Answer: It is true that in the past two months, I've worked on more and harder than last year (we read only two books last year, one in the last week of school). I feel that this is a good thing, for a couple of reasons. First of all, this allows me to be challenged and learn a lot more in the valuable time that I spend here (I have to wake up at six for some reason). The cramming of learning introduces many aspects of "English" to me. However, the english teachers should be aware, that while we can stand up to this barrage of work, we can not always stand up all ofthe time. Leniency should be given at times when the workload is overbearing.
Answer: I am an ordered learner, so the calender was very beneficial to me. For one, it informed me that vocabulary would eventually be due, so I began and finished the vocab one month in advance (too bad it cannot be copied onto SimpleText). I think that not all students might use the calendars. Different students have different learning styles, all of which should be addressed in the English curriculum. But for those who did use it, such as me, the calendars are very beneficial.
Answer:The books overall were rather interesting to read. I found The Catcher in the Rye to be humerous and full of symbolism that made the discussion groups easy. The fact that symbolism was so prevalent led to trouble finding equally valuable insights for the other books. Of the other books which I read, I found The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to be more interesting in an adventurous sort of way. Also, David Copperfield had way too much boring description and was too long to even compare to Huck Finn. All of these books are interrelated, which makes them good for connections. For next year, though, I would advise an increased list (or a different list) of book choices.
Answer: The digital portfolios, in the long run, will probably be easier than writing a portfolio every year. HTML was easier to learn than I had expected, but it takes a long time to do. Typing all of the tags as well as messing around with copying and such, takes a large amount of time for just tedious work. This will be beneficial in the future, that is, if the tedium does not kill me first.
Answer: If I had the chance to revise the digital portfolio project, ther would be little that I would change. THe only thing that I would changewould be the speed at which the project rolled along. I know that the "learn by doing" method of education is effective, but I (being not Internet advantaged) needed a little more guidance on the basics of the Internet. Also, a list of the tags (such as backgrounds or animation) would have been useful.
Answer: Besides keeping the whole project, which I think is a good idea, there is only one thing that I would FIGHT to maintain. in our time of censorship, and "politically-correct", it is important not to illiminate the creativity of the students. As it has not happened yet, I hope that it should never come to a point where the students' freedom of creativity is not denied. (hey, I had to FIGHT for something)
Answer: The only thing that the teachers could have done to help me learn more from this unit is to explain to me how it is all interconnected, or the relivance of an assignment before I did the assignment. I did not quite understand why about two days were spent explaining the Saturady Evening Post project, if it was going to be due two days after the explanation was finished. Nor do I understand, even now, how all of the readings and writings could be clumped into ONE unit. All I could have used was a little explanation.
Answer:If the lesson being referred to here is the combined lesson of reading all of the books and writing the different pieces(journals, the article and such) than I feel I would not change what I did. This is because throughout this marking period, I managed to finish all of the assignments on time, or ahead of time. The only area of improvement that I see is in the quality of my discussion notecards (that could have been improved). If the lesson being referred to is the digital portfolio, the only thing that I would change would be to spend more time on making my web pages, visually more attractive and entertaining.
Answer:If I was approached with the aforementioned question, with the aforementioned conditions, I would respond with, "The unit was very challenging and thorough, but at times a little too challenging or not thorough enough." I would make this statement using the following judgement. I would take into account the amount of work which I accomplished and all that I had learned from doing all of that work (such as how to make a good notecard), but also the amount of time that I had had to finish all of that work (there were two completely different writing assignments given in the same week). I would look at how each of the topics of what I learned was addressed with deep elaboration (we read three novels on the maturation of people or hobbits), but how often I wondered how all of our assignments were interrelated. So this unit seemed very beneficial to me, but it was riddled with uncertainties (which is not necessarily a bad thing).
