Giver Essay

Is it Better to Have Ignorance or Knowledge?

Imagine a world with no color, emotion, and everyone is ignorant except for two people in the whole community. This is The Giver by Lois Lowry. In the Giver there is a boy named Jonas, he is like all the other kids in the society until he gets assigned to the job of the receiver of memory on his 12th birthday. He realizes that his world isn’t so perfect by receiving memories and show him that there is more than just following the rules of the society. In his memories he sees colors, and gets to feel pain and happiness that his society doesn’t have. Is Jonas going to try to change this perfect world, or try to live by these unfair rules? This society is a dystopia because everyone is ignorant, except for the Receivers of Memory.

In the Giver people are kept ignorant. The community keeps the people ignorant by having a perfect world with no pain, emotions, or any differences. For example all the memories of pain are kept from the people in the community. The people are kept ignorant by not knowing what pain or happiness is, or any emotions. On page 90 in The Giver the Giver is explaining to Jonas how the community needs someone to take in all the pain. “But it certainly made them aware of how they need a receiver to contain all that pain. And knowledge,” (Giver, 90). The Giver’s words show that the community relies on the receiver to hold in all the pain and memories. This is important because without anyone knowing about the memories people are kept ignorant. In The Giver most memories are of pain, love, and happiness. In Jonas’s community there is no emotion. There is no expression of love, and Jonas comes to understand that when he asks his parents if they love him and they scold him for misusing language. The people believe that it is easy to contain a perfect world by being kept ignorant. But being kept ignorant may not seem like a good solution to Jonas. It is also important to have knowledge from these memories to realize that Jonas’s perfect world may not be so perfect after all.  

In Jonas’s community people don’t have any knowledge. The only people who keeps all the knowledge is The Giver and Jonas, they are knowledgeable because of the memories. By receiving memories Jonas gets to experience emotions, and gets knowledge. On page 102 in The Giver Jonas experiences the feeling of happiness that he has never felt before. “There are so many good memories,” the Giver reminded Jonas. And it was true. By now Jonas had experienced countless bits of happiness,” (Giver, 102.) By receiving these emotions through memories Jonas gets some knowledge. Pain and happiness are some of the emotions, with these emotions Jonas realizes that his world isn’t so perfect. He notices that there is no happiness in his community and no love. In his memories he gets to experience the emotions that he normally doesn’t get to experience. The other people in the community don’t notice that their world isn’t so perfect, they think it’s a perfect world because they haven’t received the memories. Jonas starts to realize that in his community everyone kept ignorant and the same. He notices there are no emotions, and is starting to notice that his community is not such a Utopia.

Jonas’s community is not a utopia because everyone is kept ignorant. Making people live in ignorance deprives them from living in a real world. Having pain and knowledge are feelings you would have in a real world, but Jonas’s community had never experienced them. A utopia is a place where people are recognized by their differences and where people can make mistakes, but learn from them, it’s a place where people have feeling and pain. How would you feel if you were the only one in a whole society who knew things about the real world? Would you be frustrated or try to make a change about it?  

Giver Essay Template

Themes: Ignorance and Knowledge

Paragraph #1: Introductory Paragraph (GIT)

Grabber Statement (G):

Imagine a world with no color, emotion, and everyone is ignorant except for two people in the whole community. This is the Giver by Lois Lowry

Introduce Plot Summary (I):

In the Giver there is a boy named Jonas, he is like all the other kids in the society until he gets assigned to the job of the receiver of memory on his 12th birthday. He realizes that his world isn’t so perfect by receiving memories and show him that there is more than just following the rules of the society. In his memories he sees colors, and gets to feel pain and happiness that his society doesn’t have. Is Jonas going to try to change this perfect world, or try to live by these unfair rules?

Thesis Statement (T):

This society is a dystopia because everyone is ignorant, but the receivers of memory.

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Paragraph #2: Thematic Analysis

Topic Sentence (T):

In the Giver people are kept ignorant.  

Explanatory Sentence (E):

The community keeps the people ignorant by having a perfect world with no pain, emotions, or any differences.

