12/9/19

Semester One: Language Arts Class

Semester one of tenth grade was very stressful and a lot of work. I was expecting tenth grade to be a lot like 9^th grade, but it was very different and my classes were a lot harder than last years classes.  I was honestly expecting me to fix some of my bad habits from last year especially procrastinating, but I haven’t been able to completely stop doing that. This years language arts class was a lot better than last years because last year was mostly busy work and I didn’t do much actual work that helped me improve my reading and writing skills, but this year I learned a lot in the work I did and the lecture Ms. Coello gave. My participation however has gone down a lot because I don’t feel as comfortable as I did last year. Another thing that changed was the teachers style of teaching, because of her style I have a lot more and actually understand more.

12/2/19

My happiest moment: How to return to that moment.

A time when I’ve been especially happy was when my mom would take me, my brother and my cousin to a botanical garden in Arcadia and we would just walk around and see the nature. It was really cool because they had a peacock café and as your eating lunch the peacocks would come and rom around, it was also really nice to go and spend time with my family and enjoy the simply things like finding animals that rom around and turtles that sun bath. I feel like I could be that happy again because anytime that I spend with my family without a certain person and the drama that comes, is fun and enjoyable. I feel like to a certain extend a person can control happiness because if someone tends to look more on the better side of things then I feel that they will allow themselves to be happy. If you reminisce about a time you were happy I feel you will get a little piece of it and it’ll make you happy.

12/2/19

What is a compliment? How could it change someone’s day/life?

H. Jackson Brown once said that you should “compliment three people everyday”, by doing this you could drastically change someone’s day or even life because you never know what someone’s going through. Sometimes even the littlest things people say can change the way someone is feeling for example if someone feels alone and you tell them that your there for them and their a good person, you can make them feel wanted. It can also change someone’s life for example if someone is depressed and you show some appreciation for them they will feel wanted and like their life isn’t useless. This stands to be true, but if you look at it in a different perspective you can also see that when you over compliment someone it may seem forced or like its meaningless which in turn can actually make someone feel uncomfortable. Complementing someone can also be awkward especially if your not well aquanaut with them, but despite that it can bring people closer.  

11/18/19

What was it like to write a narrative? The power of words. 

Authoring a book was a really good experience, especially for me because I don’t really like to talk about myself and this gave me the opportunity to do so. It also gave me the opportunity to let some things out that I’ve never really talked about. Another thing I really liked about this was getting to hear others peoples story because it gave me an opportunity to get to know my classmates better and get to understand what they’re going through. By doing this activity I learned things that I may have never found out and in a way it made me closer to my classmates.

11/18/19

How to find characterization: What are the main points to look for?  

I’ve learned that characterization can be shown as the acronym “STEAL” this acronym stands for speech,  thoughts, effects on others, actions and looks. Those five things help find characterization because by analyzing the characters and looking for those things you can see the way they act and there true nature. For example, if you use speech you can read/listen to what a character is saying and from there gather what type of person they are. The word describing a character must always be an adjective. When finding characterization you must look for textual evidence that proves that the character is how the way you describe. You must also evaluate the character throughout the story and not just in the beginning because as story lines progress so do the characters.

11/6/19

Quote Analysis: What is Identity? 

The statement says that you should be confident in yourself and take pride in what you do, but at the same not make others feel bad because your doing something that they can’t. Be proud of your own accomplishments without making feel like they can’t be. A lot of times people gloat about things they can do but others cant, but rather than doing that people should just be happy about it and keep doing what makes them happy. Furthermore, if you see someone struggling and you know how to help them you should, rather than be arrogant about it. 

10/24/19

Benefits of ELA: Why is it important? 

In school certain curriculum is required graduate, one of them being Language Arts. Language arts is required to be taken for four years in order to graduate because it is a skill that people will need no matter what they do in life. It is very beneficial for people because it teaches how to write in every situation and it even reading and analyzing a book is important because it shows what is needed to do when your reading something. This is important because in the real world adults have to analyze many situations and because of the skills we learn in ELA we’ll be better at it because we’ve had practice and we know what to look for. To continue, by taking language arts we learn how to right correctly and we had to write a college application or a business letter the skills we’ve learned in ELA will help us make clear descriptive claims.

