Farhad’s School Education Blog

This term in English I have learned and covered various usage of English from books to poems to essays and much more where I have had some strengths or weaknesses in. In this class I have learned about ESLRs the most as my knowledge about them dramatically grew and was more advanced in it as I started the term without having a clue what the ESLRs were. Personally, there have been two ESLRs I have been most active with, which are Involved Citizen and Academic Achiever. One personal growth I realized I had was Drama where I gained knowledge of it quite significantly; honestly I learned about most aspects of drama in just one quarter. To sum it up, this term has been a successful term especially with only the ESLRs and Drama.

Involved citizen was one of my skills to get me through English and also other subjects. To me involved citizen means having the responsibility to care and respect people of same and also different backgrounds. I was an involved citizen for instance, when I had drama for explanatory and I didn’t criticize someone in a bad mannerly way since we were all beginners in this subject including myself. In direct definition of ESLRs this means I “demonstrated awareness and respect for the rights of others.” Another example is when I had an English discussion about Anne Frank or The Tempest; I didn’t make fun of or interrupted any of my classmates who all came from different backgrounds. Even though I didn’t fully agree with what they were trying to say I still respected their point. In direct terms of ESLRs, this means I “Interacted respectfully with people of diverse cultures” Furthermore, another aspect that I used of Involved Citizen was when I “Demonstrated care and concern for my environment.” I achieved this by not being mad or arguing with my group members when they didn’t do what they were supposed to do in Scavenger Hunt project as I understood their mistakes. Overall Involved Citizen is what I accomplished for needing for me to behave and respect everyone in this term.

Academic Achiever was another ESLR I was really effective in. One important aspect of this ESLR was that I achieved being able to work independently and collaboratively, for instance when I did the Poem Unit, first in the beginning of class I participated in this poem activity with the whole class and finally I wrote poems by myself without chatting with my class peers. In Academic Achiever, this is known as “ demonstrate the ability to work both independently and collaboratively” I also managed to “access information from a variety of sources.” I did this quote for instance when I had to do research on a poet and summarize the life of that person, and even though Mr. Raisdana gave us a site to go to go for the research, I went to other sites to go more in depth for the poet’s life which was Angelou. The other Academic Achiever term I handled was “demonstrate technological literacy and the use of technology as a tool for the efficient and creative completion of a project” I achieved this quote by being able to finish the Teen Life project that was a movie about terrorism with my team members from other nations by using wikispace.com. In general I was also able to be efficiently an Academic Achiever.

One personal growth I realized I got was Drama, which was a mandatory subject as an Explanatory. This fascinating and fun subject helped me get my extroverted side out and not be the shy kid anymore with doing all the activities to stand out and not be introverted anymore. Since I like watching movies of all types, I might admire being an actor one day since Mr. Raisdana who had an intellectual idea of teaching us the skills to what an actor has to have and practice to have great sucess. So because of this I will try out in the next play next year staring 9th grade. Actually, Mr. Raisdana also taught us how a script is written with all the suspense and climax for example. As a whole, Drama was one of my favorite classes this year and I learned the whole concept of Drama that I had the benefit for the future and enjoyed it enormously.

Starting off the year I thought English was going to be this dull subject nevertheless I actually enjoyed it especially with the Poem and The Tempest course. This English class was a remarkable experience that I’ll never forget it as we learned a lot of characteristics of English and I think it will help us outstandingly next year starting high school being a fresh man. Generally I was filled with pride to be apart of this incredible 8th grade English class with Mr. Raisdana and my classmates as everything came out being a success for everyone even though my class had some up and downs.

