For the past two years, English class has been one of the classes I look forward to attending during the school day, and not only because of the awesome teacher. Over the past two years, we have covered a variety of subjects and lessons that range from identifying main ideas to writing essays. I have learned more about English these past two years than from my whole elementary school experience! So, I am writing this blog post to demonstrate my outstanding transition from the begginning of seventh grade to where I am now, a few weeks away from graduating middle school. To demonstrate this, I have chosen two assignments, “Murder Mystery” and the “Group Practice Essay” because I highly believe that the comparison of these two assignments will best demonstrate my growth.

The “Murder Mystery” assignment from seventh grade was a police report that we had to give determining whether a death was suicidal or murder. We were given a cartoon image that showed someone dead in his house. We used the clues surrounding him as pieces of evidence to determine if his death was a murder or suicide. For one of my weaknesses, I annotated that I did not “distinguish the claim(s) from opposing claims,” an eighth grade standard. In other words, I did not provide a counter argument and rebuttal. Another weakness I had was not using a variety of transitions, also an eighth grade standard. For instance, I used the word “also” twice two paragraphs in a row. However, a strength I did show was providing evidence that supported my claim, another eighth grade standard. I annotated the pieces of evidence I included that supported my belief that it was not murder, such as how “no windows or doors were broken,” signaling no murderer broke in. As well as the “gun missing above the swords,” in his home, because if it was a murderer, they would usually bring their own weapon, planning on killing someone. I demonstrated the FLAGS outcome of being “Technologically Adept” because I had to type and submit my assignment on my Ipad. I also displayed becoming a “Critical and Creative Thinker” because I had to think whether it was a murder or suicide based off of some clues I had to identify.

In eighth grade, I completed the Group Practice Essay as well. This assignmen was an argumentative essay where me and my table group members had to write whether or not the constant use of Google was lowering the intelligence of students. According to this assignment, I annotated the strength of including a counter argument and rebuttal. This meets the eighth grade standard of being able to “distinguish the claim(s) from opposing claims,” as well as proves my improvement as a writer since I did not include a counterargument in my seventh grade assignment. A further strength that I annotated in this assignment was using a variety of transitions in my writing. Instead of only using “also” as my transition word, like in my seventh grade assignment, I used transitions like “in other words”, “all in all”, “specifically”, “therefore,” and many others. This means that I met the eighth grade standard of using “a variety of transitions.” A weakness that I exhibited in eighth grade took place in another assignment called “Elements of a Personal Narrative.” In this assignment, I displayed the weakness of the eighth grade standard “analyze the structure of a specific paragraph in a text, including the role of particular sentences in developing a key concept.” This is because I concluded the climax and resolution incorrectly. I annotated the correct climax and resolution and highlited in red the incorrect ones that I identified before. The FLAGS outcome that I demonstrated is being an Effective Communicator because in my group essay, I had to exchange and listen to ideas with my table group members.

I have improved as a writer between seventh and eighth grade in several ways. I began including counter-arguments and rebuttals, I began to use a variety of transitions, and I can better identify components of a sentence and/or paragraph. I also am now more confident in my writing! My weaknesses now as a eighth grader include using “effective speaking techniques (appropriate eye  contact, adequate volume and clear pronunciation),” an important eighth grade standard. I can improve for highschool by practing speaking to my family or friends and avoid these types of mistakes.