For the past two years, English has been my last class of the day. In 7th grade, I had Mrs. Earls. In 8th grade, I had Mrs. Lepre. English has been one of the subjects that I am not the best at, but not bad at either. I am writing this blog because Portfolio Night, which is a 15 minute presentation that I have to gove about all of my classes, is coming up very soon. In this blog, I am going to talk about one assignment from 7th grade and one assignment from 8th grade. I chose these two assignments because they show both my strengths and weaknesses in English.

The 7th grade assignment that I am going to be talking about is the Themes PicCollage. In this assignment, I had to create a PicCollage that explained the themes of the teleplay “Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” by Rod Serling and the article “The Rosewood Incident” by Michael Buchanan. The red annotations show that one of my weaknesses in 7th grade was being repetitive. The green annotations show that one of my strengths in 7th grade was explaining my ideas. This assignment demonstrates that I am a critical and creative thinker because I had to use what I read the article and watched in the teleplay to determine the similar themes in both of them.

The 8th grade assignment that I am going to be talking about is the “Lesson of the Moth” Blog Post. In this assignment, I had to write a blog about the poem “The Lesson of the Moth” by Don Marquis. In the blog, I had to explain the two different philosophies in this poem and which one the author beloeves in. The red annotations show that one of my weaknesses in 8th grade was transition words. The green annotations show that one of my strengths in 8th grade was explaining my ideas, which was also a 7th grade strength. This assignment demonstrates that I am a critical and creative thinker because I had to use what I read from the poem and explain the different philosophies that were represented.

I have improved as a writer between 7th and 8th grade because in 7th grade, one of my weaknesses was being repetitive but in 8th grade, that was not one of my weaknesses. In 8th grade, one of my weaknesses was not using good transition words. I can improve on this by continuing to practice and learn different words so that I can have more of a variety and not use boring transitions.