I’ll be doing several reflective tasks this year in ELA. This page will include a number of them so I can look back on them to see if I’ve grown in skills or understanding of my abilities.

March 2017: Measuring Oral Fluency – Words Per Minute
I took a moment from reading my Independent Novel reading to orally record myself reading aloud. I can use this as a measurement of my accuracy and pace in reading aloud. The goal is to read around 150 wpm; anything more than that is too fast for a listener to follow.

Feb. 16th Romeo and Juliet Reflection

1.Reflecting on the fact that you studied and did some online research to learn about Shakespeare and specifically the play of Romeo and Juliet before we started reading it together, what are your thoughts on that process or method of beginning this text study?

I thought that the look at Shakespeare and Romeo and Juliet was useful, but I would prefer to do more just free looking around at Shakespeare, and have a few questions about Romeo and Juliet. I think this because Romeo and Juliet is more important to learning about the play, and just looking around at Shakespeare would go much faster so people could get to reading the play

2. Do you think it changed your experience of Romeo and Juliet, having studied it and learned so much about it before reading it together? Give one specific example to help support your perspective.
I think it did help us. I think this because when there was a new character introduced, we didn’t stop and ask a bunch of questions, or when an event happened, we weren’t confused what was happening. On example of this was when we got to the climax, even though we knew Romeo and Juliet would die, we didn’t stop longer than to address that we were at the climax, and just analyzed what the climax was, leading to the downfall.

3. Would you recommend for other students in the future to go through the step of studying Shakespeare and the play elements before reading it? Explain the reasoning for your answer. Pick one – yes you’d recommend it or no you wouldn’t.
I would say that people later on should read about the play before reading it. I think this because many people don’t know much about Shakespeare, and some people may not even know what Romeo and Juliet is p, and this will give them a way to find out.

4. You journaled as Romeo immediately after he killed Tybalt and lost his friend Mercutio. Explain how you felt completing that journalling, first person writing: challenging, easy enough, a breeze? Explain what about it made it this way for you?
I thought that writing the Romeo journal was difficult, mostly because of trying to make the write if seemed rushed because Romeo was supposed to be nervous, or because I tried to make it seem like I was Romeo, which has also hard to do, so I think I could have finished it easier if I didn’t try and sound like Romeo.

5. Our debates: You’ve completed many other debates before, you’d shared. How was this debate any different from the others you’ve done previously, or was it different? If it was, in what way was it different? What parts of the planning work helped prepare you for the actual exchange of the debate?
This debate was different than other we did because the others seemed rushed, were as this seemed to give us enough time to plan out our debate. The best part of the planning sheet for me was the devils advocate, because you can often guess what the other people say, and then make sure you are ready for that, which is like checking your answers, which helps.

6. How do you feel your performance of your debate related to your preparation of the debate?
I think our debates and presentations were similar because a lot of the topics from the presentation and debate were similar, like how we analyzed two characters from both of the films, which is like asking which character was most noble, made the worst decision, or was responsible for the downfall from the debate. This means, if you did a good debate, you would be more prepared for the presentation.

7. What new elements of developing a presentation have you learned from preparing your Comparison Project? List two specific elements you tried that were different from what you’ve done before and how you felt they worked for you in the end.
There were a few things in the presentation that I thought I learned. One of them was not making this personal, which I never noticed that I did some of, and I was able to look for it. The other thing that I learned was not filling your presentation with to much information, just putting jot notes so you can speak off of it.

8. Are you becoming more comfortable with speaking projects and activities? Explain.
I think that over the years I have been getting better at speaking and presentation, but I still have more to learn, mostly practicing so I don’t stop in my presentation so it goes more smoothly.

 

A2: Sept 21 Audio Reflection of Class so far this Month
Now that we’ve been in class for over three weeks, we were asked to reflect on a few things, like whether we’re comfortable with the level of work we’re doing and what goals we wanted to set for ourselves this year. Here’s my recording; it was made using a new app we learned about called Fotobabble.

September 2016:
A1. Interest Inventory:
We filled out an inventory sheet for our teacher to give her some background of our learning needs and strengths.