          The third quarter has been by far the best and most thriving for me as we did a variety of different activities and projects that really involved the ESLRs not only within our community but also with three other schools around the world that’ll I talk about later in more detail. The reason that I believed that this was the best quarter is because we got to think outside the box as we did activities both technologically, physically, emotionally we had never done before. We learned everything in such an enjoyable way that really helped us gain loads of knowledge both independently and collaboratively. Below I’ll describe each event from January to March as proficiently as I can with my strengths and weaknesses. The events are the book we read over the holidays, The Wave, Poetry unit including the construction of the book and more, Teen Life Project, the movie we made as a class with pictures and video, and finally discussions we chatted about in class that helped you understand where you are at or things you need to improve on. Overall I think we did a lot of activities and projects in a short amount of time without even realizing it, and it truly amazes me how hard I worked in English class.

         I had the option if I wanted to read The Wave over the Christmas holiday because Mr. Raisdana was not able to it with us during school. I really enjoyed reading this book even though I was having a nice cold winter holiday in Iran, and to be honest, it is one of the best books I read in my life as it is truly one of my favorite and motivating books unlike Anne. Honestly after reading Anne Frank, my interests of books were totally vanished until when I was assigned to read The Wave. I wish we could have done some activities or projects regarding to this book. I think was more of a Self-Directed learner because I “Accepted responsibility for my own learning” which means even though we didn’t have to read the book, I did and finished my task of finishing the book completely. I could although have been a better Self-Directed learner by posting my thoughts about The Wave on my blog. I would grade myself 9 out of 10 for doing this part of 3^rd quarter. To put it briefly I read The Wave and I think it was really helpful in terms of education.

          Poetry Unit was just incredible as we explored the secrets and culture of Poetry. How can we forget this unit as it truly showed us the skills we actually had and yet didn’t realize. Without a doubt I believe everyone thinks that the Poetry is and will be the best unit we’ve done over the term. Through this unit we have written poem after poem with being well edited and finalized for our books for the Poetry Night which I miserably failed to go to. In the course of this unit we have learned writing poems of diversity, and learning poetry terms and actually using them for our poems. We also learned how to recite poems in front of audience with emotions and the pace it’s supposed that depends on the theme of the poem. Fun activities included a game sort of where we had to write a poem on a random picture in the one of the senses it’s supposed to be written in and heaps of other group activities that involved me with the ESLRs: Involved Citizen and Effective Communicator as I interacted respectfully with group members and showed my skills of collaboration as I shared helpful ideas right through the discussions we had. While making my book I was impressed with my grade, but I thought I could have done better because I was missing three poems which took off 10% of my grade. To improve next time I can be an Academic Achiever as I adjust my work to higher standards, meaning next time I should keep track of my poems, be organized, and finish a project completely to get the grade you really strive for. As I did my analysis on the poet I chose which was Angelou. I was a critical thinker as I “gathered, analyzed, and processed from a variety of sources” which means I took information about this poet using four kinds of websites of information of her background and then analyzing it in my own words. I could have gotten a better grade but I had missing a few poems in my book so next time I could be more of a Critical thinker by being more organized. I would rank myself a 8 out of 10 for this Poetry Unit. In conclusion I enjoyed this part of quarter three even though it involved these all this hard work nevertheless it was worth it as I experienced poetry in my own style.

          We have participated in the Teen Life Project which consists of four schools from around the world. They are in Colombia, U.S.A., and Canada and we communicated with these teenagers using a wiki as we are divided in about 20 groups of at least 6 people and have our own page to put our information. The purpose is to see how teenagers think about the global issues surrounding us and how we can help to solve these problems. So in my school we are supposed to write a poem that sends out a message and also a picture you made representing your topic and mine was Terrorism. It was hard communicating with our group members so I decided to get their emails and the Colombians were the only ones interested in talking to me as I chatted with them in MSN. Now the other members are supposed to put everything in some sort of project perhaps a movie in our group. I was definitely an Effective Communicator because I “Used technology as a tool for communication” and “collaborated with others in appropriate learning situations to achieve group goals.”  This defines that I used the internet to communicate with my group peers for effective strategy to complete this Teen Life Project. Next time I can do better if I emailed the Americans and Canadians to help out in the project. If I was to be graded for this section, I would give myself a 8 out of 10. Overall I wouldn’t say this was the best project due to lack of communication with different time zones but at least I got to know some new people from different cultures and this is how business is nowadays so it’s worth it to do this project even though I think that 10 graders because they would be have better knowledge of communication with being mature and responsible and would be more suited for this than us.

