For a lot of my life, I’ve never been really good with words. I tend to have a hard time expressing my opinion or explaining my answers to a question. I had an especially hard time with expressing my emotions over a subject. It’s not that I was shy, I just was really bad at speaking and writing in a logical manner. So, when I started 8th Grade Language Arts, I had a hard time getting used to all of the assignments where we had to write our explanations using processes like Claim, Evidence and Reasoning. Although, through all of the assignments we were given to help us practice, I think I’m getting better at writing and talking through expressing myself and arguing over a statement. This year in Language Arts, I think I’ve grown in Communication.

            Although I probably grew in Communication in other classes along with Language Arts, I grew in Communication the most in Language Arts. My growth mainly came from the projects we did in Language Arts, and of all the projects we did in Language Arts, I think the projects where I grew the most in Communication was the World History Literature Circles and the 1st Independent Reading Project (specifically the Review part of the Project).

            The World History Literature Circle Project was a project we started in 1st Quarter. We started our 1st Literature Circles Project by reading books that corresponded to the information we were learning about in World History at the time. To those who have seen my World History Reflection, we were learning about the Jamestown colony and the northern colonies (Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island). While we learned that information, we read books that told us the information from what we learned through reading stories. Although the stories were different for each group (like how some had a book about what slavery was like before the American Revolution while others had a book about the witch hunts in Massachusetts), we each relied a lot from our books to help with our project in the future, the Infographic Project. So, we got to read stories, but also learn information. Along with reading the stories, we also started a little activity for each week about what we read. This is what we would do for Literature Circles. For my group, I read Blood on the River by Elisa Carbone. First, we would read the reading that we were assigned to read. Then, we would write Post-It Notes to specific points in our book to where we used Cognitive Reading Strategies to help us think of topics to talk about in class. Cognitive Reading Strategies are ways to help the reader think about the passage that the reader is reading, like asking questions or making predictions. Then, we would find vocabulary that we didn’t know or heard of before. Finally, we would think of two questions at the end of the reading we were assigned to and answer them. There wasn’t really a point to our activities other than to have fun while reading, but I personally think that the project was made to help us become better readers. Anyway, my first artifact is my 3rd Week Literature Circles Sheet. In this artifact, you can see that I tried to write my questions with more depth in order to better explain my thoughts. For this Literature Circles meeting, we read chapters 10-16, where in the story, our main character, Sam, is in the Jamestown colony while the gentlemen in the group are attacking the natives and starting a mutiny to head back to England.  Although, it’s hard to show growth in Communication through writing, I noticed a difference in my Communication skill after the 3rd Week Literature Circle. There isn’t much else to say about the Activity other than what’s on the sheet. When we first started the Literature Circles, I think I did well enough. I had very simple questions and very simple answers to talk about at the table, and I personally think that the first week was kind of boring. We zoomed through our activity, and then had nothing to talk about for the rest of it. In the 2nd Week, it was more or less of the same thing. The only difference was that I got a 31/32 the 2nd Week while I got a 32/32 on the 1st Week. After the 2nd Week, I noticed something. The reason that my questions weren’t thought much about was that they were too simple questions. I used kind-of boring Cognitive Reading Strategies like Making Connections and Determining What’s Important; while my questions were simple enough that you could answer them in one sentence. Making Connections is where you compare something that happens that happened in the book to something else in you life, and Determining What’s Important is when you say the most important ideas in the chapters. Since I actually enjoyed talking about the book, I wanted to change my writing to be more exciting. To do this, I attempted to put more thought into my work. When we did the Post-It Notes, I tried to use more conversational strategies, by using Cognitive Reading Strategies like Analyzing Author’s Craft or Asking Questions. Analyzing Author’s Craft is when you think about the meanings of words or phrases in the book, and Asking Questions is when you wonder about an unexplained thing in the book. When we had our 3rd Week Literature Circles, I noticed a difference in the Literature Circles. By making my work more complex so that it could have more than one answer, I got more opinions from everyone in the group. For example, I had written for the group to explain why they thought a certain way based upon an event that happened in the book, and the group answered that question much longer than they normally did based on their different opinions. I had made small changes, but they already had made the Literature Circles more interesting. It wasn’t even the writing that helped grow my Communication, but the conversations we had over the reading from the writing. So, I grew in Communication from this artifact by defining my work better in order for us to have better conversations over the reading.

