Third Quarter Reflection

Questions: In what area do you think you made your biggest improvements in English Language Arts? What is something you have accomplished this quarter that you are proud of? What has been the most challenging part of 3rd Quarter for you and what did/can you do help overcome this?

    The area in English Language Arts that I think I made the biggest improvement is in poetry. My biggest improvement was in poetry because now I can write different kind of poems properly. Also before doing this poetry unit, I didn't really like and cared about poetry at all. Now I actually like poetry because you can they can be really meaningful. I feel like that is the area where I made the biggest improvement.

    Something that I have accomplished this quarter that I am proud of is getting mainly 4's on my vocabulary tests. I am proud of this because before I would try to get a 3, but now I want to get that 4. For me getting a 4 means that I really know understand what the word means. Now I an add eight new words to my vocabulary. I also like getting a 4 on the roots and prefixes, because now when I see a word with a root or prefix I know what it means. 

    The most challenging part of 3rd Quarter was doing the Poetry Reflection blog. I know I said that poetry was the area I made the biggest improvement in, but it was hard to explain everything without rambling on too much. I had a lot to say, but I knew that most of what I wanted to say would be off topic. It was hard for me to limit myself so the blog wouldn't be saying things that had nothing to do with the questions. That is what I believe was the most challenging part of 3rd Quarter for me.

Literature Circle Blog-The Giver

Literature Circle-The Giver

EQ: What happens when someone is released?

My essential question is what happens to people when they get released? It ties in with  The Giver by Lois Lowry because it is a big question that Jonas has in most of the book. Jonas is very curious about what happens to the elderly, babies, and just citizens who get released. Just like everyone else he thought that being released was normal thing that everyone would have to experience when they get older. In the end it turned out that they actually give people a shot that kills them and then throw them down a chute. Realizing that everyone who ever released a person, including his father, is actually a murder.

The article that we thought related to The Giver was “North Korea: Life in cultural isolation” by BBC News, because in both communities everything controlled. The article stated, “When asked which world leaders - other than the Dear Leader - he admired, he quickly answered ‘Stalin and Mao Zedong!’ However, the students had not heard of Nelson Mandela.” ( paragraph 7-8) North Koreans only know about their leader who was a great person, not any other people who did great things in the World like Nelson Mandela or Malala Yousafzai. In The Giver the only leaders that they know is the Committee of Elders, because they choose everything for their citizens. The Committee of Elders pick where their citizens live, who they marry, their kids, and their jobs, they don’t choose anything.

North Korea and the community in The Giver don’t just have similarities, they also have differences. In The Giver all of the citizens know that there is other communities, but don’t know there is animals or different climates. In the article, North Koreans know that other countries exist, but they aren’t allowed to know what is happening in those countries. The article states, “North Korean TV only broadcasts hagiographies of the two leaders and pictures celebrating the country's army, model farms, model villages etc.” (paragraph 17) Just like they don’t know what happens in other countries, those same countries don’t know what is happening inside of North Korea a lot.