Kawika's PLP (Professional Learning Portfolio) |
Weekly BLog
This week of ELA was a completely normal week. We read chapter 3 of Elie Weisel's "Night", and watched a short "TED Talk" video on Thursday looking for some advice on how to make our upcoming Schoolwide Learning Expectation (SLE) Presentations enjoyable, and somewhat humorous to our audience, being school board members, our teachers, parish members, possibly fellow students and classmates, and especially, our family members. Basically, what these "SLE Presentations" are, are 5-8 minute presentations that we read to these people about a week before graduation, explaining how St. John Eudes School has helped us become College and Career Ready in the 21st Century, and Active Christians In Our Catholic Faith, which are the two said "SLEs". In addition, as a scholarship at graduation, we wrote an in-class essay about how faith can help us have courage, even in the toughest of times. The next in-class essay will be on Tuesday of next week. This time of the school year is always so relaxing; so reassuring, but this process is much harder than I expected it to be, but as I say to myself, the harder the process, the bigger the relief. I wouldn't say that I am nervous about this presentation, but excited. Excited, to talk about the experiences I've had at this school, and share the ideas that have been sitting in my head for quite a while.
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This week of ELA was a quite relaxing week. We had time to make up for missing work, and read Chapter 2 of Elie Wiesel's "Night". In the story, Elie is now 16 years old, and has been taken to one of the Nazi concentration camps, alongside his family. He and his father were separated from his mother and sister, who Elie never saw again. One of the few things that we learned early last week about Elie is that he is very serious about his religion and faith, being one of his inner desires to become a religious scholar, following the footsteps of his "teacher" figure, "Moishe the Beadle", as well as Maimonides, a studier of the Kabbalah. However, he thought to himself, if God cares about the lives of these innocent people, why won't he do anything? Things like these seem to come from God, to challenge our faith, and believe in him in the toughest of times. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer says in his prayer on Christmas Day as a prisoner, "Lord, whatever this day may bring, your name be praised."
This week, we began reading Elie Wiesel's award winning novel, "Night". This story takes place in Eastern Europe, in a country populated by mostly Jews. The narrator, Eliezer, tells us, quite progressively, about his experience before, and during his time at one of the German Concentration camps. Our assignment this week was to read up to page 27, when Elie arrives at his camp. While reading the story, many of us realized that Elie was narrating very progressively, as if he summarizes three years of his life in just a few sentences. Another job of ours this week was to help our teacher keep track of what we've been reading, and what we've been learning; by creating a "reading log". The point of this is to write down any questions we have about the story so far, and/or anything we are unsure about. We also watched a short video about Germany during the 1930s that taught me a few things that I did not know about this war in Eastern Europe, such as the secret pacts that Germany had with the Soviet Union, aka the Red Army, and Italy. Also, a few of my questions are, if Germany had planned this Holocaust and War systematically, how far ahead of time did they need to plan this? And if Moishe the Beadle was a beloved person in the Jewish community Elie lived in, why did no one believe that his stories of the concentration camps were true? These are the type of questions that motivate me to keep reading, and find answers, however; time will tell...
During ELA this week, our homework load was rather light. Not only because we had a field trip on Tuesday, but also because this week is the holiest week of the year, hence the name, "Holy Week". Not many people last week got all of their homework done by Friday, so Monday was basically a day to catch up on any missing work. Tuesday, March 31, was quite the "rude awakening" because of our field trip to the Columbia Space Center, in the city of Downey. Since this is so far away from St. John Eudes school, we needed to arrive at school extra early that day. The Columbia Space Center opens at 10:00 every day, and it is a 2 and a half hour drive with traffic, but little did we know that there was not going to be any this early in the morning. The drive ended up being about 1 hour and 20 minutes, and we arrived at the center an hour and a half early. Nonetheless, it was such a great experience and I learned so much about how hard it is for spacecrafts to be controlled, by the people inside the spacecraft, and for mission control/ground control. It taught us all that collaborative working and teamwork are very important problem solving strategies. On Wednesday, April 1, we took an assessment on the Nominative and Objective case Pronouns. Most people finished early, so we still had the entire class to work on missing assignments or late work. And finally, on Thursday, April 2, or "Holy Thursday", the entire school attended a Mass service in honor of Good Friday and the upcoming Easter Sunday. Friday was a no-school day, and the start of our spring break. It was a very quick week, and very enjoyable as well. I hope you all have a wonderful spring break and a blessed Easter Sunday.
