These past couple of years in English class at Hilltop Middle School has been an interesting process of developing a wide variety of grammatical skills and how to properly word sentences. Currently I am looking back at my previous assignments and comparing them to my current ones because I am trying to prove how I have improved in my work throughout these past two years in 7th and 8th grade. An assignment that I completed in 7th grade was called “Poverty” I chose to compare it to a Performance Task I completed in the 8th.
To start, the “Poverty” assignment was about how challenging it is to balance spending money and were to invest it in. Since we were only in 7th grade we had to use a website simulation, it gave us scenarios and choices we could choose to spend our money on. The goal of this simulation was to survive at least a month without going broke. After that we were assigned to write an essay on how we were affected individually and if we were able to survive a month or not. Then in our essay we had to share our opinion on how we would feel if we had to go through this in real life. However, in my essay there is lots of room for improvement as well as certain things I had done well. If you take a look at my essay, in the beginning of the second paragraph I only used one transition to start it off. I also had two of the same transitions in the 3rd and 4th paragraph. This being said I could have used more transitions to start my paragraphs so that when it is read it would come out smoothly. I also noticed that in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th paragraphs I was missing some punctation and placing punctuation were it was not appropriate. On a positive note, I was able to gather relevant information that had to do with the topic I was writing about. In addition, in the 2nd paragraph I was capable of identifying the central idea. Lastly, I made a connection in my conclusion that supported my claim in the introduction. As I was annotation this essay I think it portrayed that I am a Effective Communicator because after I experienced the simulation I was able to respond academically by writing this essay.
Furthermore, my Performance Task I completed this year was focused more on using articles as sources. I took these articles an used them to back up my claim on how reusing toilet water is a good idea. My intentions were to not only prove that it is a good idea but to have the factual evidence and logical reasoning to make it make sense. First off, in my 1st, 2nd, and 3rd paragraphs I managed to only cite evidence from only one source. However, the source I did use was credible and I was able to back it up with logical reasoning as I did in all of my paragraphs. In comparison to my previous assigned my variety of transitions in this essay has drastically increased. Lastly, I noticed that in my conclusion I was able to support my main claim in my introduction. After I took a look at this essay I believe I learned how to be mathematically adept because throughout writing this essay I was able to analyze the sources that were given to me to summarize and use as evidence to prove my claim to be  true.   
In the end, I realized that I have improved greatly throughout my two years of writing in English class. More so that I have developed a wider vocabulary and I am also familiar with the proper use of punctuation and capitalization. I also have a better understanding of how to properly incorporate textual evidence in my essay’s or whatever writing prompt I am assigned. However, I do find myself struggling to find transitions that will allow the sentence to be read smoothly, but I have learned different transitions I could use in my future writing assignments. Lastly, I am also challenge with using evidence from a variety of sources.