Evidence (E):

For example all the memories of pain are kept from the people in the community. The people are kept ignorant by not knowing what pain or happiness is, or any emotions. On page 90 in the Giver the Giver is explaining to Jonas how the community needs someone to take in all the pain.  “But it certainly made them aware of how they need a receiver to contain all that pain. And knowledge.”

Analysis (A):

The Giver’s words show that the community relies on the receiver to hold in all the pain and memories. This is important because without anyone knowing about the memories people are kept ignorant. In the Giver most memories are of pain, love, and happiness. In Jonas’s community there is no emotion. There is no expression of love, and Jonas comes to understand that when he asks his parents if they love him and they scold him for misusing language. The people believe that it is easy to contain a perfect world by being kept ignorant. But being kept ignorant may not seem like a good solution to Jonas.

Concluding/ Transition (C):

It is also important to have knowledge from these memories to realize that Jonas’s perfect world may not be so perfect after all.  

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Paragraph #3: Thematic Analysis Continued

Topic Sentence (T):

In Jonas’s community people don’t have any knowledge.

Explanatory Sentence (E):

The only person who keeps all the knowledge is the Giver and Jonas, they are knowledgeable because of the memories.

Evidence (E):

By receiving memories Jonas gets to experience emotions, and gets knowledge. On page 102 in the Giver Jonas experiences the feeling of happiness that he has never felt before. “There are so many good memories,” The Giver reminded Jonas. And it was true. By now Jonas had experienced countless bits of happiness,” pg. 102

Analysis (A):

By receiving these emotions through memories Jonas gets some knowledge. Pain and happiness are some of the emotions, with these emotions Jonas realizes that his world isn’t so perfect. He notices that there is no happiness in his community and no love. In his memories he gets to experience the emotions that he normally doesn’t get to experience. The other people in the community don’t notice that their world isn’t so perfect, they think it’s a perfect world because they haven’t received the memories.

Concluding/ Transition (C):

Jonas starts to realize that in his community everyone kept ignorant and the same. He notices there are no emotions, and is starting to notice that his community is not such a Utopia.

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Paragraph #4: Concluding Paragraph (ROC)

Restatement of Thesis (R):

Jonas’s community is not a utopia because everyone is kept ignorant. Making people live in ignorance deprives them from living in a real world.

Overview of Main Points (O):

Having pain and knowledge are feelings you would have in a real world, but Jonas’s community had never experienced them.

Concluding Sentence– Comparisons and Connections (C):

A utopia is a place where people are recognized by their differences and where people can make mistakes, but learn from them, it’s a place where people have feeling and pain. How would you feel if you were the only one in a whole society who knew things about the real world? Would you be frustrated or try to make a change about it?  

Good Notetaking vs Bad Notetaking

The picture to the left is a picture of good Notetaking. This is good Notetaking because everything is organized, and you can see the strategies and thinking clearly. If I flipped to this page I could easily see what was going on and I could understand everything that I wrote down.

The picture to the right is a picture of bad Notetaking. This is bad Notetaking because it is messy and you can’t easily understand what is going on. There are also two different math problems in one page. There is a line dividing both of them, but it could be possible not to know that the line differenciates two different problems.
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Le Jour des Toussaints

In French we took Halloween characters and wrote a little description about them. Using adjectives like il est courte, or elle est grand. Which means he is short and she is big. We also described the costumes like saying le costume est rouge et noir. Which means the costume is red and black. We used the Halloween characters from the quizlet set like le monstre, which means the monster. ☀️☀️

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Value chart post

imageIn art art we just finished making value charts. Rohan gave us a question about our value chart to answer. Mine was what helped me center my chart in the center of the paper.

 

I tried to to be exact with the measurements, so I measured the distance of where Rohan’s value chart was from the edge of the paper. It was around 1 1/2 inches. After measuring on my paper, I left marks where 1 1/2 inches was from each side of the paper. Then I used a ruler and started to make the boxes!

Math Profile

This is my math profile. We had an assignment at the beginning of the year to wrote about our experiences in math. I wrote that I wasn’t so strong in math, but now I feel like I have gained more confidence and have improved already!