This week of ELA was quite a week. On Monday, we were assigned a new poem to read and annotate by the name of "Mending Wall" which we were to turn in on Friday, March 27. We also read the short story "The Interlopers" on Monday, and, *SPOILER ALERT* two grown men whose families have been in a feud for three generations, meet on a stormy winter night under a beech tree, later to fall, trapping the two men. They realize that this feud has been ongoing for far too long, and they make friends. They later yelled for help, and in the distant forest, they see "people" running for them with amazing speed. As they approached the two men, they saw that these "people" were wolves. So, our job was to create a small newspaper article about the town's buzz of the deaths of these two men. There were many other things assigned to us, but most importantly, we were told to create our own bucket lists. At least three things were required on our bucket lists, but, of course, there was a twist. Not only did we need to explain what these actions were, but we had to explain to the audience about how THEY can do these things as well. Here's my finished bucket list.
Throughout this week in English Language Arts, we read and annotated multiple Sonnets, most of them by Shakespeare. And after realizing the differences that Sonnets have from regular poems, such as each line in a Sonnet having ten syllables, the rhyme scheme ABABCDCDEFEFGG, and especially, that all Sonnets are about love. So, on Wednesday, we were assigned to write our own Sonnets. However, there is a twist! Our teacher had a basket with tiny papers that had a theme on it, and whatever that theme was, you had to write your Sonnet based on it. Some people got zoo animals, others sea creatures, and mine was hoodies. Most people, particularly teenagers, like us, tend to wear more light weighted jackets or hoodies, and they don't tend to give a lot of warmth to the wearer, so I thought; why not write about an elderly person's perspective on these "new gang jackets" that have been created. And before anyone thinks that I mean anyone who wears these things is considered a gang member, YOU ARE NOT. Remember, this is simply what I think people say or have said about these hoodies. Here is a picture of the finished Sonnet.
During this week of ELA, we read and finished Harper Lee's prized novel, To Kill A Mockingbird. Today, March 11, we watched the beginning half of the movie that was made based upon it, noticing the major parts of the story, included or not. We found a few small loopholes in between some parts that either something new to the story was introduced to us, or a part that we read was excluded. However, major or minor parts, excluded or not, we knew that the writer of the novel, Harper Lee, was on the set of the movie the entire time. Whatever major part was missed she would've taken care of. In other words, watching this movie was such an exciting experience after reading such an amazing book. This is by far one of the best books I've read throughout my life, and I cannot wait until Harper Lee makes the sequel to it.
To read more about Harper Lee and this novel, click here. As the young man opened the creaky door, he began to look away as if accepting his death. Although he trusted the princess with his life, he began doubting her truthfulness the moment the door opened. The entire Coliseum went silent. It felt to the prince as if all time stopped; as if the world stopped spinning. Only pure luck could decide his fate. He though for a moment. What could've he done to the princess by which she hated him so much that she should trick him into his death? He waited for ten seconds. The coliseum was still completely silent; so silent that you could hear someone take a step. Then, out came the princess. Cheering was heard from everyone in the coliseum in happiness for the prince and his innocence. They were immediately married and rode off on horses into the beautiful pink and orange afternoon horizon.
In John Lloyd's Ted Talk about the invisible and visible, I was quite surprised to see how much there was in our world that we cannot see with the naked eye. For instance, the many galaxies in the night sky. Out of the 100 million galaxies, we can only see 5.
I also realized that many of the examples Lloyd used in his talk made connections to what we have learned in multiple classes. In ELA, we listened to a recorded story about a man by the name of Martin; whose body slowly began to shut down on him shortly after he turned 12 years old. Lloyd's talk included that even if we can't see anything inside a person, their thoughts could still be there. Meanwhile, in "The Locked-In Man", everyone considered Martin as a "vegetable". Everyone thought that there was nothing left inside him. The only things that determined that Martin was alive were his thoughts. Stereotypes in the Current World
Recently; last Monday in fact, in West Hills, a man on a bus beat up a bus driver, and has not yet been caught by policemen. Newspeople announced on TV that he was Hispanic, and from LA. This is already where the stereotypes come in. What is the first thing you imagine when you hear "Hispanic" and/or "from Los Angeles"? You may usually think that he/she are "one of those gangsters" or a generally bad person. But no one is told of the specific details, for example, if someone told him/her to do it, or if something, i.e. a mental illness, as discussed in the mock trial last Friday. In conclusion, the truth about these stereotypes is that people start assuming things about accused suspects before they even get to know much about them. Sometimes they might even agree with their friends when they tell them about it, and rarely, with the majority of people who believe that the suspect is a horrible person, who should be punished with relocation, prison, or death. |
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April 2015
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