Hello Everyone,

In the first quarter of this school year we read the book “Lord of the Flies” inEnglish with Mr. R. It is a book about a group of english school boys that end up on a deserted island after their plane crashed and their pilot died. At the end they end up trying to kill each other. Any way after we finished we had to do a project and a journal of a 1000 words.

This is my result of the Journal:

In the first quarter of English we read a book by William Golding called Lord of the Flies. With that we worked on the Bloom Taxonomy. The Bloom Taxonomy is a way of writing with 6 key terms, which are, Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis and Evaluate. With these 6 terms we were supposed to write a journal at the end of the first quarter identifying the ESLR’s that we used to help us finish the novel, participate in discussions and in class, and complete our project. Here on this following page we show you our result!

Lord of the Flies is a book about a group of boys that get stranded on a deserted island where they turn into savages except for one. This book is written, as you have all ready been informed, by William Golding. We read it in English class in our first quarter. While reading this book, I was using four ESLR’s, from which two were really important to me. When I was a self-directed learner I had good time management and I accepted responsibility for my own learning. In my own words this means that I used my time well and that I knew that I was responsible for my own work, so If I would not put 100% of my effort in it I would probably also not have a A+ either. I showed this by reading the pages that were assigned to us. This showed me that I know how to use my time wisely! If I would compare this to when I was in 4^th Grade, I did not have good time management at all because I would always do my homework the night before it was due. Also, when I was in 4^th Grade, I did not except responsibility for my own learning because when I would fail some thing I would go to my mother in stead of blaming to on my self. Also, if I would not have changed my self-directed learning skills from when I was in 4^th Grade, then I would probably not have finished the book like I was supposed to. Next time I would modify the way I read a little bit. I will use more sticky notes in my book so that I can use those as notes later on. Any way, if I could grade my self of how I did on being a self-directed learner I would give my self an 80% because I think I could have improved a little bit more on getting into the book so that I could really understand the language. I was also being an academic achiever which also helped me finish the book because I demonstrated progress in curricular areas.  In my own word this means that I improved from the beginning of the story to the end. I proved this because I improved my reading skills! When we started to read Lord of the Flies I was struggling with the detailed language of William Golding and with the many pages that we had to read, and if I would compare that to how I managed after a couple of weeks it was much easier for me to keep up! A question that I often ask my self is; what if I did not bother to have improved? I would have most probably not read the book at all because I would not have even tried! I think I did a good job with reading this book and applying this ESLR because Mr. Raisdana also told us that Lord of the Flies is a High School leveled book!

Almost every class in first quarter when we were reading the book Lord of the Flies we had a discussion about the chapter or chapters that we had examined the night before. We then talked about what had happened, how it happened and what that lead to. In this process I used some ESLR’s to help me. I was being an effective communicator in this area because I demonstrated the skill of effective group effort. To me this means that you show respect to others when they want to put in effort to help the group. We showed this by carefully listening to each other with discussions and so we could communicate better. This shows me that as a group we had the ability to share our ideas. If I would compare our discussions from the beginning of the quarter to the end I would see a huge difference! This is because when we just started to learn how to have proper discussions about a book Mr. Raisdana was the only one asking the questions and not many people contributed answering them but after a while my classmates started to ask questions as well. Next time I would like to ask more questions my self so that I can clarify the sections of the book that I, personally did not understand even though my classmates covered most of it. In conclusion I would give my self an 85% for this area because I think I could have done a better job! Also, I was being an involved citizen which also helped me participate in class discussion and in class because I seek to improve the lives of others in my community. To me this means that I had teamwork in and out of the classroom! My class and I showed this by communicating out side of the classroom about the book by asking the simple questions that were troubling us. If I would compare these actions to when I was in 6^th grade, now we are doing a much better job because if my classmates and I would walk out the classroom we would just stop talking about school, and start talking about fun stuff. This is why I would like to keep on doing that, though next time I would like to ask those simple questions in class too because then we could get deeper into it! To conclude every thing, I think that being an involved citizen helped me a lot because I learned that you can learn things out side of the classroom as well even though there is no teacher watching you.

After we had finished the book Lord of the Flies, Mr. Raisdana gave us a variety of options for our project. I choose to do a journal or diary for a week in Ralph’s voice, starting with the day before the crowd of boys left their towns in Great Britain. While doing this project I met one main ESLR. I was a critical thinker because I solved problems using a variety of strategies. In my own words this means that I did not only depend on the information that I had but that I thought outside of the box. I demonstrated this because I could not know for sure what Ralph would say about things that happened but I could guess. This also shows me that I can think independently.  If I would analyze this, a possible result would be that I could do the project with out the notes that we had taken in class, though I would the need to be really experienced for this. The only two things that I would do different next time is that I would want to put more detail in my writing and show a clear difference between the writing in the beginning of Ralph’s diary and the end! Overall, I think that this ESLR, critical thinker, helped me most with finishing my project!

