Tuesday 31st

 Today we spent the whole class period answering the question of the poem "Constantly Risking Absurdity.¨ We had to write our answers in complete sentences and write them down on a separate sheet of paper. The answers for the poem were due by the end of class. For most of the questions, I had the answers already from annotating the poem yesterday. For the other questions we had to visualize a line of the poem and write down what we felt it meant or talked about. I was able to finish 8 of the 9 questions.

Monday 30th

 Today in class we started learning about a new poet writer Lawrence Ferlinghetti. We watched a short video about him and were given one of his poems called "Constantly Risking Absurdity." As a class, we annotated the poem and learned that the poem was talking about taking risks. We also learned that the author is comparing the poem to an acrobat, so we watched a video of the famous acrobat Nikolas Wallenda who walked across the Grand Canyon. Once we finished annotating the poem we had to write down 2 themes from the poem which were; Being creative is a slow and tedious process, and interest comes with risks. Out of today's lesson, I enjoyed getting to watch the video of Nikolas Wallenda walking across the Grand Canyon because it caught my attention. 

Friday 27th

 Today we finished presenting all the poems. My group presented yesterday, so we were taking notes from the rest of the groups. We had to write three things we learned from the poem and two themes. The poems we took notes on today were "Acquainted with the Night", "The Road Not Taken", And "After Apple Picking." I was able to learn that in most poems of Robert Forst, he talks about nature or mentions it in his poems. 

Thursday 26th

 

Tuesday 24th

 Today in class we finished working on our group assignment. One of our teammates was absent today so the rest of the group had to just finish working on their part. We are going to present our poems on Thursday or Friday depending on what group gets called and if we have enough time. I had already finished doing my part of the assignment which was writing down the question that I could come up with from the poem. In class, I just had to write down the answers that I thought fit the questions I made up best.

Monday 23th

 Today in class we were sitting in groups of 4 and we were given a poem. Each group received a different poem. Each person in the group was given a different task that we had to complete based on the poem. My group poem is called ¨Nothing Gold Can Stay."My task for the group is to write down questions that we can come up with for the audience based on the poem. I had difficulties at first coming up with questions that were open-ended for the rest of the classroom, but after some time I was able to come up with 4 good questions. I also have to write down answers to the questions I have.

Friday 20th

 Today in class we had a book on our desk that we had to use to work on our assignments. In the book, we had 3 different activities to complete, and had to write down 15 new vocabulary. We had to write down our answers on a separate sheet of paper that we had to turn in by the end of the class. The first activity was dealing with the vocabulary words and we had to choose which ones would go best on the sentences we were provided. The second activity was dealing with root words and prefixes. I had a harder time in the second activity than the first one. I wasn't able to get the last activity done by the end of class, but I still turned in the paper with the rest of the work I was able to complete. 

Thursday 19th

 Today in class we started off with a quick write on something that reminds us of our childhood and why. I wrote that Barbie dolls and movies reminded me of my childhood because since little I would watch Barbie movies with my cousins and play with our dolls and a Barbie dreamhouse. Once we were done writing we analyzed and read a poem by Robert Frost called "Birches." After reading the poem and annotating it we learned that the poem was in first person point-of-view. The poem talks about childhood, and how as you get older you start wishing that you could go back to when you were a child without responsibility and able to enjoy life. Once we were done reading the poem we had to write down some themes we got from the poem. Some things we wrote down were; Life is only what you make it, your childhood could help or hurt you, and nature can make you feel free and happy. Before class ended we had to write a paragraph talking about what was our special spot where we go to when feeling down and why we considered it our special spot. I wrote that my special spot was my room because when I'm feeling down I can go to my room and distract myself by rearranging my stuff or just lying down on my bed and listening to music. I also consider it my special spot because if I need some alone time and quiet I can go to my room where there won't be any noise and I can get my thoughts straight without any interruptions. We were also given the chance to get extra credit on our blog if we needed to bring our grades up. 

