NataliaEnglishBlog

 Today we answered questions about the poem “ Constantly Risking Absurdity”. The questions were a little challenging with explaining the answers but still easy at the same time. I personally like this poem a lot because it expresses poets in a real life way. The comparison of an acrobat to a poet really expresses the creative work they have to put into their writings. My day is good so far.

 Today we read another poem from Lawerence Ferlinghetti, called “Constantly Risking Absurdity”. This poem compares a poet to an acrobat. The way he conveyed this message was through literary devices, word play, and creativity. I liked in the poem when he says “ where Beauty stands and waits with gravity”. I think this meant that standards of certain things are everlasting debates because everyone has their own opinion of when you reach a point fully. 

 In class everyone else who didn’t present got to present their poems today. The poems had very valuable meanings behind them and provided great themes. I wrote down three things I learned for each one and made a connection with them. It was kinda hard coming up with connections that relate to myself but I tried to relate it the best I could. We then turnt our papers in at the end of class.

 Today I presented my poem in class with my group. We summarized the poem and told our two themes to the class. I also presented my individual assignment as the summarizer. I took notes after on the poems “ The Road Not Taken” and “Nothing Gold Can Stay”. Made connections with each poem as well.

 When I was younger I would hang out with my cousins at their houses and my grandma’s house. All my cousins are mostly older than me so they remember better than me those memories when we would play together. They always tell me about those times now and I never can remember much. One time my cousin said we were all at her house and decided to walk around and her mother’s heels and put on makeup and act like we were walking down a runway. She also showed me pictures and I still didn’t remember the makeup part, only us walking around in heels and falling everywhere.

 A time I knew I was in trouble was during my last track meet in 8th grade. After my meet I had got into an incident with another student from a different school while my mom was on the same field with me. In the end of it I ended up going back and forth with a few people and had to leave. I could tell my mom was very disappointed in me when we got in the car because she kept asking me questions about what happened and why we were arguing.  When we got home she made me put my phone up and I could only get it back during the school week. I was scared in the car she was going to do more but she wasn’t as mad as I thought, just disappointed in my behavior.

 I feel that I have too much skincare products in my home. Almost every time I go to a store like target or ulta I find a new skincare product that I “need”. Usually the products don’t work for me or I just stop using them because I start to think it isn’t doing anything. It is almost like an addiction for me that I continue to influence. My mom always tells me to stop and actually research the product to see if it’s for my skin type but I say I rather get all the products and test it out myself. For right now I think I will take a break from buying so many products at once.

 I can never deny a good sweets after dinner. Ever since I’ve been little I have had a major sweet tooth. It runs in my family so I’m not surprised but I wish I could contain mines better. If anyone offers me something sweet after diner or maybe even during the day I will most likely always say yes. It is an uncontrollable addiction that is always influenced by my mom cause she always asks me do I want anything sweet when we’re out to eat. On holidays it is bad as well because there’s so many options for me to choose from and I can never pick just one.

 My little cousin Ashlynn was born in 2017 in July. Before she was born it was a very unexpected pregnancy for my family when we found out because we thought my aunt wasn’t planning to have any more kids at the time. So it was surprising to find out when we did but everyone was happy for her and ready for our new addition to the family. My first time seeing my baby cousin was when went and stopped by my aunts house, I fell in love with her as soon as I saw her. She was so perfect and small that I held her for most of the rest of the night. 

 In my freshman year of high school I was new to the state of Georgia and my high school. I knew I was going to have to meet new people in order to make new friends but was very nervous to do so. When school started I didn’t talk to no one for about a month because of this fear that was tearing me up inside because I really did want to make new friendships but didn’t know how. Eventually someone talked to me and I met one friend but wanted way more. I would think about how I needed to stop being so afraid and try to talk to people everyday at school. It wasn’t till the second semester I actually started talking to people without being afraid and shy to speak. It took me a long time to overcome this fear and a lot of overthinking.

 In class we were selected into groups to read a poem and do individual assignments on it. My group read our poem out loud then worked together to annotate it. We came up with many ideas and meanings for words and lines in the passage. I liked this part of the group work because I was able to engage with other classmates. My individual assignment was to summarize the poem which I did and figure out key points. All I have left to do is make an  connection to the poem.

 Today I look at words and definitions for them. I put the words into the blanks to form the correct sentences. I then look at entries for roots and prefixes of the words and used them to complete the exercise. I did not like this part of the lesson because it was very confusing for me to find words. I didn’t get to the last part of the lesson because I was stuck on the second one.

 One time when I was with my family, they asked if I wanted to ride the dirt bikes and four by fours with them. I said yes and went to put on some crocs, jacket, sweatpants, and a hat. I didn’t know till we got there that we were riding on a dirt rode. It was very windy and cold outside so I knew I should have brought a thicker jacket to keep me warm. My crocs ended up being very dirty and not the same yellow they were before I left the house. My hat would not stay on much either during the ride causing me to have to hold it down constantly.

 A special place to me is my grandmother’s house. This is because we have almost every holiday there annually. I consider it my special place because I always feel safe there and it brings in a lot of memories for me. Not just memories of myself but with my cousins, aunts, uncles, grandmas, etc when they all grew up there. Even in tragedy I know I can go there and feel better because all my family will be there to help.

 Today we worked on illuminate to complete an assignment on the poem “Out Out”. The assignment required us to do seven paragraphs about the poem and our opinions on certain things. I completed up to almost five paragraphs but didn’t get to finish. It was kind of hard for me to brainstorm ideas about the title but I tried my best. My day is great.

 In class we read a poem called “Out Out”. It was about a boy whose parents worked him too hard at a young age doing yard work. During his yard work one day he wasn’t paying attention and cut off his arm with one of the tools and died later from blood loss. We annotated this poem by defining words, finding the setting, and determining descriptions of people/places. We also talked about freak accidents and how they could be avoided physically and mentally.

 We worked on claims and evidence in an argument. I went with the side that comedians are vital importance because they make people laugh and mostly spread positive energy. I think the only way that comedians can come off as negative, when people have their certain opinions already on a subject or interpret the subject wrong. I liked discussing the different claims and hearing everyone’s arguments. My day is good, happy it’s Friday.

 Today we took notes agreeing, disagreeing, and compromising on unpopular opinions. We all got our own unpopular opinion to write about and then we shared our answers. Mine was easy to write about since it was a broad opinion. I liked finding ways to compromise the opinion with it being good and bad in a way. My day is going good.

 We started a worksheet on forming an argumentative essay. In the sheet we first established ideas of what we thought the unknown was then determined if it was valuable to explore the unknown. Provided claims to support our decision and then counterclaims. In the end we came up with evidence to support our claims based on experience, readings, and facts. I liked breaking the steps down to creating an argumentative essay because it helped me find a way to set up my essays in the future. I disliked coming up with evidence because it was hard knowing if it supported it to be valuable or not.

 In class we took notes on new vocabulary words and writing out their definitions. I also put the words into sentences and answered three questions about their meanings. The words had common meanings that were easy to understand so I liked that. Now I will have to study them so I can memorize them by the test. Today is a good day so far.

 We completed our passage worksheets today in class. I identified claims in the two passages and researched vocabulary words. I got my work done pretty fast so today was a good class day. I liked finding out about new vocabulary words that can be important to me in the future. I plan to get all my work finished by the end of this week including projects.

 Today in class we continued our argument notes and read two passages. In the passages there were two sides on whether they agree or disagree with the technology of driverless cars. I liked seeing the break down of claims, explanation, and evidence being represented in the paragraphs. We underlined claims and recognized the other key things in the paragraph and determined the authors point of the passage. My day is going well.