Reading and Writing

This week we started using our reading logs for every time we read.  I think that I should set higher goals in my reading book because I sometimes didn't even have to read at home because I finished at school.  Luckily, I am almost done with the book so I will set bigger goals for my other book when I start it.  As for writing, I think I did very well on it because I stuck with my first topic and got to work more on that as to starting over.  I will have to see what Mr. Buxton thinks.

Persuasive Essay

 WALT: Writing a Personal Persuasive Essay                   November 14, 2011

Aggravating Group Projects

By Caroline Wilson

Wouldn’t most people want a peaceful group meeting without exclusivity, a lot of compromise, and a good effort?  Effectively colabrating with classmates in groups is important, but it is also very challenging.

Even though group members ignoring others can get annoying, group member’s not doing their work is also a pain.  For instance, it puts the group behind multiple steps.  Everyone else besides one or two people have done their work as expected.  How would someone feel if they had to stay in for recess because of the two irresponsible people in the group?  What about the actual presentation itself?  How can anyone have a complete presentation if one or two people haven’t done their section?  Therefore, the whole group faces the consequences of the few people’s behavior by receiving a bad grade.  So help the group members and do the work.
Although the majority of Singapore American School students are inclusive, the exclusive people can create an unhappy atmosphere.  First, there is no doubt that the amount of people being excluded varies.  From one person to five people, every amount of exclusivity can make people feel unwelcome or discouraged. Second exclusivity often takes away the excluded member’s ownership of the project.  Finally, when the presentation time comes, exclusivity can majorly affect your grade.  For the reasons above, just try not to be exclusive.  It can put multiple people down and change their grade from what they deserve.

Working in groups is the biggest time waster.  Nobody ever wants any part for so many various reasons.  You can’t trust other people to bring things in or do their part of the project.  While on the other hand if it was just one person doing it, yourself, you would be able to trust yourself and take away any stress of people not doing their work or not listening to your ideas.  Eventually, if you were working in a group, you wouldn’t have a whole project if someone forgot their work.  Also, you wouldn’t have to deal with pesky people without compromise and exclusivity.  Unfortunately, some teachers don’t give anybody a choice.  Given that everyone will have a chance to work in a group, don’t be the one to not do their work, change people’s grades, or waste so much time.

Math

In math this week we had a fraction review.  Although I knew most of the things we learned, I still got a good equivalent fractions review in today.  From my past experiences, I have known how to make equivalent fractions and which is the denominator and the numerator.  So basically, I had a review week in math, but I still learned knew things about fractions.

Reading and Writing This Week

This week we started working on our persuasive essays.  My topic is how working in groups effectively is important.  We learned the so many different strategies like the tree question in a row strategy.  For example, my topic sentences are Wouldn’t most people like to have a peaceful group meeting without someone being exclusive?  Can’t everyone just do their work?  What about the people who don’t compromise at all?  If you think about it, most people want to be heard.  We also learned to integrate a bigger variety of transitional words.  In my power plan, organizational way of wring non-fiction, I think I pushed myself a lot more.  Instead of writing just a bullet point or a simple sentence, I put a few sentences and a few transitional words to be more prepared for writing a first draft.  In reading, we set reading goals.  These goals were different from last year’s goals because it was about the amount of reading not thinking about my reading.    So far I have successfully met the goals I have made for myself.  I am making sure that the goal is realistic because I don’t want to be up all night or wanting to read way more.  I got my 3^rd pizza slice for reading The Candymakers by Wendy Mass.  This book was a very long one but very interesting.  That is basically what happened in RLA this week.

U.N. Day Presentation

This week we did a presentation on one international author in groups of seven.  My group is Breann, George, Maddy, Nick, Zach, Han, and I.  Our author was Eva Ibbotson, the author of multiple genre books.  The slide that I created was about her use of vocabulary.  At first our group was really unorganized.  We had put one PowerPoint in Google docs which is really slow at loading and doesn’t let you do that much.  Eventually, our group came to our senses and just made one slide each on a different PowerPoint.  We did however have the same background so it ended up working out fine.  My three vocabulary words are knave, selkie, and sinister.

