Moooo Ranch

OKKKKKKK...How I would describe this is a "collage" of things from Animal Farm.  The raven/crow represents the propaganda used in the Russian Revolution and the book.  The connected papers are my example of foreshadowing with the commandments.  The sword is a representation of power and struggle and the barn represents power like we talked about in class.  The glue cart is the irony when Boxer is killed by his role model.  The two relatively straight lines show how the entire book is a parrallel to the Russian Revolution.

Echo by Daryl Hine

The poem Echo by Daryl Hine is about a heartbroken girl, crying in a wood.  Specifically, Echo from the greek myth about Narcissus. This is one of my favorite greek myths and I noticed the symbolism and relation between the myth and the poem.  The poem also reminded me of a ballet I like, which relates to my life.  The meaning is about heartbreak and being alone.

I am going to show the meaning of the poem by speaking slowly and depressed.  The poem has a lot of sad feelings and I will convey that by not having a lot of energy or movements.  I will show the meaning very straightforward but not using many facial or hand gestures.

Yeah I did extra:) shocker!

The skill I needed to work on was word choice.  I improved my word choice from the last paragraph to this one by varying my words and picking more creative ones.  I also went back and proofread my paragraph and changed a few things to make it better.  I think my quotes and commentary related to the topic better instead of just to eachother.

Poetry OUT LOUD!

Part 1:
1. Echo by Daryl Hine
2. Life by Edith Wharton
3. Invictus by Wiliam Ernest Henley
4.  Dancers Exercising by Amy Clampitt and In a London Drawingroom

Part 2:
1. My two favorites were Echo and Life because they were mysterious and had old English in them.
2. I didn't like Invictus as much because it was gory and didn't make sense.
3. I would choose Echo.
4. I thought it was kind of ethereal and musical. It flowed well and had a dreamy feeling.

Part 3:
1. The part that will be easy will be memorization, using feeling, finding one that speaks to me and  difficulty of the poem.
2. The hardest part will be conveying emotion, but not over acting.  Also, projecting my voice and understanding the poem completely.

Part 4:
1. Jackson Hille: He understands the poem and adjusts his body language and tone to match it.
2.Shawntay A. Jackson: She uses lots of feeling in the poem but is not over dramatic.


Part 5:
I am going to memorize "Echo" by Daryl Hine. The poem is very dreamy and fairy-like and I love it. I think I will do pretty well because I am in drama and that will help with memorization and emotion.  I may not be in the top ten though.  I'm sure I will be nervous before but it will be fun.  The website was very helpful and I found my poem quickly.

Extra

The most important skill I learned this year was to look deeper into the writing.  Before I had used symbolism but I hadn't thought of whole passages as a symbol.  I had never used diction, tone, word chooice and point of view to examine the author's view on the subject.  I also learned to look for deeper meanings and symbolism in the passages.

Spiders of the Sea

Until the discussion, I hadn't thought of the lobsters as symbols for people.  Other members of the class brought up the symbolism such as the judgement and ultimate demise which made me start thinking. Another thing I hadn't considered was the significance of the extrordinary, symbolic lobsters in a normal store.  The last thing I heard that was influential was the idea of the lobsters. Why lobsters? Why not crabs or some other animal?

The lobsters were in a normal setting to demonstrate the monotany of human life.  The author thinks the way we live leaves a lot to be desired.  Normally, when an author wants to symbolize people with something, they pick an object or life form that is very relatable.  Lobsters are not relatable or relevant in any way.  Not many people would pick as something they can relate to or understand.

Paragraphhhhhhh Critiqueeeeeeee!!!!

I think one skill some people need to work on is narrowing their topics.  A lot of papers read had wide concrete details such as covering racism and judgement of Boo Radley.  Another thing that was mentioned was the point sentance leading into the quote.  Instead of saying what the quote was about, the sentance should state what the concrete detail proves about the topic.  One very important thing that should be improved is proofreading.  The paper could be complete but there is one mistake that could lower your grade.  Skills that are important for essay writing are patience, good word choice and supportive concrete details.  Patience is important because to proofread, you have to be persistant enough to reread your paper.  Word choice is important because two people could have the same topic/conclusion, concrete details, and commentary and the person with better word selection would have a more advanced paper.  If your concrete details don't back up your thesis, you can't have good commentary or details to support the topic.