Tuesday 17th

 Today in class we started typing our essay onto Illuminate about the poem "Out Out" by Robert Frost. There were 7 parts in total for the essay and we had to turn it in by the end of class. As a class, we did the introduction together. For the introduction, we included a brief summary of the poem, a reference to techniques we will discuss, and text/poet from the poem. In the 2nd part of the essay, we had to talk about what the meaning of the title of the poem was about and how it establishes the theme of the poem. In parts 3-6 of the essay we had to talk about the poem and what led to the death of the boy. The last part was the conclusion and for that, we had to summarize our points from the previous parts, explain why the poem is enjoyable and still relevant today, and our personal opinion. I was only able to finish parts 1-4 of the essay.

Monday 16th

Today in class we annotated a poem from Robert Forst. We also watched a short video talking about who Robert Frost was. The poem we annotated was called "Out Out."We first discussed as a class what we thought the poem would be about just from the title. Something we came up with was that the poem was talking about death. Afterward, we started annotating the poem by underlining/ highlighting information such as the setting( time, location, and place) or important information such as who was the poem talking about. In the poem, we found an alliteration which was "Sweet-scented stuff." We also got 2 themes from the poem, the first one was " Don't rush your childhood because it can be dangerous and ruin your life." And the second theme was "Life can end in a blink of an eye."

Friday 13th

 Today in class we were handed 2 pieces of paper, one contained 2 articles about David Chappelle and the Netflix stand-up comedy called "The Closer."The article talks about how some Netflix workers decided to walk out of the studio and gave out sensitive information about how much David Chappelle made as well as other information. We had to take out a separate sheet of paper and write 6 dangerous things comedians talk about. As a class, we wrote down politics, race, sexuality, drugs, religion, and sex.

Thursday 12th

 Today in class we had to take out a separate sheet of paper and on the top wrote Unpopular opinions. Everyone in the class was handed a random piece of paper with an unpopular opinion that we had to say to the class. The unpopular opinion I got was "Rap music is absolute garbage and all sound the same." On the sheet of paper, we had to write down 3 claims. The first one claims is agree with the statement, the second one disagrees with it, and the last claim is a compromise to the statement. Once everyone was done writing their 3 claims, people would be chosen at random to say what opinion they got along with their 3 claims.

Tuesday 10th

 Today in class we had to write down on a separate sheet of paper 5 unknown things that someone would want to explore. I wrote down the afterlife, space, bottom of the ocean, future, and collage. Once we were down writing them down 1 person at a time from each side of the class had to go up to the board and write down one of the things they wrote down. Next in our own opinion, we had to write down if it'll be worth it or not exploring the unknown. Everyone in the class voted that it would be worth it to explore the unknown. So we had to write 5 claims supporting why exploring the unknown is a good thing to the 5 things we put in the beginning. I wrote down how exploring the unknown is important because you'll learn something new, you may be the first to do it, you can make a new discovery, gain knowledge, grow and learn, and finally how it would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. We also had to write down 5 claims stating why exploring the unknown would be a bad thing.

Thursday 5th

 Today we worked independently reading over two articles talking about student loans. The names of the articles are "Dealing with Student Debt" and "Unpacking the Student Loan Dilemma." For each passage, we had to first read it and then underline/ highlight 7 statistics, claims, or facts we found in each passage. Once done reading and highlighting the information needed we had to type what we have onto Illuminate. 

Tuesday 3rd

 Today in class we finished working on the worksheet about "Putting the Brakes on Driverless Cars" and "Get Ready for Roadway Robots." We had to look up the definitions of 6 words that we were given in passages. We also had to write down the 4 claims that are in each passage. As a class, we had already found 3 of the claims in the passage "Putting the Brakes on Driverless Cars", so we only had to look for the last one. In the passage "Get Ready For Roadway Robots" I only had 1 of the claims underlined, so I had to find the other 3 claims left. This assignment was supposed to help us identify claims in a passage when we're reading it.

Monday 2th

 Today in class we took notes about citing evidence. We were given two sheets of paper. One contained 2 different passages talking about whether driverless cars are a good idea. One was against the idea of driverless cars, while the other one was in favor of the idea. While reading the passages we had to highlight the claim in each paragraph.