Looking back at this week, the first word that comes to mind is fast. The excitement and chaos of Homecoming week made everything seem like it was going twice as fast as it should. Luckily, this class was sort of a safe haven for an hour each day. It was nice to know exactly what to expect, and to take a break from the craziness of Homecoming. Our main focus this week was looking at our poetry, and completing our summer reading essays. On Monday, we spent almost the whole hour going over our Poem of the Week response essay. Let me tell you, that was not a confidence booster. Reading what a good response should look like was very helpful as now I have a better understanding of what we are supposed to be doing, but when comparing it to my own essay, I just wanted to give up. I knew while writing it that it wasn’t my best work, but after looking at it again, I know just how far I have to go. I have to continuously remind myself that this is just the beginning, and I know I will get better, but on Monday it was very overwhelming to see how good the example was compared to mine. The next three days were significantly less stressful as they mainly consisted of working on our essays. We were given a fair amount of time to complete the assignment, but for me there is never enough time to finish an essay. I always want to make changes and make things better! I wasn’t in class on Friday, so it feels odd to not have the closure of turning an essay in, but I’m sure Emmy took care of everything. It will be interesting to see how we did on the assignment, and how this writing experience compares to our future pieces. In my opinion, my group worked really well together, here is a link that gives an example of how a group essay should work. http://classroom.synonym.com/write-essay-using-cooperative-learning-3934.html
1 Comment
We have made it through the first five day week, and I still feel very good about this class. Some new topics were introduced, but I think the newest thing for me was explicating poetry. In my past English classes, poetry has always been something that we talk about for a week or two; never have I done an in depth analyses of a poem each week. In the beginning, I felt very dumb and nervous because I didn’t really understand how to look at poetry in the way that was asked of me. After only a few days, I started to feel better though. I had finally started to understand what I was looking for and stopped feeling like a fourth grader in a college class. As the course continues, I know poetry will definitely be something I have to work on as it will probably be my biggest battle in this class, but I’ll figure it out eventually. Another main focus for the week was starting our summer reading essays. I’m very excited that this is a group project. I love being able to discuss books and bounce ideas off of other people. I also love the setup for this essay. The discussion page we had to fill out was very helpful, as it made it relatively easy to sort out our ideas and pick the three chapters we wanted to write about. Talking about three different books at one time might be difficult, especially for our first essay, but I’m confident in my group and believe that will be able to do it. While working on this paper, we have used different websites to give us a few writing tips, and this is one of them. http://www.scoolwork.com/EssayWritingGuide/How_to_write_an_a_plus_comparison_essay.aspx Throughout the summer, I had been very nervous about starting this class as I didn’t know what to expect. This week started simply though, as it consisted mainly of ‘beginning of the year’ tasks; going over class expectations and rules, setting up our Weebly pages, and getting to know each other a little. I really like that we are using Weebly, I believe these websites will be super beneficial for our learning. All of our work will be saved in one place for the whole year, making everything much more convenient. Another main focus for the week was our writing. Admittedly, I didn’t do any serious writing over the summer, so it was nice to slowly work my way back into that. We started with creative writing, and learned the process that will be followed for the rest of the year. After the creative writing, we watched a video that showed college freshmen and their writing experiences. Professors and students discussed various tips to help better our writing, and many of them were very relatable. I think the one that impacted me the most was a point that said writers write more thoughtfully when they know someone is reading their work. This really stuck with me as I know that I definitely do this. While I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing, I think a goal of mine should be to write that intentionally all of the time, instead of just doing it for a grade. I hope that I will continue to remember the various tips from the video and other websites that I researched when we continue writing in the upcoming weeks.
Here is a link to a page that shares some of the same tips discussed in the video, plus a few other ones. http://www.dailywritingtips.com/34-writing-tips-that-will-make-you-a-better-writer/ |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
April 2017
Categories |