Skills I personally need to work on are word choice, more, detailed commentary and proofreading.  My word choice is very basic and could be improved to make me sound more smartical (just kidding thats not a word!).  I used some words repetitively and they could have been more eloquent.  My commentary was at a very basic, minimal level and I could have added more ideas and thoughts.  Also, it could have backed up my topic and been more solid.  Proofreading. Well ok, I have no patience for anything so reading a paper- that I already spent more time than I wanted to just writing it- is a challenge for me.  I tune out what I am reading and don't catch some mistakes.

Thou shall use thy diction!!

My Halloween costume this year is Mafia Spy Woman.  My original idea was to ignore Halloween, but don any old thing we had in our abode for handing out treats to the young ones.  I was then invited to a costume gathering and had very little time to throw together a costume.  I considered many outfits and requested ideas from my family and friends.

The first person I got opinions from was my mother.  She gave me two ideas: making a duct tape costume and a jellyfish.  Making a duct tape costume in only one week seemed like too much labor.  For the jellyfish costume she suggested I locate an umbrella and attach streamers to it.  She even had the courage to suggest I get a clear umbrella because "I could have sooo much fun with it!"  There are a few things in the wrong with that.  First, would I fancy carrying that umbrella around all night? I do not care to think so.  Second, am I a mere five year-old?  Where did you get that idea, mother? Family Fun?  No way would I receive any respect for that outfit.  I talked to another friend who wanted me to be a bumblebee which was not that bad of an idea but I had no time.  Finally, when my friend was driving me to ballet, I suggested that she should assist me with finding a costume idea.  She rambled on with ideas until I heard the golden word: Mafia.  It was supreme! I had found my Hallow's Eve costume!

 

My costume consists of a black cocktail dress underneath a light blue trench coat.  I will acessorize with a fedora, black high heels and a Nerf gun.  On the actual day of Halloween, I am chaperoning my little neighbors around the vicinity our community.  It will be cold and I may include a pair of black tights in my undercover fashion statement.  To carry my rewards for traversing the neighborhood in painful shoes, I am planning on pilfering my mother's briefcase.  I am expecting this will be a succesfull Halloween.

My Own Little World

I have never really LOVED writing but I've always had fun with it by adding in my own personal style.  I have a few favorites spanning from third grade until ninth. Enjoy!

9th: My favorite writing assignment (this year) is the first day letter.  I enjoyed writing that because I could add my own commentary and ideas.  I also liked the topic of the letter; ME!  I find it easy and fun to write about myself because I know tons about me!  This may sound conceited but really? Don't we all feel the same way?

6th: This year we started learning about how to write haikus.  Again, poems and I aren't the best of friends so I wasn't super duper excited.  As we got deeper into them, I started to enjoy writing them and they came easier to me.  I wrote about summer, asian things (because thats what all haikus are about), beluga whales and my neighbors. 

2nd-3rd:  These two years I enjoyed two different writing assignments. I had the same teacher both years and we had this one big class project every year where we would build a miniature city in the center of our classroom.  We would divide the floor into nine sections and split into groups of three or four.  Each group would get a square and every member got to design three buildings to put in the square.  We had to write about the buildings and their purpose.  This was fun because we got to build the stores and buisness out of shoe boxes and show the class our interests.  The other assignment I liked was free writing.  We got time to write our own fictional stories and share them with the class if we wanted.  Some of my favorite stories were ones about my classmates and me in the future and different mysteries we encountered.  Another one I remembered was a story about a giant, evil chicken nugget.  I was a weird child.  Many people I know would argue that I still am.

This concludes my writing history.  I hope I didn't bore you.  If you have any questions comment or ask me in person!

