NataliaEnglishBlog

 Today we started reading the book called Fence. The readers were selected their roles and read out loud the first act to the class. I took notes about the characters Troy,  Rose, Bono, and Lyons. I described their character traits, role, personality, occupation, and physical looks. Then I wrote about key events that happened in the story. 

 We were introduced to the book called Fence in class which we took notes on. It was questions about physical fences and why we have fences up in real life and personally. I wrote my fence is social anxiety against being crowds of people. I have always been shy and nervous around a lot of people in one space. I didn’t know it was a boundary I had set up till a few years ago when I noticed how my anxiety would go up in those situations. I think people put up a fence to protect themselves from the bad in the world.

 Today we watched the rest of the movie with these journeys to school. I answered questions on the kid’s motivations to get to school and comparison of their routes to school to kids in the US. The kids in the film definitely have more motivation to get to school and get an education than the kids in the US who take their education for granted. They also go through more dangerous areas and places just to make it to school that takes hours. The film was very surprising in general to see.

 In class I completed my assessment on The Rockpile story. Then I did an assignment on a movie with kids showing their way of getting to school. Most of the kids walked or rode a horse that took them hours to get to their school. They were motivated to get their education by parents and elders to be intelligent and teach others. The most interesting one to me was the three boys with one in a wheel chair who had to get pushed over a hour by his brothers through rocky ground and mountains.

 I was absent yesterday on November 13th. Today I completed an assignment on my childhood neighborhood and what it was like there. I drew a picture of the house I grew up in and the neighborhood around it. Then I put rules I grew up on and a horrible event. I also included my eyesore which is an abandoned house. 

 In class we took notes on direct and indirect characterization. We also looked at steal which stands for speech, thoughts, effects, actions, and looks. We then used these used these five techniques to describe characters traits of an individual character in The Rockpile story. I was given John as my character to look into and i wasn’t able to finish in class so I will upload here.

 Today we read a story called The Rockpile by James Baldwin. The story talked about a family living in neighborhood with a rockpile outside. Kids in the neighborhood would go to this rockpile almost everyday but the children in the family weren’t allowed to. One of the kids didn’t agree with this rule and decided to go anyway and ended up in a bad predicament with his brother and parents. We answered questions about our childhood neighborhood and family rules. I enjoyed this story and want the deeper meanings behind it.

 In class everyone presented their poems that we made last week. When I presented my poem I was nervous at first but as I started reading I got more comfortable. I think I did pretty good at saying my poem and telling my two themes to the class. Then I listed to everyone else’s poems that were really nice. My day is great.

 Today in class I took my assessment on the poem “Constantly Risking Absurdity”.  It took me a while to complete because the questions were kind of challenging for me. I tried the best I could on every question to guess the correct answer. Hopefully I made a great score. My day is good.

 In class I wrote my own poem including literary devices. I came up with two themes to my poem and a subject. My poem was a free verse about bystanders in isolation. I used this topic because it is not talked about subject a lot. I think we should recognize every little thing in this world that matters.