 

Each year my math experience is different. In fourth grade math wasn’t a very good year for me, I would get confused very easily and wouldn’t understand a lot. That year I was put in a small math group with a few other kids from the grade and once a week we would work together with the math teacher. In fifth grade I was not as confused, but since I did gymnastics four days a week and four hours a day so I would rush on my homework a little bit. We got a thirty minute homework break so I didn’t have time to focus a lot on my math homework. In those two years math was one of my least favorite subjects. In sixth grade I loved math! I stopped doing gymnastics and did dance which made it a lot easier. I had time to focus on math homework, and in class I could notice I got better and wasn’t struggling as much. Sometimes I would ask for a little help on homework but not as much as I used to.

What I like about learning math is that you can relate it to a lot of things, like the other day in science class we had a domino challenge. And I ended up using a little math because we had to divide the dominos with five people. So I did 15 divided by 3. If I didn’t know math it wouldn’t be as easy to solve a simple problem like that.

I dislike how sometimes there’s this one problem that I can’t figure out and I keep on reading it over and over to understand but I still don’t understand it. Sometimes this happens when we start learning a new area in math because I don’t know so much about it yet. (This doesn’t happen very often) But there aren’t many things I dislike about math.

I wouldn’t say that I’m one of the best students in the class, but I don’t think that I’m the worst. I am a good math student when it comes to being organized, listening, and turning in assignments on time. Sometimes I can be good when it comes to the actual work, but sometimes when I don’t understand a problem I can get stuck. I may be good at a certain unit that we do or there may be some that I’m not that good at. For example For example, I think I feel more confident in multiplication than fractions. fractions.

Almost everyday I have an after school activity so when I come home from the activity I do my homework. I first take a shower, eat dinner, then do homework so I can focus without my parent saying “five minutes until dinner, ” because that is when I will start to rush. If I have trouble with the homework I can either look over it with my parent, go to school the next day and ask a teacher, or ask my friends about it. If I do my homework before my activity and I am stuck, I can come back to it after it ends and see if I can understand it better.

Sometimes in math if I am processing a problem in my head I can be a little bit slow. A goal for me is to understand and process problems in my head a bit faster. I hope that I will get stronger and more confident in math this year!
I hope that this year I will improve and feel more confident in math!

Math Check-up 2

In math we are learning about similarity in shapes. In the first picture I wrote which shapes were similar and why. In the second picture I wrote answers to the questions on the sheet. It was mostly about making shapes similar to the shapes on the sheet, and making non similar shapes and explaining. image image

Summer Reading

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The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

 

 

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Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

 

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Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt

 

Tuck Everlasting Annotations

 

My favorite book that I read out of the three books, The Secret Garden, Alice in Wonderland, and, Tuck Everlasting is Tuck Everlasting. I will describe the  characteristics of a few of the main characters, backing them up with quotes. Also I wrote about where the story takes place.

Winnie Foster: Stubburn- “Why not? said Winnie as she stood up. Its mine, anyway if it’s in the wood. I want some. I’m about as dry as dust.” pg. 29 Winnie was acting stubburn because when Jesse  was telling her not to drink the water she kept on resisting to have some until she will get it.

Sacrificial  – “I can help! When your mother climbs out the window, I’ll climb in and take her place.” pg. 114 When Mae  was in the prison cell, Winnie said that when Jesse  get’s Mae out of the cell Winnie would climb in and take her spot. She sacrificed herself for another person.

Mae: Comforting- “I want to go home.” “The tucks stopped eating, and looked at her, surprised. Mae said soothingly. Why, of course you do, child. That’s only natural. I’ll take you home. I promised I would, soon’s we’ve explained a bit as to why you got to promise you’ll never tell about the spring.” pg. 57 When Winnie wanted to go home, Mae comforted her saying that she promised she would take her home, and made her feel more comfortable around them.

