End of Sememster Blog

This year piece of writing that I am most proud of would have to be my “Snapshot Narrative.”This is my best work because for the first time I got to dig back into my memory and think about myself, which is unusual with high school writing because you’re usually talking about someone back in history, your family, or someone that has inspired you. With my “Snapshot Narrative” I got to use sensory details, so the setting, character descriptions, sound, smell, and touch was all up to me. With writing “Snapshot Narrative” the writer can tell the reader as little or as much as the they wise with this piece I didn’t have to write a full out story on the before and after on how I got to a particular place, I just let the reader enter my story and leave my story. My “Snapshot Narrative” gave me excuse to not use formal grammar and language, because the short was told my an eight year olds perspective I was able to actually talk like an eight year old and grammatical write like an eight year old. Overall I had very good time writing this piece and I was able to become an eight year old again and explore a different style of writing.

I think I am getting very good at learning how to capture other authors and philosophers quotes. I think that I can capture other peoples thoughts and explain my reaction with a more mature approach. Before correctly learning how to use a quote I would just enter a quote anywhere in my essay or paragraph then I would immediately dispute the quote to thinking that I sounded better. However after learning how to correctly input a quote into my essay I have found it is to correctly position your quote and correctly the other authors quote to make sure that the reader understands both positions on the subject you are referring to. Within my “Tragedy Project” I was able to use different point of views on tragedy to conclude my point on what tragedy really is.

I know that at the end of the semester we briefly covered how to write grammatically correct but I would like to expand my knowledge on more grammatically errors and how to stay aware of them. I think that we should go more in depth with comma’s and how to correctly place them, apostrophe’s and how to correctly place them, tense structure, and sentence structure. As for material that we can cover to get ready for college I think that we practice reading difficult readings, and we should make easy tips so if we come across difficult readings in college we have some tips to remember so that we are able to comprehend what the reading is saying and so that we know the main idea’s in the reading.

Proper Grammar Project and Inquiry Project


This week in English class we are wrapping up our Inquiry Project and we are starting a new project called the Proper Grammar project. For the Proper Grammar project we will be partnering up with someone in our class to make a poster on common grammar mistakes most students make. For my project I am partnered with Serena Robinson and our common grammar mistake is missing words. An example of missing words would be if I was writing a sentence but I was missing a word in the sentence. For the Inquiry Project this week I am writing two annotated bibliography for the books that I have read “All I Ask” by Barbara Keaton and “The Wedding” by Nicholas Sparks. It has been really hard for me to write both of my bibliography because it is hard for me to make a short summary of each book without going to in depth or without spoiling the book for future readers. This weekend I plan to finish annotating my three sources so that I will not have to worry about them on Monday.

What I Did Over Break?

Over break I didn't really do much, which is exactlly what I wanted to do. Monday thru Wednesday all I mostly did was SAT prep for the upcoming SAT this Saturday and I worked on my UC and CSU applications. On Thursday as we all know it was Thanksgiving, so I spent the day with my family. The dinner that my Grandmother prepared was amazing my favorite part of the dinner was the candied sweet potatoes (cooked sweet potatoes with brown sugar, cane sugar, and marshmellows). After dinner I took a short nap and got suited for BLACK FRIDAY! For all of those who don't know Black Friday is the national day for sells in all stores. Ever since I was little my mother and I have went to Black Friday sales together, I really enjoy Black Friday I think that there should be a Black Friday in December right after Christmas. For Black Friday my mother, her friend, and I went to Wal-Mart because of the electronic sale they were having. I got a laptop and my mother got a E-Book and a HUGE HUGE television (personally I really don't care for a bigger television but whatever makes my mommy happy). Throughout the weekend I worked on my Tea Party essay it took me a really long time to write that essay but I pushed through and I think I did a really good job.

Final Tragedy Creation


This week in English class we turned in our tragedy creations. Originally for my tragedy creation I was going to make an alter ego photograph, but there were way too many complications with the alter ego photograph, so I thought of another idea that composed of me writing a poem and recording myself actually performing the poem. Unfortunately there were complications with the sound quality from the sound so I decided that I would just get tragic photographs and place some type of sad music with the sad photographs so that the audience that saw the small video that I made would have so type of sorrow to take away from the film. Then while I was watching my short video I thought it would be nice to add the poem I originally wrote to the end of my video to really take my message home. Overall I thought that my final project was amazing. I really loved the ending result I thought I did a very good job and I am extremely proud of myself.

