Tuesday November 22nd Reflection

This is the second reflection post from our group. I am assigned to do the reflection for Tuesdays. A lot of people didn't come to class today because they thought the school was closed but it was acutally opened so we still had class. We worked on some things in class today so if you didn't come, you have some catch up to do! Don't panick because this is why we do daily reflections online so you can check out what we did in class! Here's a review of the class session today! :)

What We Did

In the beginning of the class, we had to settle in and get ready for the lesson. A lot of people didn't have their binders and supplies with them so we had to borrow our peers. Since we didn't have the geograpghy worksheets with us, we weren't able to work on them with the atlases in class today. We also didn't have time to go over portfolios so Ms.Lees will likely start them tomorrow in double block! 

When we were all ready, she assigned us to create a web or jot down ideas in a heart shaped column  of the things we thought were important to us with the title, "Heart Mapping" on top. We could write anything that we thought were important. Ms. Lees had some questions that could help us write notes with the document camera. The sheet had examples of the things that could be important to us, such as memorable times, family, friends, crushes, relationships, books, and more. We were given about 30 minutes to complete this and Ms.Lees said we should've written 30 things easily.

After we were finished with "Heart Mapping", Ms.Lees gave out a booklet with different kinds of examples of paragrapghs on them. There were 3 different kinds. There were narrative, descriptive, and persuasive, but we only looked at the narrative ones and Ms.Lees said we will be concentrating on narrative paragrapghs mostly. We read the examples that were on the booklet and found out what narrative paragrapghs were like.

The last thing we did today was, we started writing a narrative paragrapgh with topics such as, winning the lottery, the haircut, Christmas morning, but we could write about another topic. Ms.Lees recommanded it to be non-fiction and be from your own experience because then, it would have more detail to it.

Why We Did It 

We spent time "Heart Mapping", writing notes about the things that we thought were important in our hearts because Ms.Lees said it's good to have ideas down on paper so we don't forget. Also, we will be using the ideas later on in the year constantly when we are doing other assignments such as speeches, paragrapghs, and more. We are learning about writing paragrapghs so it'd be useful when we can't think of a topic to write about. It was important for us to jot down our ideas because some students have trouble thinking of a topic for assignments and they spend half of the time trying to think of one. By doing this before, it'll be easier for us to recognize what we are going to write about. 


Ms.Lees went over how there were 3 different types of paragrapghs and we learnt about the narrative type. It's very, very important for us to know the 3 different kinds of paragrapghs and what the differences are, even though we haven't learned about the descriptive and the persuasive ones, I remember my sister saying that you have to write LOTS of paragrapghs in highschool and in essays and it's very important to know the rules for how to write them. It's important to know how you can develop and improve your writing skills. You need a topic sentence, introductory sentence and a concluding sentence. It wouldn't make a good paragrapgh if you don't have those 3 main things. 


We were assigned to write a narrative paragrapgh with our own topics for practice so that Ms.Lees and ourselves can check if we are on the right track and if we are misunderstanding the concept of it. By writing a paragrapgh, we can go over as a class and check the things that are needed in a narrative paragrapgh and correct our own work and see the mistakes if we do get anything wrong. If we see our mistakes we'll be able to improve and remember it next time we write a paragrapgh. 


My Reflections/Connections 

I'm very relieved that we got the chance to write down ideas for our topic that we can write about because I'm one of those people who'd take half of the writing time trying to choose/decide what topic I should write on. I think I'm caring more about my topic because I once had a topic that I had nothing to write about so I'm more  careful with my topic so that I don't get one of those again. It was pretty easy creating a web for it because I had a lot of ideas on my mind. By doing this, I was able to find a right topic for my narrative paragrapgh easily by looking at my "Heart Mapping" map. It only took me 10 seconds to decide. Organizing and planning for the future can be very helpful in any other subject in school. For example, I could use the web skill for planning for a science project because it'd save me much more time. I wouldn't have to stop every section to decide what I'm going to do. I'd be able to know the things I have to do. I never used to plan ahead but I learnt a good skill I could use! Also, thinking of the important things in my life reminded me of my french class. We always have to talk to our partner about what's important in our life and topics similar to that and I was always stuck on what to say, but now I know a lot of things that are important to me and it'll be easier and it will take me less time to think about it!

I understood what narrative paragrapghs are. It's a paragrapgh that the purpose is to tell a story and usually tells about an event that happend. Even though we haven't learned the other two types of paragrapghs yet, I think the narrative one would be the easiest, or the most comfortable type of paragrapgh for us because I think the descriptive one would need lots of rules and lots of good describing words and I think the persuasive one would be the hardest because you have to change their mind and get the reader to think a certain way. Persuasive paragrapghs would be great practice for debating. Writing narrative paragrapghs would be great practice for me if I want to be an author when I grow up and want to write stories. Also, it could help me if I want to write a certain article that needs a narrative type of writing. 


I have just started the narrative paragrapgh and I haven't finished it yet, but I was having a little trouble trying to figure out the introductory sentence because I didn't want it to be too boring. At last, I found a sentence that wasn't too dry so I'm happy now. I actually think the narrative paragrapgh isn't hard to write because it's basically writing about an event that happened and all the details, so it isn't very hard for me yet. Maybe it'll get harder as the lesson goes on. I think it's good to get practice and get checked over if you're on the right track. For almost every subject in school, it's good to write an example and discuss it about it to check if you're doing it right and see if you can do it and demonstrate it the right way. If you don't try and you just go straight on without the correct way, you'd have lots of troubles in the next years of highschool and it'd be hard to fix. You could've gotten a formula wrong in math because you never got much practice and thought that was right untill you get your marks back and realize you made a mistake. It's always good to check it over and see if you can complete it the correct way. 


Homework

- We didn't get a chance to work on our geograpghy worksheets (landform map) with the atlases today so I think Ms.Lees would probably give us time tomorrow or we could go to her classroom at flex on Thursday at lunch! 
-  I'm pretty sure you have to be finished your portfolios by now even though Ms.Lees haven't started calling us up to talk with her yet because she gave us time to work on it at flex yesterday at lunch but if you aren't finished, come to flex on Thursday at lunch!
- Ms.Lees would recommand us to finish our narrative paragrapghs that we were working on in class today for tomorrow. 
- You should be done your "Heart Mapping" web/notes by now because we had time to work on it in class today but if you aren't done, finish it for tomorrow. There has to be at least  10 things. 

Tips

- If you need help with your geograpghy worksheets (landform map) or any work we did in class, go to FLEX for help on Mondays and Thursdays at lunch! 
- If you didn't come to class today, don't forget to e-mail Ms.Lees (e-mail is on the yellow course outline paper) or ask one of your friends in your class! 
- If you're having a trouble making a blog because we haven't used this much yet, check out the grade 9 blogs or your classmates! 
- If you missed class or don't remember what we did today, go to your classmates blogs and read their daily reflections for today! :) 

Monday : Olivia .B

Tuesday: Alice .B

Wednesday : Daniel .K

Friday: Luke .W

               DANIEL will be doing his blog tomorrow! :)