Wuthering Heights: The Story of Annoying People

So far there hasn't been a major conflict in Wuthering Heights.  There have been small conflicts between the characters but everything has been resolved quickly. The characters are mostly whiny people who sit around and create drama.  The narrorator, Ellen Dean, will fill everyone in on other character's buisness.  I suppose that is her job as the narrorator but I think she should let the readers know secrets and what's happening but  not the other characters.  My opinion of Cathy is she is way too controlling for her own good and she either needs to tell Heathcliff she loves him or let it go.  I'm only on chapter 11 and it's starting to get on my nerves.  Hindley needs to get over his aversion to Heathcliff because he's not going anywhere.  Plus, violence isn't the answer unless you are in the army, which he's not.  And Heathcliff just seems to be in the middle of everyone's problems.  If he doesn't want Cathy to believe he is below her, he should go out and get a job.  Cathy and Heathcliff's relationship is mostly a waste of time because they love eachother too much to care about other people and how they are hurting them.  Books are made up of characters and when these characters are obnoxious, there isn't much you can do.

I am going to pick characters for my final project because they are crucial to any story, especially Wuthering Heights. The only conflicts are between the characters in this book and there would not be much of a story without these characters and their flaws.

This book relates to the Gossip Girl series because their characters both ruin eachother's lives.  Their main purpose is to be better than their peers.  These stories are set 200 years apart and they have the same message: Gossip Hurts.

I don't have very many ideas for the final project except I know I want to focus on the character's traits.  Not what they did in the story but their personalities, flaws and good traits.  Maybe I will think about what happened if they lived in the present and how people would treat them now or something similar to that.  It's gonna be interesting either way...

Expiriences with a Mockingbird -\:{)

When I started reading TKAM I was so focused on answering the questions I didn't enjoy the story.  After about five pages I realized that wasn't going to work and I started reading the story.  When I was in fourth or fifth grade, the parents of one of my friends mentioned to my writing group that this book was the best one she had ever read.  Another boy in my block class read it last year and got similar results.  Similar to many other people, I found the beginning of the book slow.  Most of the reason I kept pushing through it instead of procrastinating was the reactions I had witnessed from other people. 

My mom is also a lawyer and although she hasn't practiced criminal law for many years, some of her expiriences were similar to Atticus's.  Years ago, she had a case defending a girl who was accused of bringing drugs to her jailed boyfriend.  This girl was guilty and my mom knew it.  She was in the same situation as Atticus when she had to put in effort even though it was a lost cause. 

The theme that stood out to me was not judging someone until you get to know them.  One year in elementary school two new girls joined my class and one of the girls wore pink and was blonde and looked and acted like me.  The other girl had dark hair and liked different things than I did. I thought that I would be better friends with the blonde one but eventually, the dark haired girl and I became best friends. 

Ballet Boo

My Boo Radley would have to be ballet.  It has helped me develop from just a four year-old to a fourteen year-old.  It was and will always be intimidating because it becomes increasingly more difficult.  For example, this year I moved into the advanced class which is the highest and hardest level.  The other members of my class are the best dancers in our studio.  I also feel intimidated during auditions because I know that my teachers are watching my every move and evauluating it.  It helped me develop because it has been a creative outlet, form of excersise and my passion.  I developed social skills by being confident in myself during performances and auditions.  I have made life long friends and relationships too. 

My First Post!!!!

Basically my blog is my place to share my weird thoughts on English and otherwise with all you lovely people without seeing you reaction if I creep you out too much (I tend to do that sometimes). Of course I will do all the assignments and such but that probably won't be all.  Enjoy!

I really love reading and I sometimes enjoy writing.  I am a pretty good English student because I work hard and enjoy reading.  Someone who follows my blog will be fairly entertained and can expect some random, very Emma-like stuff.  I will enlighten the online world by posting MY opinions and how I feel about the characters and their actions. College bound students need English for entry essays and missing just one year of it can greatly impact your writing ability.  English is very important for everyone, not just college bound students because it helps you understand other subjects such as math and it adds to a form of entertainment.  In math you have to use English to figure out what certain words mean and decipher sentances.  Music and poetry would not be possible without English.  I think English will help my grammar so when I'm talking to people I won't sound like an idiot when I speak.  Also, it will improve my understanding of other subjects by helping me decode words and understand their meanings so I can get what they are describing.