WrAP Up Part two 4.29.12

Lauren Scott
Dr.deGravelles
English I/block 4
April 29, 2012

Common Errors List

1. Missing commas
   Literacy Narrative paper
   Incorrect: "So when daddy went to law school I didn't understand why he could play with me while he was studying or why he was never home during the week until 8pm."
   Correct: "So when daddy went to law school, I didn't understand why he couldn't play with me while he was studying or why he was never home during the week until 8pm."
2. Comma splicing
   Profiling (a space) paper
   Incorrect: "Grandpa Henry was already dressed in one of his hundred of Ralph Lauren polo shirts, this one just so happens to be red with a navy polo man, jeans, tennis shoes, and a my father gave him for his birthday one year from a lawyer convention that reads "Nobody Talks. Everyone Walks."
   Correct: "Grandpa Henry was already dressed in one of his hundred of Ralph Lauren polo shirts this one just so happens to be red with a navy polo man, jeans, tennis shoes, and a my father gave him for his birthday one year from a lawyer convention that reads "Nobody Talks. Everyone Walks."
3. Repetition of words or phrases, "I see"
   Profiling (a space) graded draft
   Incorrect: "Whenever I look around I see hints of red in everything I look at. I see a red candle on the first bookshelf, a little jewelry box with red flowers painted on it on the second bookshelf, red flowers on the comforter on the bed."
   Correct: "When I look around I see hints of red in everything I look at. A red candle sits on the first bookshelf, a little jewelry box with red flowers paint on it sits on the second bookshelf, red flowers are embroidered on the comforter on the bed."
4. Punctuation outside of quotation
   Literacy Analysis paper
   Incorrect: "In the story 'A Letter from Santa Claus', Eleanor Estes introduces Rufus a young boy who longs to receive a pony for Christmas from Santa Claus."
   Correct: "In the story 'A Letter from Santa Claus' Eleanor Estes introduces Rufus a young boy who longs to receive a pony for Christmas from Santa Claus." 
5. Proof reading/deletion
   Research Global Issues paper
   Incorrect: "These kids need to be living and playing and being kids and not worrying about their immune systems shutting down at anytime or becoming infected with AIDS because they've HIV for more than five years old."
   Correct: "These kids need to be living and playing and being kids and not worrying about their immune systems shutting down at anytime or becoming infected with AIDS because they've had HIV for more than five years."

WrAP-Up Part one 4.27.12

Lauren Scott
Dr.deGravelles
English I {block 4}
April 27, 2012

Year-Long Process Writing Reflection Drafting
“Writing WrAP Up”

  As incoming freshman in high school and a very prominent English student throughout past years I learned so much this year in my English I class and grown as a writer in so many ways. I have never been so challenged in my writing until this year’s English class. This year I wrote a literacy narrative, profiling, literary analysis, and a research {global issues} paper. Our class was also assigned in the beginning of the year writer’s notebook entries but starting in January of 2012 we started blogs to replace our writer’s notebook entries. There has always been consistent writing assignments throughout the year giving us many opportunities to grow as writers and transition from middle school writing to high school writing.

  I was content and surprised at my WrAP total score of 23 and scale score of 1159. I thought that I had done a lot worse than I actually did. My weakest points of my WrAP writing were sentence structure and mechanics.  While my strongest point of my WrAP writing were overall development, organization, support, and word choice. I feel that my WrAP writing truly portrays my weakest points in all of my main writing such as papers but also my smaller writing such as blog posts. During the WrAP I tried to use some of the techniques that I have been taught in class like thinking and reading like a writer by having perspectives on my writing to help broadening the abilities to write on the topic I was given.

  Looking back on my papers throughout the year I saw a trend in my grades. My grades got lower as the types and processes of papers we wrote became harder. The first paper I wrote was the literacy narrative essay I missed the main point of writing a literacy narrative. I made the essay more of a profile of my father with a few paragraphs about my literacy narrative. I did poorly with conventions and organization on this essay. “…Does not go beyond the minimum to offer insight into your writing process…” was the critique given by Dr.d that stood out the most to me because all I did was try and get the bare minimum for the essay and it completely shows.

  Where I lacked in the literacy essay I made up for in my profiling paper. The profiling paper is by far best paper I have written this year. I hit the mark on every technique that we have studied for our writings this year. The techniques for writing that we’ve studied this year are organization, ideas, word choice, sentence fluency, voice, and conventions. I did very well on this paper because it gave me a chance to show a lot of my strongest technical points like imagery, a profiling subject, and fluency of story line sentences, and emotion in my voice. I also got very positive feedback from Dr.d on this paper saying, “Great drafts Lauren. You have a clear and interesting perspective that pulls us through the paper.”

