Reflection #7

Throughout this week we learned about our grammatical errors when writing. I do make quite a lot of careless mistakes and have been progressing in not creating some. At times I get confused with using and "s" when belonging and object to a person. This week we learned the box theory, where you put the the "s" inside the box if it is plural and outside the box if it is single. This way I don't make careless errors while doing the exam.

Reflection on Activity 4, Section B Writing

Now I managed to get it right on the purpose and audience of the text. Before I was struggling quite a bit because I wasn't too familiar on this question. Now I know that I have to work more on the punctuation of my writing. I managed to right it quite persuasive but I still have the common careless errors like forgetting to add in a comma.

Reflection #6

For this week we tried to explore Question 2. By looking at headlines, captions, colors, logos, fonts and how they effect the text. As a group we struggled a bit by thinking out of the box. For example when looking at logos we only looked at it straightforward instead of seeing the meaning behind it.

We as well got our CA results, in which I was quite happy about my results as I did quite good.

We did out Literature circles this week as well. I was the vocabulary enricher and I found some really interesting words that I can use in the future. While surfing through the internet I found a glossary with important vocabulary from "To Kill a Mockingbird"

To go further in my studies my plan is to do more practices and get used to the format of writing for Question 2 and hopefully increase my writing skills.

Reflection #5

For this week we build up to writing our CA for Moving Images on Thursday. We learned to thing outside of the box instead of writing very straight forward as it is a creative writing piece. For me I absolutely love that I was writing about the "Off with his head" scene from the new movie of Alice in Wonderland. It is a very interesting scene and I wanted it to differ from it while writing to write imagery to challenge the readers, so that towards the end they know what it is about. Which is why I used a lot of imagery of a monster to describe the Queen.

For my CA I had it in the Queen's perspective then the frog's. I found it quite hard at first to write the transition bit, but eventually managed to write it properly. For my worry that I had was because Alice in Wonderland is previously a book, I have not read it yet. But if the examiner has then he might compare this scene together with the book. But I doubt it is exactly the same as I am writing directly from the film.

I had difficulty in checking the spelling during the CA day. This was because I accidentally wrote more than I should have so I had less time to check my spelling, grammar and punctuation. I thought I did quite well when writing the CA as I did stick to my plan and my original thoughts.

Reflection #4

This week we started to get more into the habit of writing things that are familiar to us in such a way that they become unfamiliar. This way it engages the audience and makes them think. I found this very interesting for me and I really enjoy writing things like this as I get to be more creative and play more with my words. This way we are more prepared for what to write in our CA which is coming up next week!

We as well got back our long awaited English results. I was actually quite surprised that I got an A since this was my first time doing the exam, but I was still not quite happy with what I wrote. Even during the exam I did not like what I was writing because I felt like I wasn't really engaging to the examiner and at times felt like I was listing most stuff. Also due to the time I rushed through the exam leaving behind careless punctuation and grammar which really ticked me off. I know that I can do better than this which is why I look forward to focusing more into our exam techniques after the CA. For me I have to work on a but of British culture as it is a British exam and try to pick up the different slangs. I plan on doing this by going through the exam books then really focusing when we learn the techniques in class.

Perspective of a consciousness

Wide open the white coated mechanical daggers appeared to be engulfing strands of it's prey. The prey is still and motionless and appears to not fight for its life as it enters deep into the monster. It is a strange creature with its nose snarled up and eyes wide and alert as if aware that something might take away its prey. An instrument that cuts through the prey makes it bleed out a red substance that the monster doesn't mind eating. The prey is long and thin almost worm like creatures that appear to be wrapped up by many of its kind. There is no hope for them as the monster eats up as much as it can from the white container that keeps the prey trapped.

Making the familiar to unfamiliar.

A lone dancer stands in an empty room with no walls, but as it reaches the bottom edge, the room is filled with a sea of markings engraved to the smooth floor. There are many of it’s kind, all of them are skilled at what they do as there is a greater source controlling them and handling its body by wrapping its authority over the dancer. The bottom of the dancer is stood up on a sharp toe, where, like a ballerina it twirls and always keeps its balance. Across the smooth surface of the floor, the toe excretes a black fluid trail while it dances in patterns forming symbols lying in a horizontal formation. Permanent and forever there, the dancer has finished it’s work of art.

