The book I read was called Because of Romek by David Faber. The book is about a Holocaust survivor's memoir and his journey throughout all 9 concentration camps. I think this book is very good. I would rate it a 4.5 out of 5. I really learned a lot more about what went on during that time and how people were treated. I also think this book is really good because I usually like reading memoirs because I find it really interesting to learn about how people get through the tough times they've gone through and its inspiring.
This play that we read in class is called "Antigone". It is written by Sophocles in or before 441 BC. This tragedy is about a princess who goes against the laws given by her uncle, who just became king, to give her brother a proper burial because she thinks it is the right thing to do. The king forbid anyone to touch his body and to let him rot where he died because he attacked the kingdom because he thought it was rightfully his. So she must choose between doing what she thinks is right or following the laws given by her king.
One of the books I want to read before the end of the year is The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I want to read this book because I watched the movie and it was pretty good so I assume that the book is even better. I also want to read this book because I heard that it was considered a classic and that intrigues me to read the book even more.
This is another book that I want to read because I started watching the show and its pretty good so I would assume again that the book is ever better. I also want to read this book because a few of my friends talk about it and say that the series is pretty good so I hope I can read this by the end of the year.
This novel is called The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. It is about a girl named Esperanza and her growing up on Mango st and about the influences around her. This book is unique because it is written in vignettes and each one is a chapter. They are also written as if they were poems. I really enjoyed this book because I liked learning about how other people grew up in different communities. Its interesting and sad to hear about how people had big dreams in the beginning but were those were taken away or lost as they were growing up. But some people continue to not give up if they have a purpose. I will probably read this book again.
Writing: Scarlet Ibis Essay A piece of my writing that I think shows my skills so far is a revised paragraph that I had in my Scarlet Ibis essay. A copy of the paragraph is below. The grade I got on my essay is a 2. I think I got the score I got because my writing is a little awkward. Like I think it's because it doesn't sound like how someone would actually because I just followed the guidelines. One of the things I think I need to work on is coming up with things on my own and making the writing flow and sound good. Third Paragraph of my essay:
The narrator sometimes takes advantage that he is able to push Doodle around and at times is mean to him. For example, when the narrator says, “There is within me a knot of cruelty borne by the stream of love, much as our blood sometimes bears the seed of our celebration, and at times I was mean to Doodle” (Hurst 2). This is before he forces Doodle to touch his mahogany casket. This shows that he is totally aware at the face that he is being cruel to his brother. This also shows that he just does it because it comes naturally to him meaning he doesn’t have a good reason to be mean to Doodle. In addition, the narrator always has a way to get Doodle to do things and thats why he says, “Then I’d paint for him a picture of us as old men, white haired, him with a long white beard and me still pulling him around in the go-cart. This never failed to make him try again” (Hurst 3). This shows the narrator gets Doodle to do things by saying that they will always be together which is a lie because the narrator is trying to get rid of him. This also shows that Doodle believes that the narrator is truly trying to help him but he’s not. So thats why the narrator sometimes takes advantage of the fact that he is able to easily push around his little brother.
This semester I have learned a lot more about writing formal essays. I now know that I should always use present tense when writing an essay on literature. I learned about the structure of them as well. I knew about the intro, body, and conclusion paragraphs but I did not know about concrete details and thesis statements and I am glad I do now. I also now know how to write a script for a play. Our script wasn't the one that was picked because it wasn't the best so it would be nice to know what make a good script and what doesn't. Here is a link to the one that my group and I worked on: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-7MexQVNijWtMXteRzXCt8Mk2x2dEunV-yHarl5LfBY/edit?usp=sharing My goals for next year are to learn more about writing poems. We did a little bit in the first semester but not much. So maybe I would be able to break down poems and compare them to see what they have in common and what the differences are. I would also like to be able to write better essays. Because even though I already know how to write them I can still use a lot of help.
Projects:
Playwriting Project In this project we created a play that discussed a social issue that we thought was important. We created it in groups of 4 or 5 and we were also required to write a script and create a storyboard. We split the work up so that each person had their own job. These plays were all greek tragedies so all of them ended not with a happy ending. All the plays had a tragic hero who thought they were doing a good thing but ended up making a bad decision that ended with consequences that effected a lot of people around them.
The Great Dionysus Project: A 9th Grade Tribute to Greek Tragedy: In this project we were to produce a play for the entire school and parents to see. The entire crew was our class and we each had our jobs to do to help create it like set crew, costumes, sounds/lighting, actors/actress, marketing, and advertising. The play that we produced was the one we chose from the ones that we created in our separate groups. The way we chose was by voting. The play that got chosen to be produced was called The Red Card. It is about a girl named Isabella who is tired of being pressured by her dad to play soccer and become a professional soccer player. She also has a boyfriend, Mark, who is part of a gang and he convinces her to join and that its a good idea to hang out with him and his crew and to ditch soccer practice. The consequences of her decisions cause bad things to happen to her and the people around her. The social issue is pressure on teens. This theme is that if you put a lot pressure onto people it can cause them to make bad decisions. My role in the production was being an actress. My character was Alexa, the gang leader. I was basically "the bad guy" in the play. Other than being an actress, I helped out with the set crew and painting the backdrop. What I learned throughout this entire project, is that when you have a group of people and you all work together to create something, it can turn out to be an amazing thing. The way our crew each had our own jobs and when we all collaborated our work into producing one thing it was great. This amazes me because at first when Erin told us that were were going to produce a play in a few weeks and was really surprised and I questioned whether we really could actually do that. But by the end, I regretted doubting our crew because we had a great crew, a director who knew what she was doing, and a teacher to guide us through it all and have it turn into this beautiful moment for us all to experience. And I know I will never forget about this project because I am honored to be able to even have a chance at doing this cause before, I would have never thought I would actually being part of and producing a great play.
This is the poster that we had for our play. It was created by Tzvi Weber and Alfredo Marquez.
San Diego Through the Lens The requirements of this project was to create a research binder with our group on the neighborhood that we chose. My group and I did Point Loma. After we did that we were to write a script for the narration that we would have for the documentary we would make after. When we finished getting our final narration approved, we moved onto actually putting the documentary together. My individual contributions to this project was that I was in charge of finding books with information we could put in our research binder and documentary. I also took most of the original pictures from all the places we went to in Point Loma. Because we were supposed to have a good portion of pictures being original and not all ones we got in the internet so that is what I did. I also was in charge of the history section in our documentary. Since the documentary was divided into parts, I chose the history one because I felt like I could write the most about it. I learned that when working on group I should choose group members that I could really rely on for getting their work done as soon as they could and not messing around all the time. But I did enjoy working on this because I thought it was really cool how we were allowed to go out to our neighborhoods during school so that we would have enough information to make our project good. I don't think most school would've done that so thats something I enjoyed doing. If I were given the opportunity to do this again, I would do way more research on the community and talk to more people about it. Because I feel like we didn't talk about all the parts of Point Loma that people enjoyed. Our final narration: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g6D3y_tsvek9ByB5EutKJ22ECrGP6pT-Xf7b8Nkf_rA/edit?usp=sharing Pictures: https://drive.google.com/folderviewid=0B2PKlJmJ8eJzfmhNbDZld0VWdXVzWGRnaklDZDFCeDJIOEhMY19wQkFubDZVWVlMN1QyZ28&usp=sharing Our documentary:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66AQacjh9I8