          At first I thought 3^rd quarter was going to be torture. Truthfully seeing that I was never into poetry, I was wrong as I realized I write poetry fairly well but I wouldn’t consider myself being a poet yet. Finally I was filled with pride to be apart of this great 8^th grade English class with Mr. Raisdana and also with my peers since everything came out being a success for everyone. A truly unforgettable experience!

I was a self directed learner by reading the book carefully and clearly which indicates that I did not escape long paragraphs and read the paragraph or chapter again that I didn’t understand. I mostly accepted responsibility and had good learning strategies for understanding the book. This means that I took notes without the teacher asking me sometimes, and after reading the book I went to sparknotes.com to fully understand a brief summary of the chapters we were assigned to read to get an advantageous review of it. Although I am a self-directed learner, that doesn’t mean I am always like that because two times I fell behind reading because I didn’t fully finish reading. I’m a slow reader and it takes time for me to understand some paragraphs. So I could have done better of this obstacle by reading some after school, in the bus going back home, and at night. When reading the book I compared it to the first day, where the class was struck with confusion and awkwardness as we were ordered to go barefoot and Mr. R in a inaudible voice said that we had to pretend we were isolated on an island, and then I read aloud the paper on the board as everyone listened to me, and on it we were asked on a brown timeworn paper with burned edges to elect a leader. So after a scrappy and baffling election, I had been nominated to be the leader of a massive class. You could say a kindergarten class with somewhat  mostly immature 8th graders that did NOT pay attention to me at all. So I experienced  that I was like Ralph, and Aron, my assistant was like either Piggy or Simon sometimes, and also I thought Fred was like Jack without a doubt and because he was the cause of intrusion by influencing other people to be like him by  messing around, not paying attention, and distracting other students from listening to me. I give my self a 8 out of 10 for the quality of me reading the book and conducting the assignment where I was the leader.

I was a critical thinker while doing the Meyer Briggs assignment because I gathered , analyzed, and processed information from other sites and variety of sources. This means first I took information from my test results from different sites and summarized them all in one. This was done by having four different Internet Explorers open on ESFP, and I used this method of taking information and typing my words on Microsoft Word. After that I also got a illustration by getting the chart that explained me. I was a critical thinker throughout the assignment because I divided my assignment by separating the other information to get to explain it all in one by having the most important facts. I rewrote what I saw from the sites by combining them in my summary and prepared the names of famous people that were ESFP like me. I think my finest and most trouble less for me in the Lord of the Flies section came in this one, and I would give myself a 9.5 for being a critical thinker.

I was a self directed learner while doing the project because I took creative risks in developing untried ideas. This means I put pictures stickers on my shirt, and even though my handwriting’s not the finest, I painted the words decent enough for people to be capable to read them. I bought special stickers, and scanned the top of my title cover and customized it in Adobe Reader 7 for the t-shirt. I spend some of my free time going around to buy a white T-Shirt. I explained the book in a quote for people to get interested and fascinated in. I connected this project to my spider man shirt by getting ideas on where pictures, logos were and how they were set that made them look so attention grabbing for the audience. I created a Puma sponsorship for the shirt and design the T-shirt on rough sketch on how I was going to construct it by as most  modern fashion look-alike. My project could have been way better if I had gone to a shirt making company to help make it, but I went around  searching for  shops in two days to get a shirt making shop but, inauspiciously I couldn’t because they would take too long to make the badges and stitches that I was going to have for my shirt. So I could have improved if I had a little more time to finish the project. I also checked that my project would be evaluated on high ranks. I think my shirt doesn’t how hard I worked, but if any one could look at  the planning  and how I went searching in malls for the supplies, then that would show my contribution and fair effort in the project, so this would mean that I would grade myself 85% out of 100% which makes me satisfied for the work I’ve done.