The Conclusion

Of all my blogs I think that my favorite was the one where we got to write in formal or informal diction. We got to be really creative, and it was fun to show our writing in a unique way. Over the course of this year my writing has improved a lot. I have gotten to be a better writer throughout this year, and my blog really showcases that. In a post from September I wrote “As we got older she began to talk more and express her opinions. My mom told me a few years ago, that when we were little we were playing some sort of imaginary game, as kids often do, I was explaining to my sister all these ideas, and things we could do, and she just said, "No, this is how it's going to be." And she told me. My little sister told me what to do. And I listened.” In that quotation, pay more attention to the quality of writing than the actual content. It shows that while my writing wasn’t bad, it was just simple. Now I have more creative ways to write, I write better.

            I have written a lot about the books we have read, and analyzing those books. At the beginning of the year, there was a lot of To Kill A Mockingbird posts, and that led into my outside reading, Animal Farm into The Importance of Being Earnest, into Great Expectations, and so on. Anyone reading my blog would see that I am an avid English student and that I enjoy it. My blog really shows how I get into my work and enjoy what I’m working on. From viewing all the posts that I have written it reflects that I have been able to become a better writer during this year.

            My best blogs are the ones where I compare a book to something in my life I know my life, and can compare those two things really well. I think in ways where I can understand deeper meaning of things better if I can put into perspective of my life. My writing in that area has always been pretty good, but it has gotten better over the year, and having the blog to be able to keep track of that through the blog is really special. I will be able to have it to remember what we did in Honors English this year, and how much I learned and grew as a writer.

Memorable Assignment

The assignment that I liked most this year was the Outside Reading Project first semester. I really liked this because it gave us some freedom from which to choose what we wanted to do. I read The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver. I liked that we got to read it at a pace set by our specific group so that we could all talk about it together. I liked that there were multiple books to choose from so instead of talking to the whole class about it we had our little groups to discuss with. That was fun because I got to really enjoy the book with a smaller group rather than the big class where I don't get to talk about it as much.
  The Bean Trees was a pretty easy book to get through, but in my group some people were having trouble keeping up with the reading because of their extra-curriculars and other homework. I maintained being able to read and became sort of a leader for my group because I was always done with the readings. When I was always prepared it was fun for me to come to class to talk about the book because I was up to date. This project was my favorite thing all year because it gave us freedom within the restrictions to do what we wanted. Since we could choose the book we wanted to read, it was more fun to talk about with the other people who wanted to read the book. It's not always as fun to discuss a book when half the people don't like, or want to read it. When everyone in the group want to read the book its much more enjoyable to discuss!

Experience with Poetry

      In the past, poetry has been good for me. In elementary school we would make those little books filled with poetry that we wrote, and some by other authors that we read in class. I still have my old books, and I still like to look at them. I think they are really cute and are really nice to have as a memory of the class, and as a bookmark for how I wrote poetry as a kid. Though those are fond memories, my best experience with poetry was last year.
     Last year, we got to read a lot of poetry from all different kinds of books, and then write our own poems. We then put them in our own poetry anthologies and read some for the class. Part of learning to write, read, and perform poetry was just reading poems to other people. We did this cool thing where we would do partner poems. We would have a partner and we would read the poem together and then tell it to the class. I remember it being really cool. The change in voice between the two people reading it, and the emphasis it puts on the different parts of the poems because of the changes. It was really cool to hear how other people interpreted the poem, based on how they said it.
   That unit really changed how I viewed poetry. Before then, I wasn't interested in it. I liked reading novels better because I didn't think that poetry had a deeper meaning besides just the words. I liked the imagery in poems, but I didn't think of anything else inside the poem. Analyzing poems has really made me respect poems because they are like novels in that they have theme, and a meaning, but they can manage to get it across much more quickly and often much more subtly. That is something that is really cool about poetry and why I like it.
  Right now, I do like poetry. I hope that this unit will be fun and give me more reason to like it. I think that it;s fun because it's short, and so analyzing it doesn't take a long time, but there can still be a lot of things to notice.