THE FINAL BLOG!!!!!!!!!

........As I was going back through my blogs, I noticed that I have less and less errors in my writing as the year progressed. I also noticed that my writing style has changed a little throughout the year.
........Blogging this year has been a very different, and fun, way to do homework. I sometimes lose track of due dates, so remembering to do the weekly blog was hard. Especially since it wasn't on paper. It was usually hard for me to come up with a response to what Mrs. Gilman had posted because I did it late-ish at night. This is probably the latest blog that I have posted all year because I've been sick and I couldn't get myself off of the couch to do it.
........William Shakespeare said, "My words fly up, my thoughts remain below; Words without thoughts never to heaven go." My writing in general tends to not show my full understanding or feeling towards the subject. But I thought that I did pretty well at showing my understanding of things on this blog. So, I guess that Shakespeare's quote more contradicts my point, but it describes my other writing.

____I would consider myself a more-accomplished essay writer than I was last year, but I'm not perfect. The literary analysis tools we have learned have helped me go beyond literal ideas and questions. I think literary analysis will help me write better-quality essays and reports on books in the future.

____I need to work on getting more commentary into my essays. I used to have a lot of commentary and not too many concrete details. I need to find a good balance without overloading one or the other. I think that my comma and general punctuation could use more work, even though the spell cheker can find some errors.

Summer Reading List!

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith.
It sounds like a good twist on the original.
1984 by George Orwell.
My mom liked it, and it sounds like 2012.

Theme and Motif: Fate

____I looked up the astrology for when I was born. I am a Gemini, but I already knew that. The sign for Gemini are twins. The symbol looks like II. I looked up something called a birth chart andI put in my birthday and time and place and it made a birth chart. The birth chart showed where the planets and sun were aligned when I was born. Gemini are supposed to be lively and free. They're supposed to be happy and creative. Gemini are known to live life to the fullest. I think that most of these traits are true for me. There are some traits that I know don't fit me like how Gemini are supposed to be religious.
____Romeo and Juliet talk about how the stars determine their fate, and how they were meant to be from the start. I found many things about Gemini that aren't true for me, but some of them are true. I think that Romeo and Juliet fell in love too quickly. They rely on the stars and fate too much. Silly things like how Gemini are supposed to favor the color green over other colors being true for me, might not be as life-changing as a true fate being wrong.

EXTRA CREDIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

At the beginning of the school year, I was really expecting a lot of creative writing, and a lot of reading. Yeah, the reading is not my favorite, but I can cope. I can also cope with no creative writing, since I do it on my own. I didn't expect so many essays, but once I get into them, I really get into them, so much that I have to have both my mom and dad go through it for mistakes, because I am really bad at catching my own mistakes.
I'd expected a lot more of "go home and do it on your own" kinds of things, but there's a lot of in-class group activities.
I learned that I don't know how to use commas properly most of the time, and that I use dash- or hyphens- or whatever they are way too often, just look back ten words, and there you go.
I didn't think that I would ever have a class in hall five, but I did, and it's really hard to push through the crowd to go up the stairs, but it's really easy to follow the natural flow of the people that are going down the stairs.

Skits

1) When Miss Havisham catches on fire.
-Miss Havisham, Pip,
-It's a good scene because it has a lot of action and it's funny.

2) When the police-ish people come to arrest the convicts.
-Two convicts, Pip, Joe, Mrs. Joe, police people,
-It's a good scene because it relates to other parts of the book and it has a lot of action in it.

3) When Pip gets caught by the convict.
-Pip, convict,
-It's a good scene because it starts the whole story and would be fun to act out.

Great Expectations

I don't understand who The Avenging Phantom is. Why does he/she/it keep appearing throughout the book? Why did he/she/it come into the story in the first place. Also, what does he/she/it do to help the story? Pip will just be thinking about something and then The Avenging Phantom will say something and then go away until he/she/it feels like coming back into the story.

Post 03-10-10

_____I didn't understand the newspaper aricle section that clearly on page 231. I don't know what it has to do with Pip or the story. And then he starts talking about the North pole and eskimos. Why? Then he says something about a patron, and I don't even know what that is. This whole section was very confusing for me.
_____I think that a patron might be like a customer... ...maybe? I still don't know what eskimos and the North pole have to do with anything. Also, I am still pretty confused about the importance of this article and how it is relevant to the story.

