2nd Quarter Reflections

Prompts: 

- In what area do you think you made your biggest improvements in English Language Arts?

- What has been the most challenging part of 2nd Quarter for you and what did/can you do to help overcome this?

- What is something you have accomplished since the new year that you are proud of?

            An area that I think I have made my biggest improvement in English Languge Arts is annotating. Usually when I annotated I would write down whatever came up in my mind. Now I put more thought into it and really think about the topic the piece of writing is informing me about. When reading To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, I annotated so much. Usually I don't annotate in books at all, or when I do it would be a a thought on every couple of pages. Taking out all of the notes I wrote from the book made me realize that I put a lot of effort to understand the book. In articles I use to just highlight things that seemed important and wrote small explanations on why I thought that was important. Now I really think about the important details and write a lot more thought into it. I think most of that reason why I used to not be good with annotating is, because I was just being lazy, and wanted to get it done without much quality.

            The most challenging part of the 2nd Quarter for me was to do all of my assignments and turn them in on time. Eighth grade has been very challenging for me these past two quarters, because of the homework. In seventh grade I would get very little to no homework in most of my classes. This school year I now get loads of homework for each class. It has been a little stressful for me, but then again I have been lazy with my work lately. I've noticed that my work changes from when I take my time to do my work to when I do all of my work at the last minute. Lately I have been putting off my work simply because I don't want to do this. I know I have to break out of this habit, because I am just putting more stress on myself. I want to just finish the homework as soon as it's given instead of waiting for the last day I can work on it. It's like I know that I should do the homework when I have time to do it, but instead I just put it to the side, and think that I have more time to do it. That just makes it worse for me, and I know that, but I still seem to put it off. In the third quarter I will focus of homework before I focus on other things that are not important. 

            Something that I have accomplished since the new year that I am proud of is getting good grades on my vocabulary tests, and other units in this class. Ever since the new grading system I have been nervous to see if my grades would be lower than usual. Since the new year I have busy with after school activities and every week I kept thinking that I wouldn't do good on my tests and in school work, because I didn't have enough time to study. I ended up doing really well on those tests. I think after more and more tests they will become easier, because I will know more strategies to study better, and when the right time to study is. This quarter has been so challenging for me to get good grades and finish all of my assignments, but I managed to do it all, and that's what I'm most proud of.