Ist semester writing pieces
At this Moment, I am
This writing piece consisted of us completing a packet that had prompts. The first prompt asked us who do you think you are as a 9th grader ,the second prompt asked us who are we as a boy or girl, the third prompt asked us who we are as a teenager. The fourth prompt asked us who we believe we are as a friend, and the last prompt asked us who are we as a human being. With all of those questions answered in the course of the week, we compiled an "At this Moment I am" piece. After we had our final draft of the writing piece, we had chose the length of a piece of wood and we painted it whatever colors and designs that best suit us. Then we printed out the writing and brushed over it with coffee giving it an old look. We nailed the essay onto the colorful piece of wood we made and hung it on the wall outside.
rEFLECTION
What I think I could have done better during this project is pushing myself. I was way to comfortable with what I was doing and being comfortable isn't always a good thing. I mean that I shouldn't have been so cozy with my writing and be more exotic with it. I'm told that I have so much potential and I know but isn't it easier to make things easy?
Original Poem
We were given another packet to complete by the end of the week but the topic now was about poems. Haiku's, Free Verse's, Carpe Diem's, and Elegy's were all the different sorts of poem styles that we learned. Every style of poetry we were assigned to each day in our writing packet, came with an area where we write our own Carpe Diem, or our own Haiku, so that really helped me in understanding the unit more. This unit launched us into our first semester project. It was a kick starter to the Celebration Slam.
rEFLECTION
I felt like I was holding back too much during the week we were learning about poetry because of my peers. I was afraid to express myself because I didn't want to be judged by the others. If I would have not worried about that, then I would have done so much better with the poems and even during the Celebration Slam project.
Art Story
This writing piece really tested our imagination and story- telling, because it was all about improvising. Ms. Britt showed two very random paintings to the class and our task was to make a story for each of the pieces.
RELECTION
I thought that I did very well with this activity. Ms. Britt asked the class who wanted to share out their story and of course I volunteered. When I shared my story out to the class, they all said, "awwwwww" because they thought that my story was sad in a cute kind of way. Getting that kind of reaction from your peers and from your teacher has to mean you did a good job right?
First Bio article for book
Our Bio article was made for the designated artist for each tiny house group, and each group member made a biography from a different topic or event in the artist's life. For example, my biographical article for Matt Dunn was about his early life. So what I put in my article was different from what my other group member put in his article about one of Matt's art pieces. All of our information in our articles came from the answers to the question we asked Matt in the interview we had.
reflection
What I took away from this is that some things are more important than others for different people. I felt like I was struggling to leave things out. It was almost as if I was fighting for the different stories with my fellow group members, but then I realized that not everything is going to prove what you're trying to say. Communication was also key when making these articles because when its time to present our articles, me and let's say, Thomas, a friend of mine, have the same story in our articles and the reader is like, "didn't I just read this?"
2nd semester writing pieces
2nd biographical article
The time came again, when we had to make another article. This time, it wasn't about our artists' life, it was about our work. The logistics in building the tiny house and a little on how the tiny house connects to your artists. This time it was the systematization in building the tiny house. Key word: building. The link/ article below show the different roles that each person from each group wrote their article about. My topic for this article was the Explanation of the blueprints and/ or sketch up, but I din't write about the sketch up. There is also a link to my first draft.
reflection
Allright. Cool. Iv'e done this once already, so that means that It'll be easy right? Wrong. We still had the same problem. Our information was limited and what we were doing was that we were still not communicating enough where all of us can know who is using what information whether it's a story that Matt told us or an artifact such as a blueprint or the 3-D cardstock model. Something I could have done to solve that problem would be to communicate yeah, but with Matt. I knew the whole time that If I had any question for him, I could have sen't him an e- mail and he would have answered, but I didn't.
5 vignettes
After finishing both biographical articles and revising them to their extent, they were put into the book and then Ms. Britt officially announced that Humanities class was done with the Tiny Home project. So what's next? We started to read a book called The House on Mango Street. That book was full of symbolism and our job throughout the unit was to identify that symbolism. But to really understand the book which was written in vignettes, we had to write five ourselves.
rEFLECTION
Writing these was challenging for me because I'ts always been difficult for me to write what my heart tells me to. And I'm fascinated by other authors like Sandra Cisneros who lose themselves in their writing and whats the outcome? A really great piece. But writing about prompts everyday definitley helped me in becoming a better writer and even giving me confidence to write deeper stuff.
Original shakespearean sonnet
Before starting the Shakespeare unit, we had to learn about sonnets because Shakespeare wrote a lot of them, so many actually that it's actually debatable whether or not he made the all himself. Anyway, our fist task was to write a sonnet on the topic of love. On the spot. A sonnet is 14 lines of iambic pentameter and 10 syllables are in each line. The sonnet needs to have a specific rhyme scheme and our job was to write a sonnet keeping all of these things in mind. The topic of the sonnet was up to us. Below is the link to my final Shakespearean sonnet
guidlines
Subject/Theme of your original Shakespearean Sonnet:
Please write a love sonnet using unconventional or unique metaphors. I recommend using Sonnet 130 as an example.
The quatrains should describe your love in a unique way. In order to make this a bit more manageable, use imagery to help you organize your thoughts. I recommend breaking the quatrains up by sight, scent, smell, touch and taste.
The couplet should be your final plea, that even though your love is unique, it is special.
Structural Guidelines:
Please write a love sonnet using unconventional or unique metaphors. I recommend using Sonnet 130 as an example.
The quatrains should describe your love in a unique way. In order to make this a bit more manageable, use imagery to help you organize your thoughts. I recommend breaking the quatrains up by sight, scent, smell, touch and taste.
The couplet should be your final plea, that even though your love is unique, it is special.
Structural Guidelines:
- 14 lines
- written in iambic pentameter ( 10 syllables)
rEFLECTION
Writing a sonnet was very hard for me. Plain and simple. But it's these things that we do at school where you need to push yourself, and writing the Shakespearean sonnet was probably one of them. One thing I could have done better is revising my sonnet. I know for a fact that on some of the lines I didn't use iambic pentameter or didn't use the rhyme scheme.