Nicolette LaMarr
English Honors Mr. Stevens-Wills 6/12/17 Panel Reflection Honors My year as a tenth grader in English honors has completely improved my skills as a writer and a reader because of many useful skills you have provided me with. The repetition of you teaching and reviewing these skills definitely helped me remember them, which lead to my improvements because I used them in many out of class situations. Skills like understanding the given prompt and how to build a thesis off of it was something that I was missing, but the usage of the continuous prompt “how the author conveys meaning” completely helped me stick these skills into my head, rather than only learning them once, which would lead to me forgetting everything about it. I have also noticed many repetitions of habits we use in this class when analyzing texts, where we always reflect on the message the author is giving and how it relates to outside situations. We do this especially in panel discussions, although I find it more helpful for me to listen to others speak rather than speak myself because I tend to talk in circles. That is also another improvement, I'm not talking in circles as often as I used, yet I still am, which is something I need to work on. One thing that panel discussions and presentations have helped me on was not shaking and having a strong voice while public speaking which is a huge help for the future. I clearly see my changes in my reading and writing habits as my essay scores continue to improve and I feel as if I have a better understanding to what I am reading. My improved understanding to the material I read has changed my view on reading, and I actually enjoy it most of the time because I know what's going on for the most part. As a sophomore in English honors, there have been many clear improvements in my way of thinking, writing, speaking, and readings skills and they have changed my performance in class for the better while preparing me for my future classes and different situations in life. What improvement stood out to me the most was my better ability to understand my writing prompts and like I said, the repetition of your lessons on them really force these skills into my head as well as going to the Writing Center. An example of my improvement in understanding the prompts clearly shows in my first essay “Process Essay 1”, and the rubric said that my thesis ““All Summer in a Day”, written by Ray Bradbury displays feelings of guilt and regret through the usage of visual and auditory imagery.”, which does not clearly address the prompt and it is very vague as you commented. So that is when I first made my way to the Writing Center and ““All Summer in a Day”, by Ray Bradbury, demonstrates how the author uses visual and auditory imagery to describe Margot and the setting that reveal the meaning of how people are impacted by victimization.” which is still vague and quite awkward, but it was a step up from the first thesis. I improved in other categories where my grade went up drastically, because unlike the first essay where you commented “The examples are too disconnected from the story. You need to give your evidence context”, there was clearly improvement when you commented “You are drawing much stronger connections between the imagery and the text”. There is a large difference between my writing at the beginning of the year and my writing now, and my theses demonstrate how I’ve absorbed a greater understanding of the context and prompt, an example of my improvement would be from my revision of my “Process Essay 2”, and my thesis was “ In the poem"Wildfire Moon" Carol Dukes believes that individual perspective determines whether something is chaotic or beautiful. The speaker focuses on a child's innocent observations to emphasize how experience is the element that defines one's view of the world.”, and this thesis is clear, organized and not awkward like my previous ones. I did not automatically become better at writing theses, I had to ask for help, and go to the writing center, and have my peers proofread my essays and make suggestions. The reason that I am focusing so much on my theses is because, they were my worst skill when it came to writing and they are the structure to an essay. One last thing I did to help me improve my skills at writing a strong thesis was writing one for every poetry blog post. It was practice for me everyday, and my improvement shows when comparing my “Process Essay 1”, thesis and my one of my blog posts thesis from the poem “Smoking”, which was “In the poem “Smoking”, Elton Glaser conveys the harmfulness of smoking by utilizing visual imagery of the body's reaction to it showing how the convincing thoughts of smoking can lead to internal damage in your body.”, and I used an imaginary prompt of “how the author conveys meaning”, for them all. While this thesis address the prompt, it also connects to the meaning without being awkward. I believe that going to the Writing Center was a large part of my improvement while your repetition of teaching how to understanding the prompt helped me have a huge improvement throughout my essays I wrote this year. I realized my love for reading increased as SSR helped me find genres I enjoy because I was forced to read, and I wouldn’t otherwise. I really enjoy books composed of poems and young adult fiction my favorite were “Milk and Honey”, and “Suicide Notes From Beautiful Girls”, while writing the book reviews made me look back and obtain a greater understanding and the meaning behind these books. Thanks to SSR, I now enjoy reading because I discovered the topics that interest me the most. Before I was in this class, I would shake and stutter on my words while public speaking, but the continuous assignments you gave the class improved my ability to form words while speaking in public. I also really enjoy socratic seminars and panel discussions by the end of the year because I realized that these are really helping me understand the topics at a greater extent and actually taking other classmates ideas into thought. The sharing of ideas was my favorite part because it portrayed other students ways of thinking while I combined and connected my thoughts to them. In my last essay, “The Tempest”, was interesting because I flawed at something I’ve never really focused on which was organization. In my essay, my tactic was to shift from scene one all the way to scene five and it obviously became confusing because I kept going back and forth between characters. I do wish that there was time to go back and fix it because it is something I do need to work on and the more practice I get with it, the faster I will master the skill of organization. You did not comment on my essay of having too little evidence, so i'm assuming that I achieved that standard and I do feel like I did. One of the last panel discussions I really related to was both the one speaking of social media. The one about social media was big for me because, ironically, I was going through some issues with social media and the discussion actually helped me make my decision of deleting all of my social medias. All of the issues that came with them are gone and I truly feel happier because like explained in the discussion, social media actually made me sorta depressed. Lastly, I would like to thank you for assigning all of these assignments, even though I didn’t like them at first, I now realize that they were a big part of all of my improvement I made this year. I also would like to thank you for reassuring everything to me because I constantly ask the same questions, but the reassurance did help me quite a lot, an example would when I asked if a quote from every act from “The Tempest’, would meet your requirement and you said that it was not enough, and looking back to it, if I never asked that question my grade would be lower because I would’ve only put one quote for each scene. This year I went from, awkward grammar, vague theses, disliking reading, and stuttering on my words while public speaking to presentable grammar, stronger theses, liking to read, and being able to actually speak in front of people. I’ve seen the most improvement in this class by far because, this class not only focuses on reading and writing, it focusing on speaking and the sharing of ideas. A couple of the last panel discussions I really related to was both the one speaking of social media and the one speaking of how our success is built from our failure. The one about social media was big for me because, ironically, I was going through some issues with social media and the discussion actually helped me make my decision of deleting all of my social medias. All of the issues that came with them are gone and I truly feel happier because like explained in the discussion, social media actually made me sorta depressed.
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