Reflection on Persuasive Speech

Persuasive Speech Rubric Y11

Scale → Skill ↓	1 (developing)	2 (intermediate)	3 (expert)
Clarity	Learner does not speak in complete sentences. Learner is not really heard by the audience.	Learner speaks in full and complete sentences. Learner is heard by the audience most of the time.	Learner speaks in full and complete sentences, even when sentences are rather sophisticated. Learner speaks clearly and is heard by the audience throughout.
Persuasion	Individual does not use persuasion and is not able to get his/her point across. Learner does not use character information and is irrelevant.	Individual uses some persuasive techniques,. Learner uses body expression and movement to get his point across at times. Learners makes points but they are sometimes unclear.	Individual is able to persuade the audience. Learner uses a range of techniques including language and body movement effectively. Learner makes strong points and makes a relevant and informative case to persuade the audience.
Body Language (emotions)	The learner has showed little body movement appropriate to the task The learner has shown little reaction to the audience	The learner has shown some body movement appropriate to the task The learner has shown some emotion towards the audience	The learner has shown appropriate and sophisticated body language to help him or her persuade the audience The learner has shown a range of emotions towards the audience
Interaction	Speaker reacts appropriately rarely/never. Speaker interacts more with notes than audience.	Speaker reacts appropriately sometimes. Speaker uses notes occasionally.	Speaker reacts appropriately most/all of the time. Speaker uses notes in such a way that it is not noticeable OR does not use notes at all.

My Personal Target: To successfully get my points across and make sure I do stay alive on the plane.

Peer Assessment by Lena: You had relevant/appopriete responses to the speeches. You spoke clearly and used your notes as a guide to what you were going to say

My Reflection

When presenting my speech, I tried to speak as clearly as possible. I wanted to make sure I presented myself appropriate to my character. It turns out everyone was practically against my character, so I tried to fight for myself and bring up my points. This was good I guess as it gave me more to argue for and present myself in a more professional way as a doctor. My character was a heart surgeon who happened to have an affair with a colleague. Though I made my point clear of saving lives everyone tend to remark me on how I had and affair to which I had to argue back and persuade them to focus on that fact that I save lives.

When I got my feedback I was quite happy as that was what I was aiming for since I knew that at times I did use my notes to guide me and at times I did interrupt but only to back myself up. I was really happy with my AO1 mark of 14 as it was better than I expected. I was still very scared when I spoke as I thought at times I did some errors when speaking. Next time I should improve in giving a more persuasive argument maybe by adding in more sympathy to my situation that way I can persuade my audience more.

Reflection #3

For this past week we started looking more into what skills we need to develop. When I was studying for the SAT I always write down the words I don't know and unfortunately I have stopped this skill when I stopped studying. So what we needed to do was to go back to this skill and keep on expanding our vocabulary this way we know what types of words are appropriate for the time it should be used. Then we wrote writing mats which are personalized for our errors. For me I but in adverbs as I find having a list of them would be really useful as well as connectives to make my sentences flow. Here below is what I created, I wanted to but some spaces blank that way I can add more as I go along.

From here we had discussion for stories the whole class has read. One of it was "under the Baobab Tree". We elected a certain roles to discuss this book.

discussion director - Stephanie
summarizer - Mia
quote finder - Lena
insightful illustrator - Myself
vocabulary enricher - Ann
connector - Lisa
travel tracer - Carlos

With these roles assigned we tried to explore the book more. As this was our first time it didn't go that smoothly since we didn't really know what to discuss on. But from here it was an experience and I am sure we will do much better next time. We should ask more questions with one another and give our own perspective. We decided to choose the book "To kill a Mockingbird" and this time I am the summarizer, hopefully there will be much more discussion. Towards the end of the class we looked into persuasive writing that we will explore more next lesson.

For this week the skills I picked up was to find out what my weaknesses are, find a way to get through it and as well as work as a group and try to discuss more.

Story (Mundane) Writing.

1) Planning:

Making toast

breakfast and you have nothing else to eat

you woke up late

mom told you to make some toast

observing the marks made by the bread toasting

imaging of being in the toaster

burning in hell

what if that happened to me

questioning my belief in this world

doesn't notice that I burnt the toast.

mom makes breakfast instead

2) Writing:

My eyes open so lazily to the sunlight attacking my eyelids. "Urghhh" I hear myself saying "Is it morning already?". My mom knock on the door and complains about how it is already noon and I'm still not awake. Great. This means I have to do my own breakfast, I only know how to toast bread, that's it! So I drag myself down the stairs and enter the kitchen.

What a range of exciting and delicious bread selection I have today! There is whole wheat, brown bread and the best for last, plain bread. “Yay” how exciting, please excuse my sarcasm. Okay better get on with this I can already hear my stomach growling.

In the toaster goes two slices of plain bread and let the torture of waiting begin. I hate toasting bread, I always have, it is always so boring. What do people really do when toasting bread? I just stare at the toast and day dream about whatever I am about to do today. I can see the cylinder rod slowly turning red, a glow of fire bursting towards the bread. Imagine if I was in that toaster? God, it must be really hot. It this what I am actually doing to the bread, roasting it alive? I know it’s not even a living creature but still wouldn’t it hurt being burnt like that?

I can see small grains of the bread changing color to a light shade of brown overwhelming the white pigment of the bread. I look down at my skin, what would happen if my hand was in the toaster, would it slowly go darker? What a way would it be to just die that way, slowly burning alive. Maybe hell is like this, a torturous never ending burn to your skin that enters deep in my bones. I’m not sure about me going to hell, I know I don’t think about God that much but I don't do anything wrong. I get good grades, I never give into peer pressure and even if I do get mad at my parents I still listen to them.