Protective – “You leave that child be she said. Winnie stared. Mae was standing just the outside the doorway. She held Tuck’s long-forgotten shotgun by the barrel like a club” pg. 99Mae defended Winnie by pointing Tuck’s gun at the man in the yellow suit, so Winnie wouldn’t have to go with the man. (Winnie did not want to go with the man in the yellow suit)

Jesse: Mysterious/Anxious- “Is that good to drink?  she asked. I’m thirsty.” “Oh, that. no-no, it’s not, he said quickly. You mustn’t drink from it. Comes right up out of the ground. probably pretty dirty. And he began to pile the pebbles over it again.” pg. 29 Jesse was acting very mysterious when Winnie was around because at first he didn’t want to tell Winnie about the water. So he kept on saying “the water is dirty,” and making excuses for her not to drink the water.

Imaginative- “Well, listen, how’d it be if you was to wait till you’re seventeen, same age as me-heck, that’s only six year off-and then you could go and drink some, and then you could go away with me! We could get married, even. That’d be pretty good, wouldn’t it! We could have a grand old time, go all around the world, see everything.” pg 72. Jesse was being very imaginative with Winnie, thinking about marrying her. Winnie and Jesse had only met that day. (And it ended up not happening. )

Miles: Caring- “Mile’s got a plan, but I don’t see how it can work,” said Jesse. pg 113 Miles was so caring about his mother, he made a plan to get her out of prison. Even though Jesse didn’t  think the plan could work, it actually did.

Helpful-  “He knows a lot about carpentering. He says he can take Ma’s window frame straight out of the wall, bars and all, and she can climb through.” pg 113-114. Miles was very helpful because he had carpentering skills to help Mae get out of the prison cell. If Miles didn’t know anything about carpentering, the plan wouldn’t have worked and Mae might not have been able to get out of Prison.

Setting:

When Winnie first meets Tuck’s family, the setting is in the woods of Treegap. Winnie’s family owns the woods, so that is where she goes off wondering around.

Another setting that is used in the book is the Tuck Family’s house. This is where she finds out more about the spring water, and where Mae shoots the man in the yellow suit.

When Mae gets out of Prison, the setting is the prison cell.

Poem 3

This poem is called the Yellow Brick Road, it is a rhythmic poem. I got inspired to write about a character, so Olivia B and I wrote about Dorothy. There is a lot of imagery, and line breaks. I really like this poem because you can separate each little section and it can be it’s own, but also when you put it together it will go well all together.

Walking down the yellow brick road

After the Wicked Witch showed

With the broomstick she rode

And laughing like a toad

 

Stopped by a scarecrow, on my way

He was clumsy, and made of hay

He wanted a brain to think in such a way

But that day was not today

 

In the distance, we see a shimmer

It is a glowing tin man, whose shimmer gets dimmer

We pour some oil on his rust

That slowly turns into dust

He is so hollow, in need of trust

We will get him a heart, for love, we must

 

On our way to the Emerald City

I had to start being witty

When a cowardly lion came acting like a kitty

He needed some courage to feel pretty

 

I see a field of flowers

I think poppies might have some powers

The last time I slept wasn’t for hours

Then the witch and her monkeys said, “The flowers are ours!”

 

My eyelids have froze

I think I am starting to dose

I will be back before the light will dispose

Let’s hope the gates won’t close

 

We just woke up

We’re ready to go in

So is Toto my pup

Everyone has a grin

 

We walk through the gates

It’s a wonderful sight

We hope our wishes will be granted

At least before tonight

 

The wizard is a fright

He says that by tonight

He needs the broom from the witch of the west

How will we get it? She is such a pest

 

We sneak in the tower

But I get caught

I hope that Scarecrow, Lion, and Tin Man

don’t miss their shot

 

I am stuck with the witch

But my friends act quick

They break through the door

Luckily I can run as fast as her broomstick

 

She follows me down the staircase

I see a pail filled with water

I see her ugly face

So I splash her and she melts

I can’t spot her!

 

Back to the wizard we go

With her broomstick in hand

With the Lion, Tin Man, And Scarecrow

We have finished what we have planned

 

Poem 2

Beautiful sunlight

Bright colors of paradise

Blooming trees in sight  

 

This poem is called Spring, it is a haiku. I got inspired to write a kigo, it is a poem that represents a season with a word. The word that represents spring is Blooming. In the first line there are five syllables, then seven, then five again. There is a little bit of rhyming in this poem. I like this poem because it rhymes, but it is also a haiku.