Week 3 Quarter 2

So far I have gotten 10 public speaking experiences.  I got to have ice cream!!!  I think that goal is progressing fast enough.  Just yesterday, I added another one of my vocabulary words.  I haven't had a chance to add them in my writing yet though.  The vocabulary words I chose were Ailing meaning unwell or sickly, Apparel meaning clothing mostly outwear, brawn meaning muscular  strength and power (I remeber this by Ryan Brawn, the best baseball player in the world on the Brewer team), gawky appearing awkward or clumsy,Frolic meaning to behave playfully or to romp, and finaly flamboyant meaning bold or showy.  Goal # 3 is to not spend a lot of time on unfocused homework.  I have used the calender and am progressing well.  I still haven't done a vacarro but did read outloud for my two pizza slices.

About my pizza slices, I have two as I just said and those are my least favorite so I could get them overwith.  Now I am enjoying the Realistic Fiction book, The Candymakers by Wendy Mass.

I think that Han, Camille, Nick, Harrison and I did well on our book club presentation  Harrison could have specified a few charecters not all of them though.  Overall, I think that our presentation went well.

This week I learned a lot of vacabulary words in the classroom and as my goal.   I also learned that even though you think ou don't like something by the sound of it, you might supprie yourself by liking it (my piza slices).

I'll be back next week.  Bye!

October Reading Letter

Dear Mr. Buxton,

If You’re Reading This it’s Too Late, the sequel to The Name of This Book is Secret, by Pseudonymous Bosch is a magical book starting from two young magicians.  Pietro and Dr. L, the magicians, are much older now though.  Dr. L turned on Pietro one night after a performance and teamed up with Ms. Mauvais to do bad things to Pietro and ended up stealing thing too.  Cass and Max-Ernest, members of the Terse Society are the “super heroes” out to stop Dr. L and Ms. Mauvais.  Cass and Max-Ernest are in the Magic Museum, the Terse Society’s “layer” finding only robots in the whole museum.

          Before discovering the robotic creatures, Cass and Max- Ernest came across posters advertising unfamiliar magicians.  Since Cass and Max-Ernest had no idea what or who the poster were from, I can infer that the posters were probably from a long time ago.  Maybe even from Dr. L and Pietro when they were living with the circus.  Another possibility is that the posters are a fake and are used to cover something up.  For instance, if Dr. L and Ms. Mauvais ever got into the Terse Society’s “layer”, they wouldn’t know what the Terse Society was up to.  Maybe the posters are some kind of code.

          While reading If Your Reading This It’s Too Late, I had a confusion question.  At the top of the doorway after the posters saying “Magic- A History of Disappearing or a disappearing History?”  The question mark made no sense because I thought that they are the same thing.  In reality, there is no real magic so I guess I can’t really say.  Magic can be more complicated than it seems.  But relating back to the posters, it could just be a weird code.

          Many different vocabulary words came up, and one vocabulary word was... ingeniously. First, I looked for any familiar words in the word.  Genius is in it so it must be either really smart and original or really dumb and unoriginal.  The prefix is in which in this context means really smart.  The suffix ly just makes it an adverb.  So my conclusion is that ingeniously means really smart or original.

          Pseudonymous Bosch is great at grabbing your attention.  First of all, the topic is amazingly interesting and nobody can write a good piece of writing with a bad topic.  On the other hand, Pseudonymous Bosch has great cliff hangers at the end of chapters.  For example, on page 85 it ends the chapter with one of the members from the Terse Society being the mean teacher.  The last sentence is “It was Owen.” It may be a simple sentence, but it was perfect to end a chapter that way.  The last thing that is impressively nice about If Your Reading This It’s Too Late is that he has descriptive sentences like “SLIDESHOW...SLIDESHOW....SLIDESHOW... blinked a sign of tiny popcorn style light bulbs.

          Regularly, I am not a fan of mysterious books.  But this book has changed my opinion.

Sincerely, Caroline