Mason's Reading/Writing Outside of Class

In Mrs. Steele's class, we are reading the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathanel Hawthrorne. It is about a a young lady who committs adultery with a man in the village. She gets pregant and she goes to jail for 3 months. Her punishment for this sin is jail for 3 months and she has to stand up on the scaffold in front of the whole town with all the shame of the sin. hester has to wear an "A" om her clothes so that everybody will know what she has down. Her child's name is Pearl and Pearl doesn't understand the meaning behind the "A", Hester tells her she is wearing it for the sake of the golden thread. When Hester takes the "A" off her child, Pearl, won't come to her because she doesn't recognize her. Hester puts the "A" back on and Pearl kisses both of her mother's cheeks, her brow and she kissses the "A". We have only read to Chapter 20.

Things Read Outside of class

In Mrs. Carson's class, we have been reading a lot about poetry lately. We have read some pieces from Emily Dickinson and from Walt Whitman. One day when we were reading a poem from Whitman, I realized something was different. Whenever he writes, he tends to make up words. For example, we read a poem about a brilliant astronomer and an adjective he uses to describe this person is learn'd. I believe the reason he did that was to make the reader place his/her own definition to that word in which ever way he/she perceives it. To me, this is an excellent way to make readers think instead of just reading and implying the understood meaning of each word.

On Composition

For the 4th and final paper, we had to write an reflective essay on which is currently being used in our portfolio. We had to write about our thoughts on the class in general and relay them to how we are a writer now. Peer review played a huge part for some of us as we worked on our IRE. We helped each other by getting rid of 2nd person pronouns such as my or myself. When we did this, it made our papers much more readable and comprehensive. Mason, as usual, had organizational issues while Peyton and Erin had some problems on where to place certain paragraphs to make the flow seem better. Tyler's paper was the one that we had some trouble with. He had some organization issues and we were not sure what to do about his thesis. Overall, we thought that Junior Composition bettered us as writers because of the things we have learned whether it be via trial and error or in a lesson plan.

Erin's Reading and Writing Outside of Class

For my reading and writing outside of class this quarter, I read all the news on the "OMG!" website. I have to keep up with my celebrity gossip. Even if I didn't read some of the celebrity news, I would still find out about it somehow. For example, Kim Kardashian and Chris Humpries divorce. They were only married for 72 days and ended up getting a divorce. I never read this in an article but I still found out about it through word of mouth. Some of the news I did read on "OMG!" was dramatic. Giuliana Rancic had breast cancer therefor she had to have a double mastectomy. The surgery took four hours but she is doing well. Reading this news always keeps me up to date.

Reading/Writing Outside of Class

Recently in Mrs. Steele's class we have been reading pieces by Edgar Allen Poe. The most interest one we read to me was "The Fall of the House of Usher." This story was very interesting because it was just really weird. The story is about a strange man who has a disability and he can't stand to face the world. He stays inside of his dark, gloomy house and never comes out. Everything bothers him, such as sun light and loud noises. He played the guitar but he was only interested in a certain type of music. He is a very frail man and he can not mvoe around the house without losing his breath. His friend comes and visits him to try to help because he knows something is wrong. He ends up burrying his twin sister, Madeline, but she is still alive. She escapes out of her casket and they die together. The whole stroy is about how they connect and feel when something is wrong with one another because they are twins.

Things Read Outisde of Class

One day I was at home reading a truck magazine about a pulling competition and noticed something different about the article. The author wrote in nothing but active voice. The only reason I noticed this was because what he was saying was so much more clear. I could recognize the main point of each sentence which allowed me to start thinking. If I could write in this form and fashion, I could be a much better writer than what I am now.

Things Read

I liked reading multiple things that we have read in class. I personally really liked reading "A Freezing Persons." This allowed me to have an outside view on how to write. This essay was comprised of a way of writing that should be avoided as much as possible unless one knows how to write in this form and fashion. It made me realize the different ways people can write essays and make their audience absolutely love their writing. I also like reading "Trial by Fire." I liked how the author showed him being nothing but guilty and then completely change the way that people viewed him.

Lessons Learned

In Junior Compositio, we have learned that using specific examples. We have been tought that using them as much as possible, especially in c ertain situations, makes for good writing. In my everyday life, I can use this with every aspect because it allows for better application. I also leanred how to properly use compound sentences. This is a very important concept because sentence structure is the base for writing in general. Because the sentence structure is so important, this is why we went over it alot in class.

Mason's Lessons Learned

Before and during writing Paper 2 we learned how to use examplification in ours papers. This skill helps describe a general idea by using specific examples. This really helped me make points more clearer in my papers. By doing this, I think my papers have improved becasue I can now really describe a point with examples that the reader my relate to better.

