Learn about topics that matter to me personally
Challenge myself
Develop skills that I would like to use in the future
Develop skills that will help me make a positive change in the world.
Learning Values
on Category: Grade
on Africans In NY: Creative Assignment
on Africans In NY: Creative Assignment:
You Can Call Me Groot
In this assignment, we all received a small bit of information on an enslaved African and then wrote around those small pieces of info to create a biography. While doing this assignment, I learned how to weave in small but real pieces of some facts into a self-made story. I learned that I really like to write about true facts mixed into some fiction or just educational thinking. I also liked having to think about where they might be from and how they got to where they are at the end. I really liked the process of this assignment and I hope we get more like this or maybe the Day In The Life piece that we did in the first trimester of seventh grade.
The Giver Essay
on The Giver by Lois Lowery
You have probably never lived in a place where everything is overseen and everything you do is all planned out. You have no choice in what you do as a job and no choice in family. Many things you know and love are changed so that they are part of a forthcoming utopia. The main character of the book, The Giver by Lois Lowery, is Jonas. Jonas starts as an eleven year old boy and turns thirteen at the end of the book. Throughout his life he realizes that he lives in a completely man made and organised world. This leads him to think that everything he knows, and the world he lives in is wrong. He goes throughout his life learning of the past and how the rulers, called the elders, corrected everything to their liking, just to make the community a utopia in their eyes. In Jonas’s community the elders strive for correction and control to make the community a utopia. They do this to stay in power and to prevent rebellion.
Over the many years they have ruled, the elders have always made changes to keep the community perfect, in their eyes, and enable them to stay on top and in command. The elders try to make the community perfect at all costs. They would use all their power just to obtain and rule a true Utopian society according to their view. In this quote it shows how they changed everything for that perfect utopia they pictured, “‘Climate Control. Snow made growing food difficult, limited the agricultural periods. And unpredictable weather made transportation almost impossible at times. It wasn’t a practical thing, so it became obsolete when we went to Sameness.’And hills, too,’ he added.’They made conveyance of goods unwieldy. Trucks; buses. Slowed them down. So—’ He waved his hand, as if a gesture had caused hills to disappear.’Sameness,’ he concluded.’” (Lowery, p. 74).This shows how the Elders must have gone through many years to finally eradicate all things that seemed useless or would get in the way of everyday routines. One of the reasons they make all these changes is to keep their world perfect, but there are many other reasons they do this. They also hope to restrain the people by doing such things.
Over the many years the elders have ruled they have changed lots of things, and also disposed of many things loved by the community, these corrections have kept the community dehumanized but therefor under their jurisdiction . This shows how the elders just want to be in power. In their view, to be in power they have to make the citizens think that everything is being taken care of. To make it like this they have to change many things so that it seems perfect, that way the people won’t ask for change and/or rebel. This quote tells us how organized everything is because if it’s not planned people might start to question how they live and turn to the elders in rebellion. “But Jonas remembered the rules. No medication for anything related to his training,” (Lowery p. 95). Jonas and all other people follow the rules very carefully so they never run into any trouble with the elders, and don’t get released from the community. The elders do a lot of hard work to keep themselves under control and keep the community from rebelling, but there are some things that seem imperfect to them that they still have to correct.
In Jonas’s community the Elders main ambition is to be in power at all times and to make the community a utopia using their ability to annihilate anything they don’t want to be there. They make all the corrections just to prevent the civilians from rebelling. The Elders control things like the local climate, the terrain and many other natural structures. The Elders also expel things like color. Color plays a big part in The Giver, the Elders give much effort to prevent the amount of color in many of the surrounding objects. For there to be a perfect world (In the Elder’s view) there must be no questioning of their right to be in power and no thoughts of rebellion. They do not want the people to have rights that they do not have, and they don’t want anyone to be free.
I liked writing the Giver essay because I got to talk about two to topics and not just one. I found it interesting how I got to relate the two topics because it would make it stronger in so many ways. Although I was ill when we made most of this I gathered ideas while I was in bed.
Math notes
on Bad:
Good:
Math check up sheet two
on
6A Meal Data
on Today we compared the food groups we ate over the past
few days with the chart from about a week ago.
Who The Heck Are You
on My Letter
On February the ninth we wrote a letter to the person we wanted to interview. My letter was to Freddie in DMX6. The reason I wanted to interview him was because he is from England where I am from.
My Questions
For the letter we had to make ten questions that are of interest to us. Mine were based around from my theme of England. Questions like where he was from in England and how he felt moving.
