Blogging to the End

I remember the first time we were told we were going to have a blog for assignments. My first thought was that I would never remember to do the assigned blogs each week. Another thought I had was that I could write really cool things and people would like what I said.

 Looking back at my very first blog, Giselle’s intro, you can tell I was just trying to add more than I really wanted to say. I tried to make my first blog post look impressive so classmates might be interested to read my blog.

Some of my earlier blogs I always felt the need to check about books before I wrote them because I wasn’t completely sure of a point I was trying to prove in a piece of writing. Reading my blogs in order, you can see the total difference in tone. From my blog post, My writing My way.. (Extra Credit!), you can read that I have more of an opinion on things, and I have fun writing it. The blog posts from then on sounded more like how I would explain topics like the poem “Lobsters”. What I learned is that I just need to write what I think with supportive evidence, and I shouldn’t babble on something that I don’t know about.

“ But these are flowers that fly and all but sing: And now from having ridden out desire” This quote is from the poem, “Blue-Butterfly Day” by Robert Frost. I really like this quote from his poem because not only does it talk about the nature of butterflies, but talks about children. I think these lines represent how I have the knowledge to put the correct answers but I don’t and I am “ridden out desire”, meaning that I wished I would want to include more in my blog. When I do my blogs I second guess what I wrote worried if I will sound stupid or something is inaccurate or wrong. 

My favorite blog posts are ones that we did reading Great Expectations. We made many references to different literature writing, and objects. Mainly we did the important metaphors to enhance a certain theme. I really enjoyed reading my, GE Photo Post, about comparing Pip to a flower. Here is some analysis I did on Pip and the flower on that blog, “I compared Pip to a flower because he was a daisy in spring, healthy and full. As time goes on flower petals fall off, the events happening to Pip makes indecisive. The flower cannot restore it's petal in one day, the daisy will come back in spring and repeat the process. Pip is loosing all his petals, he isn't becoming his true self.” I think if I wrote like this for majority of my blogs, it would enjoy writing blogs more because it is fun to make comparisons and your originally viewpoint on something.My other Great Expectations post I liked was, Making Connects with GE. I connected the story to Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell Tale Heart I liked it because I connected the stories and it wasn't as difficult as other posts were.

Honors English this year was very fun! We got to practice our essay writing skills and improve our vocabulary with some help of word power. We also got to experience routine blogging on the internet. Quite a year it has been; and there will always been at least one great highlight each day in English!

So long Freshman Year!

-Giselle

Memorable Assignments

     Thinking back through assignments and projects brings back good and bad memories. The most memorable project was Poetry Out Loud. when we started to memorize "Fire and Ice" it was oddly fun using hand motions to remember what the next line was. I got "Part for the Whole" by Robert Francis. Before memorizing the poem, we did a class analysis of our poem, and I was confident that I understood the poets message.I started the technique when I first got my poem, it worked very well. I usually practiced my poem at night so no one could hear me. Now that I look back, it's really funny how frustrated I was when I messed up, I had to start from the beginning until I got it right. When I memorized halfway through the poem I stopped the hand signs and started memorizing anywhere I went. My friends usually were my audience hearing my practice and practice and practice.
     I got my poem memorized about a week until the class competition. No doubt I was nervous the day of the competition. The main thing I was afraid of losing points was how dramatic I told the poem. I did a surprisingly good job! Got tied for second place and went to the school competition. This was the most memorable because it was hard but fun, and it really felt like exercising an important skill. 

My Experiences with Poetry

      I personally like poetry, it is a gateway for emotions but not always sad, sappy poems. There are types of poems that people don't know about and I think everybody will like some type of poetry. when I was younger my parents didn't really introduced me to poems, but many nursery rhymes. I just remember reading Shel Silverstein poems in his "large" books and showing how funny the type of writing was.

     First time I worked on poetry thoroughly was when I made multiple haiku's in 5th grade. Mine mostly consisted of bugs and nature.In middle school I really got to work with poetry and making my own original poems. In my 8th grade language arts class we made a poetry book including 2 poems by known poets and 10 poems made by me. As I'm looking at one of the poems I wrote, I remembered sitting at the front of the classroom thinking of what to write then, I saw the buses enter, the trees, the sun reflecting off of everything and started writing. Looking back on that, I realize it is simple to be motivated if you really wanted to. when my 8th grade teacher graded my poetry book, she added that I had "great imagery throughout" . I think I just loved to describe things I see, hear, touch, feel, and smell it's very easy but the way you describe something is interesting. 

     Ninth grade, our class started analyzing poetry, and I have notice that I chosen Emily Dickinson in middle school and my second choice for reciting poetry. I did poetry out loud, my class and school recitation was "part for the whole" by Robert Francis. It was fun learning different ways to express my poem and make certain parts of it more dramatic.

     Poetry is representing something and looking at something in a different direction, then you might see in person. I like deciphering poems and looking over different styles of poets. when I heard we were doing poetry, I was kind of happy. However, I don't think from the poems we read in class are going to motivating or going to move someone.