To rap every thing up, while finishing the novel, participating in discussions and in class, and in completing my project this quarter, I have met all the five ESLR’s! And over all it was kind of fun!

In total my journal was 1298 words long!!!!!!!!

Hey People,

In social studies we are doing an Aztec project and with that we had to answer all kinds of questions and find the definition of words.

Here are the vocabulary words:

Anthropologist – A person who is specialized on the scientific study of the origin, behavior and the physical, social, and cultural development of humans and their belief.

Archeologist- A person who studies prehistoric people and their culture.

Economist- A specialist of the production and spreading of money and goods.

Historian- A person how studies history.

Linguist- a person who studies language.

Theologian- a person who studies religion and its influences and finding what is true.
And here are the questions:

Step 1:

• Where did the Aztecs originally live? = North West Mexico in a place called Atzlan.
• What prompted them to relocate? = They were so nasty that they were driven to one place from an other. Then Tenoch had a vision that Huitzilopochtli and he told him to lead his people to a swampy island in the middle of Lake Texcoco. There he was supposed to find an eagle sitting on a cactus, which was growing from a rock or cave surrounded by water. There they were supposed to build their city and thank Huitzilopochtli with human sacrifice. The city Tenochtitlán was named after Tenoch in around 1325.
• Where did they end up and why? = They ended up on a swampy island in the middle of Lake Texcoco because Tenoch had a vision that Huitzilopochtli had told him to lead his people there. There they were supposed to find the symbol which was an eagle that sitting on a rock and eating a serpent. There they were supposed to build their city and thank Huitzilopochtli with human sacrifice. The city Tenochtitlán was named after Tenoch in around 1325.

Step 2:

• The Aztecs ended up in the middle of a lake and built their new capital Tenochtitlan. What were the pros and cons of settling in the middle of a lake? Describe the lay of the land and chose an image for your exhibit. = Some pros: Some cons: The people had to make chinampas to grow crops. Also they didn’t have many rocks!

Step 3:

• Which gods were worshiped? = Tezcatlipoca (god of the Great Bear constellation and of the night sky), Quetzalcoatl (god of morning and the evening star.), Tlaloc (rain god), Chalchiuhtlicue (water goddess), HUITZILOPOCHTLI (sun and war god), Xipe – Totec (farming god), Coatlicue (earth goddess), Coyolxauhqui (moon god)
• The pyramids were built for what purpose? = To honor the god and to perform sacrifice.

Step 4:

• Who are the different members of Aztec society? = Slaves, commoners, and nobility.
• What are their roles? = Slaves worked in the households of the nobles. Commoners were bust with agriculture and common trade. Nobility were the people that were nobles by birth, priests, and those who earned their rank, they had the top positions in the government and could choose supreme leaders and could tell people what to do.

Step 5:

• The Aztecs have a spoken language. What was it called? = Nahuatl
• Did they use any other forms of communication? = they had a written language!

Step 6:

• How did the Aztecs grow food and what was their main crop? = They grew food on chinampas, also they used the slash and burn method. Their main crop was corn.
• Did they trade and with whom? = With a lot of other trides around the aria all the way to what is now Panama.
• Did they have a currency (money)? = Cacao.

Step 7:

• Discuss the Impact of Spanish Contact 1519 from both the Aztec point of view and the Spanish point of view. = Artec point of view: Cortez came to Tenochtitlan and got power but when he left and Pedro was in charge, he killed us at our festival and then we did not trust Cortez anymore so we went against him, but when he came back he beat us. Cortex view of point: when I first came to Tenchtitan the Aztecs were really nice but after I left Pedro in charge they suddenly got mad at me and so I beat them in a final battle!

Step 8:

• Discuss La Malinche or Dona Marina. Debate her positive/negative impact on Mexico past and present. = La Malinche was a slave, interpreter, secretary, mistress and the mother of the first “Mexican.” negative: she only saved the Indians. positive: she did not join Cortez. Dona Marins, postive: it was she who got Cortez and Moctezuma to have a first meeting. Negative: she became the alter-ego of Cortez.
• What does the term Mestizo refer to? = A person of mixed ancestors.
• What influences remain today from Aztec culture of the past? = dialects and food.

Thanks for reading my blog!