ELA 8th Grade
First Semester
For this semester, I worked on Personal Essays and I experimented with writing in a way that I thought was a professional tone. I learned that I am not fit for that tone and I should try other methods. I also learned whilst trying to come up with a title for my personal essay the meaning of the flower hyacinth.
Second Semester
In this semester, I learned about editorials, the multiple purposes that it serves and I was also able to write one myself that wasn't at all interesting. I learned that through editorials, you can persuade, inform, entertain, express how one feels and much more. As my teacher have had said, this is what makes ELA unique; it is because there isn't one clear answer that you must arrive at but multiple "answers" that are welcomed, opened to and isn't incorrect. Through this editorial unit I was able to get a sense of that. Additionally to the editorials, I read "The Diary of Anne Frank". It was a new experience because I don't read historical fiction or non fiction books and what we read here connected a lot to what we learned in Social Studies.
Third Semester
I read "A Wrinkle in Time" by Madeleine L'Engle and even though I read it once I think I was able to notice more deeper thoughts (my table mates and I along with the class and others actually created a "deep thought") because of the group and class discussions. For example, the difference between the citizens of Camazotz and the Beasts in the other planet was one metaphor (I think you can say it is a metaphor) that fascinated me a lot. This is so because the citizens in Camazotz looked so "normal" and familiar to the main characters, Meg, Charles Wallace and Calvin, yet these main characters weren't really welcomed and were rather ignored. Whereas in the other planet, the Beasts, though weird looking and of a completely different kind, were absolutely not hostile but warm, provided hospitality, kind, caring, etc. This shows that appearance does not relate to personalities. I thought that the way the author represented that lesson was really nice.
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Another thing that I did this semester in this class was have reading groups on a dystopian book. For my group, I read the book "The House of The Scorpion" by Nancy Farmer and I found it really interesting. The books that I read (I don't read a lot of books though) are mostly books that revolve around a dystopian plot and this was the book was really the one that wasn't sticking to the cliche dystopian plot in my opinion. But it did have one common theme and that is: of difference and uprising, which came at the end and that kind of made me not so happy of the book as much as I was before. Even so, I found metaphors in the book that made me really fascinated in how the author incorporated that metaphor/how the metaphor was written. Through this dystopian book and the science fiction/fantasy book above, I learned that as a reader, I am a person who like metaphors and symbolism in books.
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Fourth Semester
I am reading William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. It's quite interesting because never have I read these pieces that uses these old-language-style as well as Shakespearean (weird how one can come up with their own language and make it as their own and an official language). I learned that thou and thee means you and thy and thine means your. At first, it was really difficult for me to understand the plot because of the unfamiliar grammar and now, though there is still some trouble understanding, I think I'm improving.
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