Mason's Reading/Writing Outside of Class

These posts are on Paper 2, and football season was in full swing then and as best as I can remember the most I read outside of class was the sports section in the newspaper. Many times there was a article about GWA in there and I would read it three or four times every week. most every week there was a writeup about us. It's always most intersesting when you'[re reading about yourself and what other people have to say about you.

Mason's Things Read

I liked the article entitled " It's Not Just a Game Show". This was a article about a great grandma and a grandchild. The kid's parents were police oficers and they had crazy shifts. Luckily, Nan Nan lived close by and the child spent aloat of time with her. They always watched "The Price is Right" they would try to guess the answers while sittinf in the rocker. Later the great grandmother died and everytime the game show would come on the kid would watch it. every time he/she would turn off the game show channel he /she would feel comforted from a long distance hug from Nan Nan.

Erin's Reading and Writing Outside of Class

I am not a big fan on reading and writing outside of class. The most writing I do would be to write items on a grocery list. I have begun reading many "pins" on Pinterest. Pinterest is a social network that has many interesting and creative ideas for things that I would have never thought about. For example, a swirl braid. It is so simple and looks good but I never would have known or thought about it without Pinterest. I love reading about ideas that I can use in my own life that are super cute(:

Erin's Lessons Learned

Last nine weeks, we learned how to change passive voice to actice voice and vice versa. It was a very difficult lesson to learn. We had multiple quizzes and worksheets to help us understand how to do this objective.
When recognizing active voice, the subject is doing the acting. For passive voice, the subject is recieving the action. Active voice sentences are straight to the point and do not beat around the bush. Passive voice sentences contain "be" verbs. They are longer and sometimes harder to understand.

Ex. Active voice: Bob mailed the letter.
Ex. Passive voice: The letter was mailed by Bob.

Erin's Things Read

For paper two, my favorite article we read was called Trial By Fire. I was very intrigued by the essay. I found myself not wanting to put the papers down until I was finished reading. There was a man named Cameron Todd Willingham. He was accused of killing his two daughters by setting his own house on fire...with the daughters in it. Many arson experts said he was guilty. They even had proof of how he "set the house on fire." Later on, we found out that he was innocent but it was too late. He had already been executed. This ending was very sad and made you feel bad for judging Willingham at the beggening of the essay.

Things Read!

Its hard to think back on the essays we read for paper 2 but one of the essays that I remembered the most was the essays on Steve Jobs. Everybody in class was assigned one of the two different essays to read and then we were put in groups to discuss the difference between the two essays. Our goal was to pick out the Thesis statement of each essay and discuss why we thought it should be the thesis statement. One of the essays was based on the comparison between Steve Jobs and Jefferson. The other essays was just based on Jobs and his death. This essay was written by his sister.Both essays were very well written but I liked the 2nd essay the best because it wasn't so formal and it really explained how Steve Jobs lived his life and why he was such an important man.

Lessons Learned.

When we started talking about paper #2, we were assigned practice topics to write about in class. We practiced writing about many different small topics in class to prepare us for the SAT writing section and also for our second paper. Paper 2 had to be written during our exam period so we only had two hours to write it. In class, we learned in order to keep your ideas and thoughts organized while writing this paper we should Pre-write or quickly write down what we want to focus on in each paragraph. This method was supposed to help us still write an organized paper even though our time was limited. I found this to make it even harder for me to write the paper because I rushed myself and felt like I didn't have enough time to pre-write and write the paper.

Reading/Writing Outside of Class.

I never read or write. The closest things to reading and writing outside of class for me is getting on Facebook and reading what everyone else posts or either updating my status every once in a while. I also recently set up a Twitter account and I have found myself spending more time on it than I usually do on Facebook. I find twitter to be a little more casual than Facebook. On twitter, everyone usually tweets about whats going on in their life more frequently than people do when they update their Facebook status. I never though I would get a Twitter but it can get addicting sometimes and its really just a fancy way of documenting whats going on in your life in stead of writing it in a diary.

On Composition

Paper number two was a paper that we had to write and compose in class. It was a challenging but exciting way to write. We did not have the opportunity to meet in our peer review groups and we all believe that this effected us greatly. Most of the time whenever we gather into our peer review groups, we use our time wisely and efficiently which allows for an outside view and some much needed corrections. Not trying to point anybody out but Mason is the one who usually needs peer review the most. Sometimes, he comes into class having a complete essay but it seems like it is written without effort. He has all his ideas down on paper but his sentences do not complete a thought and he has a lot of run on sentences. Erin and Peyton usually have well written essays that are comprised with at least one unruly paragraph. Tyler on the other hand usually has some great ideas but he does not have them gathered correctly in the paper. As a group, we though paper two was difficult but overall came out a success even though we wrote the paper independently.