period 2

*NAVIGATE:

Home
MeneMAC
Hawaiian History
Biology

*STANDARDS

IDEAS ORGANIZATION WORD CHOICE
VOICE

*Mrs. Sueoka

English is after media and it's convenient because my first two classes are in the same rooms (air-conditioning is also a big plus). Well on to the actual subject. Our very first assignment for English was to write a letter to Mrs. Sueoka about myself, my interests, and what I wanted to learn this year. Then I made a collage that showed I was unique. It turns out that Mrs. S doesn't love birds either. We learned how to critique a person's paper in specific ways so that he/she can better their work, like in this exercise. If you just say, "Your first paragraph wasn't good" you aren't really criticizing it in a helpful way. Explain how you can improve it like, "What were the different things that you did that made it not so boring?" We did things like "I Wonder" where we choose an article, item, advertisement, etc. and make questions about it. Here is an example of one I Wonder that I did about BAN deodorant. I've also done writing prompts with various topics. Writing prompts give you two scenarios or argumentative topics and you pick one to write about. My Earth brochure was one of the options for Writing Prompt #1.
So far this quarter, we've taken a midquarter exam about on the 6 traits where we read two stories and critiqued it by making specific comments on how to improve. Our midquarter revision was taking something we've wrote and revising it. We took the final written piece assignment as our exam this past week. We were given multiple topics in class and we had to write about one right then and there. I think the funnest activity was the outside reading card because I like assignments that let me be creative and playing around with Photoshop kept me pretty entertained.
An achievement I'm proudest of was being able to write a decent paper. At first it was just a draft and I learned (with the help of writing assessments) how to transform it into a better piece of writing. My Earth brochure paper wasn't very strong idea-wise in the very first draft, but after many times of re-writing it and with new suggestions on how to make it better, it turned out to be better than I had thought. A major challenge was the creative writing topics. In the past I pretty much did only argumentative papers. I knew how to give evidence that supported my side. After my first writing about the brochure I kind of know how to make an interesting story now.
My goals for next quarter are to simply take on what Mrs. S has in store for us. I'd like to obtain that good writing ability that some people have. You know some of those amazing sentences that are just so well written it knocks your socks off? Yeah I want to be able to write like that.