English class has been fun these past two years since we have done a lot of projects and activities. I’m writing this blog post to explain how I have improved in my writing skills from seventh grade. I chose two assignments. One was from seventh grade and the other one was from eighth grade. My seventh grade assignment was the Perfect Paragraph assignment, and my eighth grade assignment was my Presentation Analysis blog post.

My Perfect Paragraph assingment was where I had to write a paragraph explaining the happiness level of a certain place. The place I chose was Puerto Rico. Below is a screenshot of the annotations I did on this assingment. The annotations show my strengths and weaknesses when I was in seventh grade. The blue highlighting and notes show the strengths and the red highlighting and notes show the weaknesses. I included annotations such as “this shows how I used a variety of transitions” because I used different transitions to make the paragraph flow. I also put “This demonstrates how I was good at introducing topics” becausethe first sentence stated the main idea and what I was going to talk about.  My last annotation for strengths was “I used complex and compound sentences instead of simple sentences” because I only had one simple sentence in the paragraph. For my weaknesses, I wrote that “this shows how I needed to work on punctuation” because I needed to add some commas and a period, and “this shows how I needed to work on spelling” since I misspelled a word. The picture shows the arrows linking the notes to what I highlighted. This assignment helped me be the FLAGS outcomes of global and civic minded and technologically adept. It helped me be global and civic minded because I had to show my understanding of the world and technologically adept because I had to submit it on a Juno Doc in jupiter grades.

My eighth grade assignment was the Presentation Analysis blog post. Basically, we had to work in our tables to see which app was the best for presentations by making these fake presentations on the apps. After, we had to do a blog post on edublogs about the process, what the best app was, and our reaction to what everyone thought the best app was. For strengths I stated that “I can explain what I mean to make my writing clearer”because I went into detail and “this shows how I can use technology to make my writing better” because I included a hyperlink to my presentation. I also wrote that “I can conclude essays in a good way” because my last sentence tied everything up. For things that I have improved on from seventh grade, I put that “this demonstrates how I have gotten better at punctuation” because I included all commas and periods necessary. A current weakness is making sure to use credible sources. This artifact helped me be the FLAGS learning outcomes of being technologically adept and an effective communicator. It helped me be technologically adept because I had to figure out what app was better for presenting and posting an essay on edublogs(which is a website for posting blogs.) This helped me be an effective communicator because I had to express my ideas and concerns about the apps and write an essay explaining what I did.

I have inproved as a writer from seventh to eighth grade. I have gotten better at punctuation and spelling. I have also gotten better at describing my thoughts. Right now, I still have weaknesses such as using the most credible source I can find for informative essays and using lots of detail in narrative writing. To improve for high school, I can make sure to always describe everything as much as I can and using accurate sources from experts.