So far, English class has been pretty well for me because it has helped me improve as a writer and as a reader. I’m writing this because English class has helped me a lot in academics and also because we have to write a blog post to get ready for portfolio night. The two assignments I chose to talk about today are a seventh grade writing essay and a blog post from eight grade. I chose these because it shows my improvement in writing over the past two years.

My seveth grade assignment that I’m going to talk about is this performance task essay we wrote about where we had to argue about wether tap water or bottled water is better. On what I need to really work on is my spelling becuase I got a 2/4 in grammatical errors. Also, I need to work on having a better conclusion with a more clear thesis restatement and it needs to have a clincher to leave the reader on the good note. I was really good at stating my claim and using evidence to support it, as well as writing counterarguments and rebuttals. My essay was good overral I just need to focus on my spelling. By completing this performance task, I demonstrated one of the FLAGS learning outcomes which is being a critical and creative thinker, because I analized the sources and anotated them and came up with and argumentative essay in which I got a 41/44.

My eight grade assignment I chose was a blog post we had to do where we discussed a poem called “The Lesson of the Moth”. We had to write about the two philosophies the author uses in the poem and which one we think the author agrees with. I really improved on my grammer, because I only had one spelling error and one misplaced comma. I’ve also improved because I used a more complex vocabulary than on my performance task last year. However, I still need work on putting more evidence to support my ideas. Here, I demonstrated one of the FLAGS learning outcomes which is being a critical and creative thinker, because I learned how to analize a poem and break appart each stanza to figure out the true meaning of what the author is trying to convey to us. Also, because we had to write which side we agree to, so we’re thinking about the authors purpose and message and translating it into our own ideas.

I’ve improved as a writer between seveth and eight grade, because in seveth grade I used to make a lot of grammatical errors especially in spelling. This year, as shown in my seccond assignment, I don’t make that many errors in grammar. My weaknesses right now are that I still have a few spelling mistakes and I have to find more evidence to support my claim and that I need to express my ideas more clearly. I can improve for next year in high school by doing more work and writing more often to improve my weaknesses.