1st Quarter Reflection 10/17

                                         40 Book-Challenge and Blog Progress

        I seem to be getting a slow start into my book challenge and I have greatly increased my writing skills in my current blogs. In present time I am currently on my 7th book for the 40-Book Challenge and I try to pick challenging books in order to improve my writing skills. Last year, I remember that I used to choose old pieces of writing, like Pale Fire and Frankenstein. Although they are challenging, this year I wanted to focus more on choosing literature that I usually don't read. For example this year I finished reading Paper Towns by John Green. I've heard about this author before, especially last years but I never imagined myself reading one of his books. Since my choice of literature changed, my blogs also seemed to change. This year in my blogs I focus more on analyze the author's writing and how the plot of a story impacts the character. This year we focus more on writing techniques, character development, and analyzing literary devices in our books. I think that these new prompts have opened up a different view of the book. I notice specific details that I usually wouldn't have noticed.

                                       What have I learned from the world?

        In past years I am aware of the news and what happens in the world around me. This year it seems that I have taken awareness to a higher level. In class this year we have learned a lot about the Ebola disease and more recently the threat that ISIS has against the United States. When I look back at last year I would look at the current news and easily forget about it. I wouldn't do any further research on a specific topic but that easily changed this year. When I was introduced to Ebola, I felt like this disease would be easily forgotten in about a week. In later weeks I seemed a bit surprised that we started talking about it in class. When the topic arose that week, I learned that this disease was even more deadlier than I thought. The past couple of weeks I learned a lot about world issues and how those problems can have a huge impact for people around the world. The last important skill that I learned was how current issues can be connected to events that have happened in the past. In the TED talk of this week I learned how news can be connected to famous historical text or stories. 

                          Improvement of Research and the Benefit of These New Strategies

        I've noticed that this year my research skills are slowly improving by collecting information from multiple sources instead of one. The new strategies, such as looking for a writer's techniques and development throughout the story has benefited me in a positive way. When we did the TV research project, I was surprised that it takes more than a couple of sources to support your argument. My argument and claim was that TV does impact the viewer and sometimes other forms of technology. When I used to do research projects, I would usually only include my opinions or just a bit of interpretation. The literary strategies that we learned in class help me understand the character's feelings and actions a bit more than last year. I  understood the reason why they were acting a certain way and the purpose of having them in the plot line. When I improved my research skills in class it also helped me outside of school.

                                         

I added this quote to show how my skills improved throughout this first quarter. I think my life in school did get better with change. The things we have learned in class has changed my skills in a positive way. The research skills got better because of change especially with my interpretation and sources.