Above is my creative narrative assignment. This historical fiction piece was an assessment on my knowledge of the time period. Before we began writing our pieces, each student was given a short biography of an African in New York. We then had to integrate facts from the biography and facts that we knew about New York City in the Colonial Era while filling in the blanks with creative writing.

While writing this piece, I learned a lot about the time period. I learned about the similarities and differences between Colonial New York and New York today. My biography had little information so I had to do some research on the side. I also learned about myself as a humanities student. I learned that it is very challenging for me to write historical fiction; especially when I am required to include specific facts. Overall, this was not my favorite assignment but I learned a lot in the process of writing it.

This is my essay. It compares how false accusations are used to gain power and attention throughout the Salem witch trials, the McCarthy Era, and current day. This essay taught me lots of things. It taught me how history has repeated itself many times. It taught me how the people in power often are the ones who are repeating the mistakes made by other people in power. It has also inspired me to become even more interested in current events. This essay has shown me so many things and now I can make even more connections in other writing assignments!

We recently received our grades on this essay and I am very proud of them! After seeing my grades and reading the comments Suzanne left on it, I realized that I did a much better job on this essay than I thought I did. While I was writing my essay, I was constantly changing my idea/themes and starting over paragraphs. When doing this, I thought that my essay was not going to be smooth and connected. After revising and editing, I was surprised to find that my essay was in fact smooth and connected. This gave me a sense of satisfaction and completion. What really helped me was my writing partner Dora. She did a great job editing. Overall I think I did a really good job on this essay!

(Suzanne also helped me so much!!)

This is my essay on The Giver by Lois Lowry. My theme is isolation. I’m really proud of this essay because I got good grades on it. Last year on my Parzival essay, I didn’t get the best grades. I am very happy that I did well on this because this makes me more confident on my essay writing skills. Before writing this we worked on expanding our analysis and working on TEEAC. I feel very confident that I can improve in the future on both of those things.