10/21/19

S.M.A.R.T.  goals: What I want to improve? 

My goal is to learn more skills on how to write an essay in a decent amount of time rather than spending hours on end doing it, and I would also like to stop procrastinating because then I don’t get sleep. Another goal that I have is to apply the standards that I’m learning more to my writing because I feel like I’ve been sticking to what I know rather than what I want I’m learning and so its making my writing suffer a lot. I want to also be better at interacting with my notes because I feel like I just write them because I have to, but I never actually use them which is basically the whole point of notes so right now writing them is jus pointless but I want to change that. 

10/10/19

Advantages of ELA: Why it’s so important

In ELA, I believe that the subject matter is useful in many ways and it helps in not only other classes but in the real world too because I personally use it to think of a way to word things in better ways. The topics we learn about are sometimes boring but they are able to tie everything we learn into things which help make more sense of things. The expectations are really high especially for honors and sometimes I think they shouldn’t be so high because we’re all learning as we go and it can’t be perfect, but at the same the curriculum we’re learning allows us to be able to do the things we’re given at a certain level. In general language arts has always been a    pretty boring subject for me because I don’t like reading but as I’ve grown I’ve began to like it more because the books are more interesting and so is the subject matter. 

10/7/19

True meaning of a blog: What you need

A blog is a web long where you write anything that you want and then you post it for others to read, its basically a diary that others will read. A blog can be about anything topic that you’d like it to be about as long there is a common theme amongst the topics. Blogs are written in reverse  chronological order, with the newest entry on the top and the oldest at the bottom. When making a blog you must include the date, writers name, title, pictures and subtitles for each new topic. One of the most important things of a blog is it being published.

9/30/19

The Count of Monte Cristo: Summary 

Now that Dantes is back from sailing through the Ocean he goes to visit his fiancé, Mercedes, which is when it is found out that her cousin Fernand is in love with her. He has been trying to get at her for a while, but she’s in love with her husband and insists that he stops trying. When Dantes arrives at Mercedes’ house, Fernand runs out and Caderousse and Danglars find him at a bar. They then proceed to call him over and laugh at him because Mercedes doesn’t love him, which angers him even more.  

9/23/19

Different Expositions: Dumas Strength

Dumas uses great exposition to not only introduce the characters and settings, but also critical events that will be huge for the rest of the story. He uses the setting in a way that makes the book seem intriguing but still tells the readers where the book is based off of, then he goes on to introduce the characters but he does this with smooth transitions because everything fits together. Along with this as he’s introducing important characters he also reveals crucial details that will later on add to the books plot. With that said the books exposition flows together nicely which makes the book more suspenseful. For example, he starts the book off by stating the day and where the boat arrives at, then he begins introducing the characters but doesn’t say the names right away instead the names are revealed when another character begins to talk. For this reasons, Dumas’ book is very intriguing to read. 

9-19-19

A look into my future: Expectations for 2022

In the year 2022, I will be graduating from Eleanor Roosevelt High School and preparing to leave for college in the fall. I hope to be able to spend my summer before college with my family especially my brother because he will already be off to college and I would also love to be able to travel one last time before I turn 18 to Mexico with my mom and grandma. I hope by the year 2022 I have learned my lesson about being friends with the wrong people, but I also hope that I will still be friends with the people I’m friends with today. As I venture off to my new life as a college student I hope to take with me all the lessons my parents taught me and all the memories I mad in high school.  In the year 2022 I also hope I’m going to my dream college (NYU) with my best friend Lesly. 

