2nd Week Success by Sunny

In the two weeks of school we had so far, we have read two short stories in each week and annotated important parts of them. 'Harrison Bergeron' was the name of this week’s story. Our annotations fall into six categories; setting, characterizations, vocabulary, plot elements, irony and theme. Later in the week, we used our vocabulary annotations to come up with 10 vocabularies for our words of the week list. We then used those vocabulary words to find their definitions and to do other activities with these words. This leads onto our vocab Project.

For the vocab project, Mr. Koch gave each partner group a word from our words of the week list, and each pair had to make a project defining the meaning and the use of that word. For example a video explaining the definition, a question and answer that uses the word, a drawing that shows a visual definition, or even a short drama performance. We students in 7-7 especially found the videos quite interesting and entertaining.

Also something we did that was reading related was the Torch test. One of the pre-assessment tests that we always have at the beginning of this year is the Torch test. This is a reading test to see how well we can read and understand stories. For some people this is easy, for some it is hard, but for a major amount of people, it requires a lot of thinking. This occurs because it may be asking you something you know, but does not always give you the right word or vocabulary for that answer and also don’t always give you the answer in the passage that is given to you to read. It is a reading test but it also tests your knowledge.

The first writing assignment that we had was our first process writing papers. It was our choice to choose one of six types of writing: Reader Response, Creative Fiction, Original Poem, Personal Narrative, Business Writing/Technical Writing and Expository Writing. We chose one of the six and wrote a first rough draft on our own. Then at school we had a peer revision, we exchanged our drafts and gave each other comments and advices on parts that were not needed or parts that needed to be added with more detail.

To end the week, we had a class activity during our mentoring time on Friday morning. Our class got in 2 teams, each with 11 people. The 2 teams got in 2 lines facing each other and 2 opponents on the end of each line walked through the 2 lines facing each other. While the 2 people were walking through, the people on the opposite team were allowed to make you laugh by saying things or making faces but without touching, and if you laughed while walking through the 2 lines you were out and went on the other team's side. The point of the activity was to teach us about peer pressure, especially since we were in middle school now and we really cared a lot about what we wore, what our friends wore and what they did that sometimes influenced us to do, we had to know how to control ourselves and be able to decide what was okay to do and what was not.  

We had a fun week and most of us went to the STUCO Function to have some extra fun on our Friday night.

-Sunny Lee