So far, English has been pretty easy for me. Well, until this point. Preparing for Portfolio Night is always the most stressful time of the year. But luckily, we take the class reflections one at a time. Over the past two years, English class has been good to me. I’ve had straight A’s both years, all four semesters. The reason I’ve decided to maintain straight A’s is for this very time of year. Just in case I don’t do my best on Portfolio Night, I’m always backed up with the A’s. Because believe it or not, I do have weaknesses. I’m writing this blog post to express how proud I am of myself for completing two years of F.L.A.G.S English. Anyways, the assignments I have chosen from 7th and 8th grade are the “Dream Trip” and “Real self vs. online self blog post” assignments. I chose these assignments because I had the most fun with them and I felt that they both gave me a little bit of a challenge. And just like many other people, I like a good challenge.

Alright, for my 7th grade assignment, I chose the “Dream Trip” project. Personally, I had a few strengths and weaknesses. Here is the assignment, the “Dream Trip,” and the strengths and weaknesses I felt applied to this assignment. 

For this assignment, we worked in groups of four and had to choose a place in the world to go to. We had to make a five day itinerary and calculate the finances required for this trip. Then, we had to research for places to go and things to do in that area. And as for the annotations, the orange one states the biggest challenge that I faced while completing this assignment. The weakness I faced was putting everything into the itinerary. I had trouble with this because I am not the best with making detailed summarizations. And the red one states one of my strengths. This strength was compiling the activities for every day. I really enjoyed doing this because all I had to do was research for fun things to do in Paris, where my group and I chose where to go. And the last annotation, the green one, is the last strength I recognized which was calculating the finances. I was good at this portion of the assignment because I am good at math, which is what this part required you to do. By completing this assignment, I have achieved being a critical and creative thinker because I was able to perservere through my weakness and finish the assignment and be able to get an A on it.

Now, for my 8th grade assignment I chose the “Real Self vs. Online Self” blog post. And much like the 7th grade assignment, I have some weaknesses and a strength. This is the assignment, the “Real Self vs. Online Self” blog post, with the weaknesses and strengths that I identified in this assignment. 

For this assignment, we had to compile a comparison of our online selves and our real selves into two paragraphs, make a one paragraph description as well as a photo of ourselves, and lastly we had to create an interactive video. For the first red annotation, I decided that the part where we had to make two paragraphs comparing our normal selves to our online selves was a weakness because I generally have trouble with making detailed paragraphs and this was no exception. And for the Orange annotation, I thought that the part about doing a short description of myself was a strength because I know myself pretty well so, already knowing the material, I thought it was very easy and turned out well. And lastly, the pink annotation was a weakness for me. The pink annotation pertains to the interactive video. I don’t do well on videos and I don’t like them, so this was not a fun this or me to do, and because I didn’t like it, I had trouble completing it and making it acceptable. From this assignment, I have learned to be technologically adept because I was required to make an interactive video about myself and make a digital image depicting myself using the iPad.

Between the 7th and 8th grade years I had improved tremendously. I am now able to make multi-paragraph, detailed writings and successfully make iMovies and interactive videos. Currently, I do not have many weaknesses but one would definitely be spelling. This is a huge problem for me because I rely heavily on spell check because I do my assignments in the iPad. I can improve upon this for high school by taking online spelling courses and doing online spelling tests. I believe that by doing these things, I will be able to have spelling-error free writing.