9/16/19

Universal Theme: My life as a book 

If my life were a book, the theme could be effects of the past because I tend to live a lot in the past rather than in the future. I do this because people in the past have mistaken my nicest for taking advantage of me which makes me have a lot of trust issues. Another reason for this is because things that have happened to me in the past have caused me to not be able to move forward with certain things and have also truly affected me today. To continue, I am someone who looks back at the past a lot to remember my bad and good actions which helps me to be a better person today. If my life were a book, the theme could be effects of the past because I tend to live a lot in the past rather than in the future. I do this because people in the past have mistaken my nicest for taking advantage of me which makes me have a lot of trust issues. Another reason for this is because things that have happened to me in the past have caused me to not be able to move forward with certain things and have also truly affected me today. To continue, I am someone who looks back at the past a lot to remember my bad and good actions which helps me to be a better person today. If my life were a book, the theme could be effects of the past because I tend to live a lot in the past rather than in the future. I do this because people in the past have mistaken my nicest for taking advantage of me which makes me have a lot of trust issues. Another reason for this is because things that have happened to me in the past have caused me to not be able to move forward with certain things and have also truly affected me today. To continue, I am someone who looks back at the past a lot to remember my bad and good actions which helps me to be a better person today. 

9/9/19

Standards- Difficulty with Certain Standards

After reading the six standards I found that in reading the more difficult standard for me was determining the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text. It is more difficult for me because a lot of the time I read words and don’t go back to check what they mean even if I don’t understand them. The writing  standard that is more challenging for me is  writing arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence. I struggle with this one because I tend to run on a lot once I get into the argument I tend to keep on going until I get through all of the evidence and explanation. 

8/26/19

Annotations: What I do vs. what I don’t do 

When I’m annotating I like to use strategies that I’ve learned throughout the years because that way I will know what the most important things to back at look are. The strategies I like to do are highlight important details and on the side write why their important, circle the words that I don’t know that way I can write what they mean later, underline the words/ phrases that are key to the paragraph, and star the topics of each paragraph. Other than looking up unfamiliar words and decoding the figurative language you could find the key information hidden in the texts and explain why it’s important and how it relates to the text. 

8/22/19

What I’ve Learned vs. What I want to learn in ELA

So far I’ve learned that in writing you must use the style of writing that your promoted to write, and right now we are suppose to be using MLA style writing. I’ve also learned that although you do want to be thorough in your writing and cover all the points needed, you also don’t want to get off topic or go into tangents of unnecessary information. While writing your conclusion you don’t want to rewrite/ restate your information, but rather confirm, reaffirm, reveal, and wrap it up. I want to learn how to make my paragraphs longer without putting to many unneeded facts because many times I will just use run on sentences to get it to be long.

8/19/19

Compare and Contrast: Myself vs. Santiago 

Santiago is a young shepherd who loved to travel and see new things, but after having a dream about a treasure, he was more excited to find that then anything in his life. The boy was very trusting even though he’s been fooled before and I relate to him a lot in this perspective because I tend to trust people knowing I shouldn’t. He was also very charismatic because he loved to help others hence him helping the crystal merchant and trying to help the Englishman find the Alchemist. He was also very adventurous because whether it was going to travel around the desert or going to Egypt to find his treasure he was never afraid to get out there and find new things. I relate to Santiago’s adventurous side because I love to go on adventures and I love to travel around and see new things which he gets to do because he’s a Shepherd. 

8/15/19

What I’m good at in school: Positive attributes 

    One thing I’m really good at at school is paying attention and following directions. This year, I will use this to my advantage in this class and subject”.  It will help me in this class because it is important to be paying attention so that you absorb all the information that is being given. When your paying attention you are also more likely to know what is going on and that will help me in this class because it’ll insure that I know what I’m doing. Following directions is also important because if your doing something your own way it may not be correct. It’s also important because that way you’ll know how to do everything. Following directions and paying attention is especially important in language arts because that way we know what to do and can complete an assignment correctly. 

8/12/19

What is a Memory: Short Analysis 

“No one can ever take your memories from you—each day is a new beginning; make good memories every day” -Catherine Pulsifer (author of Wings of Wisdom)

Your memories are yours to cherish, so no matter who comes into your life, you are the one who controls what happens and they can’t make you forget the good and bad things that happen. Everyday is a day where you can make new memories so you must live each day to the fullest. In each new day you get a new chance to make it worth wild so you must take chances.