1st Quarter Reflection

1st Quarter Reflection

10/29/15

       I think this quarter went by really smooth. I think this quarter went by smoothly because I used skills to help with my learning that I didn't use last year. I used metacognition, or thinking about your thinking, a lot more this year when it comes to assignments, projects, and lessons. It helped focus on what I was struggling with and not what I already knew. That made it feel like the whole day go by faster. Another thing I that I think helped was organization when it comes to document and paper. Every class that has multiple documents or papers has a folder. This helped me find stuff easily if I needed it.

        This quarter I learned good about current world conflicts and past world conflicts. We learned a lot about refugees, especially Syrian refugee. We read a book Of Beetles and Angles, which was a memior about a refugee. We also read and shared various articles about refugees. I also learned about banned or challenged book this quarter. We did research on a book and we had a gallery walk showing all the books. It was interesting to see books like Harry Potter and Green Eggs and Ham being banned and challenge.

        I think my research skills have gotten better this year. I've done a lot of research this year so I'm slowly improving. Now I use multiple sources and I will check publish or last edited dates. Last year I don't think I ever checked that, so that's a improvement. Before I also would use Wikipedia and only that. Now I use the resources listed on Wikipedia and I mostly try to stay away from it.

The Eleventh Plague - 10/14/15

The Eleventh Plague

Author: Jeff Hirsch

Pages: 0 - 148

Prompt: Analyze what motivates the main character’s behavior

SPOILER ALERT

        Stephen's, the main character, behavior at the beginning of the book was motivated by his grandpa and dad. His behavior is also affected by the post-war setting throughout the book, but I'm going to focus on the grandpa and dad. Stephen's behavior was mainly motivated by his grandpa. His grandpa had a lot rules set for Stephen and his dad. They would always make at least one mistake, even while doing the simplist of tasks. The way his grandpa would punish Stephen and his dad was by slapping them. After his grandpa died he was motivated by someone else, his dad.

       After the grandpa died Stephen and his dad behavior changed. They would always question their actions because of the impact the grandpa had on them. They were stuck in the way of thinking, but they would say to their self that he isn't here anymore. It is a little messed up that they said that to theirselves, but they had to take risks. Once again, Stephen's motivation would change after his dad fell into a coma.

        Now Stephen is motivated by his surroundings. He gets taken in by a town of people that was created. They hospitalized his dad and they take care of Stephen. They give him food, water, clothes, etc., since they are that nice he doesn't want to get thrown out of town. He has to now resist his instinct to loot and fight. He also has to adjust to living with many people.