            The Independent Reading Project is a project where we read books and then review them. More specifically, the Independent Reading Project is where we choose a book to read, write sentences to where we had reactions in the book, fill out a paper over the plot of the book and write a paper over our opinion of the book. Every quarter in Language Arts, our teacher, Ms. Schultz, assigned the project to us for us to read more books and be more adventurous with our reading, although in my opinion, I think it helped my Communication. In the Independent Reading Projects, we would first choose a book that we wanted to read. We were required to have a book with at least 150 pages (along with being a proper reading level for the student). Then, we would look through the book to find sentences that we had a reaction to. Our reactions to the sentences could be things like relating to the character or thinking in a different way than the character did for an event. Next, we would fill out a paper to describe the plot of the book. In this part, we filled out a sheet explaining the characters of the book, the setting and major events in the book, like the Climax or Resolution. The Climax is the point in a story where the conflict of the story is starting to be resolved by the protagonist. The Resolution is the point in a story when the conflict is resolved, or ends. Finally, at the very end, we write a review over the book. In the review, we state our opinions over the book and whether we think people would like to read it or not, and we use C.E.R. to do so. C.E.R. stands for “Claim, Evidence, Reasoning”, and is a strategy we use at the D.R.S.S. where we give evidence for a statement we make and then explain why that evidence supports out statement. Other than that information, I don’t really have anything else to say about Independent Reading Project. Anyway, my second artifact is my 1st Quarter Independent Reading Project Book Review. In this artifact, you can see that I put a lot of detail into my review. The reason for this amount of detail is so I can make an argument as effectively as I can, although I didn’t have this amount of detail in my project at first. In the 1st Quarter Independent Reading Project, I read the Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. You can see in this artifact how I started off with a hook, made a “summary” of the plot of the book, stated what I liked about the book, stated what I didn’t like about the book, and finally close my statement. Similarly to the 1st Literature Circles Project, I thought I didn’t write as well with my first two attempts at writing. You see, when I started my Independent Reading Project for the first time, I had no idea of what I’d do. Therefore, I decided that I would just follow the instructions to figure out what I’d do. So, by using the instructions, I made very simple writing for the sentences and Novel Summary Sheet part of the project. By the time I had gotten to the review part of the project, I noticed something about my previous writings, specifically towards my sentences. When I looked back upon my sentences, I noticed how weak my writing was. There was something wrong with it in my opinion, but to be sure, I had it critiqued by my mom. When mom critiqued it, she said that the only thing that she thought was wrong with it was that it was kind of boring. When I looked upon it again, I could see what she was talking about. By making my writing simple, it was drab and unappealing. It had not met my goal to keep the readers attention. So, I asked my mom if she thought I could do anything to change this in order to keep the reader’s attention. So, we talked for a while and what I mostly got from her feedback was that I was too general for my work. From this feedback, I changed my work a little bit each time, and continued to show my mom my work until I got to a point where she said that she thought my sentences had kept her attention. From all of the information I was given, I then felt I had enough feedback on how to keep peoples attention by talking to my mom to make my review. In my review, I added a lot of details and focused on the main ideas of my points. For example, you can see how I take specific quotes from the book to show the things I like about the book. I had used the feedback I had gotten from getting feedback from my mom to improve the work that I was making and make the work that I already had better. Also, when I got my score over the project, I got a 100/100. Although I didn’t use Communication with this endeavor to help express my opinion or convince others of an argument, but by talking to someone in order to complete a goal (which in this case was improving my work). So, I grew in Communication from this artifact by using critiques and conversations from my mom to help improve my work.

            I’m glad that I grew in Communication this year. I know that this year will have a lot of projects in it, and some of which I’ll have to do myself. So, I think it’s good that I grew in Communication this year (in Language Arts especially). In my 1st Literature Circles, I learned how I can ask questions in a certain way to get better responses from people. In my 1st Independent Reading Project, I used critiques to have conversations on how to make my work better, and I also learned how to make my work more interesting so it would keep the attention of my readers. I feel from these growths that I will be more prepared for high school and college. In high school, I know that our projects will eventually get more and more individual, where eventually we’ll only be working on our own projects for the entire year, so it would be important to learn how to talk with other people to have them help improve my work or achieve a goal through advice. In college, I will have to make my applications interesting enough to keep the attention of the reader when I submit them to colleges. I also think that Communication will be important for a job. I plan to be an animator or an illustrator when I grow up. In animating and illustrating, I know you require a lot of critiques and other conversations in order to do well in animating or illustrating (along with other jobs), so gathering Communication skills would be important. Anyway, I think I grew in Communication this year in Language Arts. By growing in Communication, I think I’m slightly more prepared for the future.