“DINGGGGGGG” the toaster alarm goes of and gives me a shock. Wow 5 minutes already? I was just thinking about what kind of person I was and didn't even notice I left the bread in the toaster for too long. I can see smoke fumes coming from the side of the toaster and as I peek in I can see, I did it again. I completely burnt my toast and it is completely black like charcoal. “Oh my lord, you didn't even eat breakfast yet and you burnt your toast, that’s it I’ll make you some pancakes” my mom exclaimed to me as she is bringing down the laundry. Yes, pancakes, pancakes are good. That will stop me from thinking about my belief in this world.

Reflection #2

So for this week we learned about mundanes. Which is basically something that is boring. Something that we probably do every single day and we find it extremely boring. So as our starting challenge what we did was look into what type of things do we find boring that we do everyday for example: Brushing your teeth, changing clothes, ride in the car on the way to school.

From there we looked at the story of paint drying and a bomb exploding. Miss Abena asked us which one do we think would be more interesting. So obviously the first thing that came to my mind was a bomb exploding. You know the term "boring as paint drying". That was came to me because imagine actually watching paint dry. How boring can that be? It seems like such a pointless and mundane event. While a bomb exploding would mean a huge event with a lot of things happening, from people screaming to a huge explosion to policemen arriving to the area.

So when I read the story with was quite a surprise that I found the paint drying story actually much more interesting. I realized that the writer managed to take such a small and expand the thoughts of the character in the story which makes me relate to the character more. As I am hearing her thoughts on life. People are always in a hurry that they don't have time to think for themselves and this even of watching paint dry makes them open their eyes and truly reflect on their lives. While I found the bomb exploding story really boring. Even though it was a huge event there was too many things going on. The person was give very brief description to catch up to the event and it was all a rush. I found it entirely boring as the person was basically describing what was happening instead of writing about his or hers feelings. So in a way as a reader we cant relate to her.

We were about to write our on story of something really mundane and make it seem so interesting but unfortunately we ran out of time. I learned that to make something interesting you must write about:

1) what is happening to its surrounding

2) Reflect on what the character is thinking

3) Expand the event into something deep and thoughtful

4) It is in your hands to make the story either boring or interesting

With that in mind, I am now going to look more into life whenever doing something mundane that way I can reflect on who I am as a person more!

Clause Poster and Peer Assesment

My Personal Target: To produce a poster that has detailed explanation. At times I tend to use simple explanation and I should further explore it. To make sure I also don’t waffle on and keep my explanation precise and concise.

Comment (Lena) : I think you managed to achieve your personal target of making your explanations concise and not trying to waffle on. Your poster was also detailed and had examples of each type of clause. There were some grammar and spelling issues but other than that the poster was informative and eye-catching,

Reflection #1

For the first two days of class we basically set up our blogs and email addresses. We then started to do some writing challenges. We were given a sentence then we had to expand it as much as we can making sure there is quality instead of quantity. This was done during a time limit and I felt that I did quite well during these exercises. We started to create our own mark scheme for the posters that were assigned to us for homework on English technical features. So far we have just been getting used to the new format of a new english class. While writing the mark scheme I found it quite interesting to do it. As to write one you must slowly build up your point from "Development" "Intermediate" and then "Expert". Through this I managed to gain the skill of how I should set up any assignment and aim to that "expert" level. It was a great week to kick off our preparation for our English exams.

Writing Challenge (Shark)

I went outside to have a swim in the ocean. I needed to get away from my family just for awhile, so I sneaked outside of my window to go to the beach. My house was near the beach and I knew if anything were to happen I could escape easily. But as I swam my worries started to drift away and I was quite far from the shore. It was a beautiful night and the sound of the sea was so pleasant. Suddenly, I heard a very large swish in the waters. “What was that!” I exclaimed to myself. I looked around to see if I was in any danger. Then right before my eyes I saw a fin of the shark moving around me, circling as if I was his new prey. I swam as fast a I could to get away from the shark and headed back to the beach.

Panting, out of breath and my heart beating heavily; I stopped for a minute to see if the shark was still after me. I was now closer to the shore. I kept on swimming until I could feel the grains of rocks and shells beneath me and quickly ran out of the waters. Then I felt something stinging from the side of my ankles. I looked down and saw that the shark had actually bit me! I was that close to being eaten alive and so close to death. But I managed to escape the shark and walk away safely.

I walked quite steadily towards my house, even though I had this huge shark bite on my ankle and called out for help to my family. I could hear my dad rushing down the stairs and in less than a minute he came bursting through the door. “Where on earth did you go to? I was worried sick!” he saw my ankle seriously injured then stopped yelling. We headed straight a way to the hospital to check my injury. That is the story of how I escaped death.