  The two most challenging papers, for me, were the literacy analysis and research {global issues} papers. A word for the wise never pick Christmas themed short story they’re very hard to analyze and just bad news for a literacy analysis paper. “Lauren, I know this paper had been a struggle for you” was the comment that Dr.d gave me on my l and was the most important because ‘a struggle’ for the literacy analysis paper is the understatement of the century. I had such a terrible time with this paper so after a certain point I just gave up which was careless and childish of me. For the global issues research paper I had an interesting topic and great rough drafts. But when I got to the final draft one of my strongest points of literary techniques, voice, I used an emotional voice rather than a factual and formal voice in my paper. I have been working on the distinction of my voice in papers lately though. I failed to correctly and precisely edit my paper which just carelessness on my part. Even though I struggled the most with these two papers I learned the most and they will help me as a writer.

  As freshman year comes to a close looking back on all of my writing I remembered the process I went through on each paper. I remembered going to see Dr.d at tutorial and sometimes afterschool to make sure my drafts made sense with our literary techniques and the overall goal of the paper. I learned that you must edit your paper as many times as possible before going in for a final draft, always organize and pre-draft because organization is easy points, and if you really don’t know what to do for any of your papers go online and read around and research your paper’s goal and purpose or ask Dr.d! 

Outside Reading 4.23.12

Outside Reading Times~ Biology Textbook-90 minutes Poetry book-30 minutes World History Textbook-30 minutes We Bought a Zoo- 25 minutes

Free Post 4.16.12

Song Analysis: 'Hurts Like Heaven' by Coldplay

  For this free post of analyzing a song of our choice I had a really tough time choosing a song. I went through my iTunes Library for like thirty minutes yesterday listening and looking up lyrics on Google for this assignment! Finally I hit one of my favorite bands, Coldplay, and knew I had to do one of their songs for this assignment. So the Coldplay song I chose was 'Hurts Like Heaven' on their newest album 'Mylo Xyloto'.  I've always seen Coldplay's songs are poetic but it was just like reading a poem with these song lyrics!

  From just looking at the title 'Hurts Like Heaven' I saw a simile which was a positive start to this assignment. Throughout there is enjambment and caesura as I annotated my lyrics {http://www.elyrics.net/read/c/coldplay-lyrics/hurts-like-heaven-lyrics.html}. I saw so much repetition in the song but the repeated words are 'written', 'you', 'control','street' , 'heart', 'heaven', 'weapon', 'cold', & 'mark'. The repeated sayings/lines throughout are 'It's so cold', 'Still I won't let go', 'Oh you use your heart as a weapon', 'And it hurts like heaven', 'Concrete canvas', 'Armed with a spray can soul', 'Yes, I feel [a little bit] nervous', 'How come they're out', & 'Let [them] take control'. I notice alliteration of the letters C & B. In one stanza the alliteration of the letter C is throughout, 'So on concrete canvas under cover of dark Concrete canvas I'll go making my mark Armed with a spray can soul I'll be armed with a spray can soul'. While only in a line I saw the alliteration of the letter B, 'Fire from the belly and the beat from heart'. All of these repeated lines and words bring emphasis towards the rebellion of the song.

  While reading the lyrics and listening to the song I got two different images but I still got imagery at the same places for both. Imagery in the song are 'Written in graffiti on the bridge in a park 'Do you ever get the feeling that you're missing the mark?', 'Written in marker on a factory 'I struggle with the feeling that my life isn't mine', 'See the arrow that they shot trying to tear us apart', & 'On every street, every car, every surface are names'. After reading and listening to the song many times I notice rhymes, which should of been the first & easiest things for me to find! The rhymes I found we always end rhymes, because they were at the end of the lines making a rhyme. The rhyming lines are 'Written in graffiti on a bridge in the park 'Do you ever get the feeling that you're missing the mark?', 'Written up in marker on a factory sign 'I struggle with the feeling that my life isn't mine', 'Oh you, use your heart as a weapon And it hurts like heaven', 'See the arrow that they shot, trying to tear us apart Fire from my belly and the beat from my heart',  'On every street, every car, every surface are names And at the streets arise, I'll be rather insane', 'So on concrete canvas under cover of dark Concrete canvas, I'll go making my mark'. One small thing I noticed were that there were the occasional opposites put next to each other! Examples of these opposites are 'It's so cold, It's so cold See the arrow that they shot, trying to tear us apart Fire from my belly and the beat from my heart' & 'Yes, I feel a little bit nervous Yes, I feel nervous and I cannot relax'. Both the rhymes and opposites were kind of ironic in the song.

