmates helped revise my papers and gave me suggestions that eventually helped raise my grades. Dr. D has helped me to appreciate writing a lot more and she showed me how to use different techniques in multiple writing styles.

In all my writing pieces I have found some errors that occur in many of my papers: missing commas, comma splices, and spelling errors. However, I do show lots of good characteristics in my papers: great titles, good organization, and ideas. The most challenging paper to me this year was writing the global issues research paper. Although researching material for that paper was easy; I discovered that I wasn’t very good at merging that material into the final product---this actually happened in all my papers that required in text citations. In the research paper I found that about 70 percent of the comments were on quote integration, comma splices, and the “spider man” flaw---the quotes jump around not making much sense. These simple mistakes ultimately led to my grades reflecting my mistakes.

This year my classmates have done a great job in peer editing during our editing  groups; when I take advantage of their feedback it dramatically changes my resulting grade. Although my scores have gone down since the beginning of the year, I feel like my writing has ascended over the course of the year especially in grammar. It took an abundance of point deductions at first to get me to stop using comma splices but now I feel like I’m a professional. My knowledge using feedback on subject verb agreement is still cloudy, and I still do not have a clear sense of what mistakes I have made in my writing. Although, some feedback has saved me from disaster, almost all of my quotes were done incorrectly.

            This year in English has been interesting and with every new prompt comes challenges. Even though I have been improving over the year in my writing I feel like I could have done much better. Also on my Wrap Test I did not do as well as I had hoped, in fact, I did worst than last year getting all 4’s except two 3.5’s. Compared to eighth grade, the grades dropped .5 and 1 in all categories, although it is above average I did not achieve my goal.  In spite of all the difficulties, I still have stayed consistent for the most part especially in organization and ideas. Even though they went down overall I have improved my writing this year in many ways.

                        

Reading

I read ESPN the magazine and Sports Illustrated on the Kentucky basketball team for 2 hours. I also started reading black hawk down for 45 minutes.