My Interview
In my interview I asked all my questions and some follow up questions to Freddie’s answers.
My Step Two Doc
After this we had been given a document on how our letter should go and a space to plant ideas. You can look at in here:
Step two doc
My Final Piece
For our final Who the heck are you we made our interview with three to six of our questions in there. Here is mine:
Final “Who the Heck are You?”
My Plague Letter
on Lately in class we composed a letter in the medieval times about the plague. I liked my letter a lot particularly my character who was a medic about to die of old age not the plague. He was asking a man named Earl who was a witch doctor from Braemar in the mountains from scotland. This person was actually Harvey from JJL6…
October 13th 1349
Dear Earl,
I hope all is well in Braemar, for us in Dundee it feels the apocalypse is among us. As you know you are lucky to live in the mountains seeing as the vile spirits do not manage to get up there because of the cliffs. As you might remember I am old and on my deathbed. Being a sterling doctor of high popularity and helpfulness for the plague many people are scared that when I pass there will be no one to help them. As you know my son would normally be my second chance as a medic but sadly he has joined the flagellants. As you can tell it’s not going well for me and the smallest favor would help. As an old friend and poor man, I ask of you but one thing. To come join the dying folk’s and save them from their tragedy or at least give them the pleasure of dying in peace.
The death, buboes and weakness have driven the people to hysteria. My poor son Henry Moore is in such frenzy, he has whipped himself to the state that he is finding it hard to walk. He thinks all people are sinned if they have the plague and does not realise it is a desease ready to wipe out mankind from the face of the earth. My wife, Faye Moore, is the one who received the plague. I treated her and mended her the best I could, watching the ooze drip from her buboes, she lived in this tragedy for eight days (which was a very long time if you had the plague) not seeing her son. That led Henry to join the flagellants, not out of insensibility, but out of dysphoria and depression. I tried to save her with all my might but that wasn’t enough.
My friends have been impressed by all the work I have done for them and the villagers but they know what I am nearing and know about you and how you could help them save them and protect them. And don’t worry about how good you are as a medic I know that you heal people with small illnesses and that is nothing like the black death so when you come here, if you do, I will teach you all I know from by teachings. My mentor did not only teach me he also taught me to teach so I will be, maybe not the best, but a good abecedary to you. And this, this out of all reasons is why I want you to come here and save what has been thought as the impossible to restore.
Best regards
John Moore
My Wire People
on 
This is my wire project from art. I worked on this for about 45 minutes and I was very proud of it… This is a model of a real life picture from a video, it’s a cool Soccer move that I do; a chest, kick and a nay nay. But in america the last one is called a scorpion.
My Parzival Essay
on Recently we have read a book called Parzival. It is about a boy who went on a journey to become a knight. We were discussing how he achieved this. Was it free will and/or fate. We were given the opportunity to chose one of these and write which one we thought was correct. I found this a struggle because I had never writen an essay before so I was a bit worried. I chose free will and this is my argument;
If you let your life be taken over by fate where would you be? Without free will we would be in places we don’t want to be in. In the book Parzival, a book by Katherine Paterson, a boy named Parzival takes a journey to be a knight, in the end he does not only succeed in this, but he also becomes a man of high power. In his journey he uses all of his skills by his own free will; he had to be selfless, courageous and to think well on his feet.
Parzival became king because of his selflessness. On Pg38 a huge feast is offered to him but he refuses for the sake of the people, “The people loved Parzival for this, the queen most of all, for it broke her heart to see her people suffer”. He chose to do this even when he was hungry after his journey. This was a heroic choice because the people needed food more than him. He is selfless but this is not the only thing he exceeds at.
Parzival became king because he is unbelievably brave. On Pg112 ,” He saw the strangely appareled knight.” a knight charges at him without warning with the element of surprize but he does not give up. He chose to do this even though he could have run away. This is exceedingly courageous because he was facing a very tough opponent. But determination is not the end of his talents.
Parzival became royalty because of his great decisions. He went to the king for a second time even though he didn’t have to, Pg 119, “With Joy, Parzival asked his brother Feirefiz to go with him.” and “ There was no joy at Wild Mountain.” He elected this hard decision even when it was not mandatory. This is a tough decision because if he didn’t, the curse would have killed the king. That is why Parzival is great at decision making.
The choices he chose by his own choices affected not just himself, but everyone around him with great selflessness. Without the strengths that he possesses he would have never have risen to the royalty that he eventually achieved. Those kinds of choices affect people, for instance world leaders like Mahatma Gandhi made choices that changed people for the greater good. And this is why free will matters and how it affects the world for the better…