Group Writing

The most obvious ways that Wilde portrays the motif dishonesty in his play is through the characters’ physical actions and what they say. When Lady Bracknell is interviewing Jack to see if he is worthy of marrying Gwendolyn, no matter what he says, she seems to make it even more impressive than it should be. Wilde uses this scene to tell how the Victorian society is always lying to make themselves higher than the rest. Then, Algernon goes bunburying to meet Cecily, and he pretends to be Jack’s made-up brother, Ernest. Making up a fake identity is a bad form of dishonesty, especially in the case of Jack and Algernon, where they’ve both gone bunburying under the name of Ernest to get married. Wilde uses dishonesty in bunburying to show how often the Victorian society lies, and how big of lies that they are. Also, Miss Prism never told anyone that she left a baby in a bag. Wilde did this to both give an explanation to why Jack was found in a bag and later adopted, and to show how people in high society hide both big and little secrets from others to make themselves accepted. Wilde’s incorporation of dishonesty and untruthfulness in this play makes it more interesting and gives it excitement and suspense.

Poetry Out Loud

I watched Allison Strong perform William Shakespeare's "Sonnet CXXX; My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like The Sun" Allison put her hands on her hips to look proper because the poem was about a mistress who was proper. She talked in a kind of a British accent to emphasize the properness of the poem.

She sounded like she was complimenting on her mistress' beauty, but really she was saying that she was disgusting and ugly. She was disguising her complaints so that they would sound like compliments. It has irony because she sounds like she is saying compliments with that tone of voice.

Life Lessons

When I was about two years old, my little brother, Jack, was born. I thought that he was a kind of new toy or a baby doll because, when he was starting school, I would call him little innocent names like "baby," or "lap-snatcher." My mom would warn me that if I continued that, he would grow up and be even worse back to me. She would tell me that someday he would be taller than me and would be able to tackle me like how we played when we were little. He would also tease me like I would back then.





But no matter what my mom said, I still called my little brother names and made fun of him... ...Now I regret doing that. Now the annoyances are constant. Just a few moments ago, he was in the computer room and I was working on this assignment, and he really wanted to read it. (He still does.) He kept insisting that it was illegal to post something without the other person's permission. He kept it up until finally my mom told him to stop. These are the times when I regret bothering him when we were little.

The Alchemist: Imagery

The author uses imagery in his novel because it would be fairly hard to describe how Santiago "hears" some inanimate things tell him what to do. For example, he sometimes tries to listen to his heart, and then his heart actually talks to him. This happens many times throughout the story. The things that do it are his heart, the desert, the wind, the sun, and the Soul of the World.
It would be challenging to try to tell the reader how Santiago can use signs to get messages from those inanimate things. So the author uses personifacation to make it easier for him to tell the reader about the signs that Santiago is getting from those inanimate things that tell him what to do and/or how to do it.

I like The Alchemist so far. It isn't the book with the most attention grabbing introduction, but it is kind of intriguing. It's not that hard to get into, but I'm still wondering why it's called The Alchemist.
I'm not sure what the most dominant literary element in my book is because it has mostly just been talking and explaining about how he came to be a shepard.
So far, the only literary element has been "scared to death." and such. So that isn't that much of a literary element since it's just a maxim, but this book is about this kid's journey as a shepard, so there might not be many literary elements in it.
The tone is kind of somber because he talks about how his father wanted him to be a priest, but he ended up wanting to travel around and see new places, and the only way to travel that his family could afford to fund was being a traveling shepard.

When I start a book in which the first few pages aren't that appealing to me, I usually try to keep reading because sometimes they get better. Sometimes, however, I just can't get past those first few pages, so I have do put that book down and start another book.
When I just can't find a good place and/or time to read a book, I usually either read at night or during school when we have silent reading time.
My reading style is mostly fantasy because I like stories and books that are about magic wizards and dragons and fairies (Oh my!).
I like to read fiction because it is sometimes funny to think about what it would be like if I were the person riding on a dragon's back, or taking journeys through time.