Lastly I noticed that when I read the lyrics out loud them seemed to mean differently to myself than whenever I listen to Coldplay perform the lyrics which I thought was odd. There are a lot of important tone changes and diction in the song that make certain lyrics more important than others. There are a lot of sounds and important guitar bridges which I think add the drama of this rebellious love song. Whenever I heard Coldplay songs I knew the words but after looking at this song I've found that they have a lot more meaning than just a catchy beat which makes me love Coldplay even more!

Reader's Response 4.15.12

We Bought a Zoo by Benjamin Mee

  Over spring break I conquered over half of my large free reading book, We Bought a Zoo by Benjamin Mee. I know y'aal are probably thinking that I must be a terrible reader because it's taking me so long to finish this book.  But the reason it's taking me so long is because in Mee's writing he goes into an unnecessary amount of detail and honestly I get a little bored. While I read I just want him to tell me about the crazy adventures of the zoo he's purchased but so far not many crazy stories have come along.. Which is a little disappointing. I read about six chapters this week and Mee spoke about more of his family troubles. Except not with his ill wife, with his immediate family and their inheritance crisis. 

  Mee now has to worry about his children in this new environment because it's not in shape for children to be running around and playing about! But also because his brother has gone M.I.A and will not return any of the family's phone calls or visits to his house. I feel so bad for Benjamin because his mother just died after she moved in to his new house on the zoo with his family and his brother is ignoring him. He has no time to worry about the zoo right now because he's so stressed with all the bills that he can't pay without his share of the family inheritance. But I truly love how his children always find ways to cheer him up by making him pancakes or leaving him notes around the house. It makes me want to see where this book goes! Even though it's been in a slow spot for awhile I am not giving up on this book!

Reading Times~
5.9.12- 35 minutes
5.10.12- 30 minutes
5.12.12- 60 minutes
5.13.12- 20 minutes 

Reader's Response 4.1.12

We Bought a Zoo by Benjamin Mee

This is my third week reading We Bought a Zoo by Benjamin Mee. I'm trying to not get bored with this book but it's hard when all Benjamin talks about are money, bills, and debts. But I have been noticing how formally his writing is. The book is so much more different than the book because the children react to the family moving to the zoo.
Mee's little girl isn't as cute as in the movie but of course that's how Hollywood made her in the movie. I'm sure she was adorable in real life but Mee didn't convey that in the book so far. But his son is very witty in the book as he was in the movie. Mee isn't saying a lot about his kids personally unlike how they did in the movie. I still so mad that I saw the movie before reading the book because the movie is making me not like the book! I going to finish this book though, and hopefully like it more or just as much as the movie!

~Reading Times:
3.26.12-40 minutes
3.27.12-30minutes
3.28.12-32 minutes
3.29.12-40 minutes
3.30.12-10 minutes

Analyzing a Poem 4.1.12

Analyzing "Nikki-Rosa" by Nikki Giovanni

  When I was looking through the poems of section two in our class poetry book I saw that the last poem was by Nikki Giovanni. I really loved whenever Ms.Giovanni came and spoke to our school a couple months ago so I though it would be cool to actually read some of her work that she is so well known for. The poem I read is called "Nikki-Rosa" and since our section is of Childhood memories I predicted that the title was about Nikki's childhood nickname & experiences from her past.

  The very first thing I noticed when glancing at the poem I noticed that there were no uppercase letters. But then I looked closely and noticed that only the words 'Black', 'Woodlawn', 'Chicago', 'Christmas', & 'Hollydale' were in uppercase letters out of the entire poem. Giovanni used a few literary techniques in this poem such as enjambment, tone, rep and some consonance.

  An example of enjambment  is"childhood remembrances are always a drag   if you're Black". But the entire poem is filled with enjambment from each and every line. An example of consonance is "...you always remember things like living in Woodlawn   with no inside toilet   and if you become famous or something..." I saw a consonance pattern of -ing within those three lines. I also noticed that Giovanni's tone transitions from just a story of memories into defense of the memories.