Tragedy Essay


This week in class we had a lot of time to work on our tragedy essays. I really enjoyed the day that we got to have people read our essays. I felt like I got a lot of feedback with what I can change to make my essay flow better. I was placed in a group with Leah, Lauren, Serena, and Alex and they all gave me really good feedback with grammatical errors, flow, and the overall organization of my essay. With their essays I tried to read it like someone that has never been in our class to make sure that their essays made sense and that they had a good explanation for why they did or didn’t agree with an author’s point of view. I think that reading their essays gave me inspiration to change my essay.

Tragedy Essay: November 5, 2010

This week in class our rough draft essays for our Tragedy essay was due. The rubic for our essay was to reflect on other authors opinion and explain how we felt about the authors opinion and compare it to our opinion on what tragedy was. My basic opinion on tragedy was basically the same as Aristotle’s that tragedy happened to someone not necessarily a person that is a part of a royal family but has an arrogant behavior and falls from power because of their actions and receives a punishment that does not fit their crime. Throughout the essay I tried to prove my point my using other authors articles for evidence. Overall I think that my essay is very strong but I feel like there is not enough of my opinion in the essay. In past essays I have not had a lot of evidence with other readings, so with this essay I made sure to add a lot of evidence but I feel like it is the bulk of MY ESSAY. For my final draft I want to add more of my opinion and find a way to subtract some detail that doesn't need to be added.

Tragedy Project


This week in school we were introduced to our tragedy project and tragedy essay. My idea for my tragic project is to take a alter ego photo. I think that photography can represent tragedy very well if you have a story and purpose behind it. My idea for my photo is to have an alter ego with myself. I want to have one part of my self being the rich royal person and the other side of me being the peasant or fallen person. Aristotle describes tragedy as being a well known or royal person has made their fallen from their arrogant ways that is caused by themselves and receive a punishment that is to severe for their crime. So that is why one part of me is the royal side and then other is more like the peasant, I also want to make it look like the royal side of me will be stepping on the peasant side of me. I found a you tube video that is going to show how to create the alter ego photography.

Oedipus: October 22, 2010


This week in class we finished reading the Greek play Oedipus. A tragic tell about a man's fall from power. While reading this play I saw a lot of myself in Oedipus, mostly with the way that he was at the top of the world then how he just fell from power so fast. It really made me think of myself because sometimes I think that I can climb my way to the top then fall because of my arrogant ways. I never want to achieve all that I want in life then just fall from that power because of something like arrogance and my selfishness towards other people. If I do in fact become a judge or some high powered lawyer that I dream to become, I hope I still remain as down to earth as I am now and that I help my community in any way that I can. And I don't want to give back financially I want to give back with my time and energy. I think that if you just give back financially you don't really contribute all that you can you just think money excuses you from really giving back. So to keep myself from the arrogance that Oedipus had I want to give back and do all I can from my community with time and energy.

All I Ask: October 15, 2010


This week in class I finished my first book for the Independent Reading Project. My first book was “All I Asked” a black romance novel written by Barbara Keaton. When I first started to read “All I Ask” I thought Wow this is a really great book until I got to the middle of “All I Ask” I thought this whole book is extremely predictable because it follows that black romance formula. The black romance formula is a woman is bitter because of a previous break up so she is angry at all men, so when she meets a man she ignores their existence, but one day the right man comes along which she rejects but the man likes her so much that he doesn’t stop trying to get her attention, finally the woman goes on the date with a man and they both slowly fall in love with each other, after a short period of time of knowing each other the man and the woman fall madly in love and find that they cannot live without each other, then they get engaged, and soon after have the wedding of their dreams. In “All I Ask” it uses this very formula Deborah Anderson “Deb” a woman that has just broke up with her college boyfriend Mario meets Darrin Wilson a friend of a friend at a party, when Deb first meets Darrin she ignores the fact that he even exist, until the bump into each other at a restaurant and finally exchange phone numbers, when they finally go on a date both Darrin and Deb find that they are each other’s soul mate and wish to never part from each other. Soon after meeting each other Darrin proposes to Deb and they get married and have a happily ever after. I thought Barbara Keaton made her book so predictable and a huge cliché of black romance novels. If Keaton would have added a twist like embracing the fact that Darrin thought his ex-girlfriend Traci was calling him and made her pop at the same time that Deb came over and Deb and Darrin temporarily broke up. I think some type of wrong turn would make this book excited and known to more people.