NataliaEnglishBlog

 In class we started off by taking an assessment on illuminate on Langston Hughes poems. Since we have been reading his poems the last few days we had to answer questions about them. I think I did kind of good for the most part. We then got introduced to our assignment on making a Culture Poem. I decided my topic of my poem would be the Lake of Stars Festival celebration that happens in African culture.

 We read another poem by Langston Hughes, about America. The poem explained roles of people who have to deal with oppression because of a certain trait they might have. We also discussed the issues that were pointed out in the poem and our personal resolutions to them. The end of the poem was similar to Donald Trumps speech, with the line “making America great again”. Overall I think the poem pointed out some big issues we have in America that need to be fixed to become great in the first place.

 Absent on Monday.

 Today in class we did a worksheet on the poems we have read in the last weeks. We broke down the curriculum in sections to explain the poems. We first did a poem together, determining its theme, topic, claim, complex argument, and using evidence to back up all of them. It was kind of easy determining the things needed after we did an example as a class. My day is going good.

 On Thursday we read a poem by Langston Hughes, called Mother to Son. The poem was about a mother giving advice to her son about how life isn’t always perfect and that he will get through the bad times. I liked the images used in the poem to describe her hardships and pain. Overall the poem is a great read with many great points. We then answered questions to go with the poem for better understanding.

 Today in class we watched a Nike advertisement video that read a poem called Dreams Deferred. The poem is about delayed or putting off your dreams and it lists what might happen if you let them be deferred. Things that can happen for example are you could forget about them or you could wait to long and end doing something else in life you don’t enjoy. The Nike advertisement basically said just do it, meaning follow your dreams no matter what. Then we asked ourselves what is our dream and how we would accomplish it in the next 10 years.

 On Thursday, we started off class by watching a video on Oprah Winfrey interviewing people in a town full of white people. The conclusion from this video that I made was that the people wanted to self segregate themselves in their town away from black people because they were racist. We then read and annotated three poems. I liked the first poem we read because I agree with the message being conveyed about black people being apart of America too if they are a citizen and have the same rights as everyone else. We defined some terms in another poem like freedom, refuge, and liberty.