English class has been a fun and challenging rollercoaster over the years. We have had fun activities like, kahoots, geoguesser, writing narratives,warm ups, and etc.. Mrs. Lepre’s warm ups are pretty fun, but challenging at the same time. Usually, warm ups are different, but a lot of different students come up with different ideas. We always have a blast in her class. She creates assignments and she makes them fun and interesting. When she shows us different things she tries to do it in a way that no other teacher does. She tries to teach us in unique ways, that it doesn’t get boring, its different from they way our other teachers would teach us. The reason I am writing this is because I want to show my writing skills in 7th and compare them to my skills in 8th. I want people, especially students to see that you writing can always improve. I am going to write about 2 essays the first one is
“Non-monetary benefits of college performance task”, this is an essay I wrote in 7th and “Toilet to tap Performance Task Essay”, I wrote this essay in 8th grade. I chose these two because I want to compare my writing skills from 7th to 8th grade.
This paper was one from my 7th grade year. This paper had some weaknesses that I feel like I have improved. In this paper I made 5 mistakes and learned about my 5 weaknesses. In this assignment I was supposed to write about the non-monetary benefits of college. I was supposed to read and annotate all texts. After, this I had to highlight all evidence and find examples to support my decision. In my paper, 1 weakness was missing evidence. I was always confused about how to find and how to chose the right piece evidence. I was missing 2-3 pieces of evidence per paragraph. I was missing the part where I had to write which text my evidence was from. I wrote down the source just not the name of the texts. Another problem was citing my sources in paragraph 2. I wrote all the information in the essay, but I didn’t cite the sources, I only cited the source for one piece of evidence. I would also write things that weren’t necessary to put in my essay. I would write things from the text and paraphrase it, but it wouldn’t really make sense. I wrote a good introduction. This essay demonstrated that I am an effective communicator. I showed that I can defend any argument I believe in.
This is the paper that I wrote in 8th grade this year. This paper is much better than the one I wrote in 7th grade. I felt that I have improved and fixed all my mistakes and weaknesses in my essay. In this essay I was suppose to write about Recycled Water ‐ To drink or not to drink?. In this essay what I achieved was that my introduction had a hook, thesis, and a topic. I also cited all my sources in a new way. Mrs. Lepre showed us how to site sources, the way they will show us in high school. I had all piece of evidence and got my evidence prepared before writing my essay. I made sure that I didn’t re-write the same thing all over again in a different paragraph. In this essay I demonstrated that I am an effective communicator. In my essay I made connections to the text, cited sources, and organized my writing before starting.
I can say that I have improved my writing a lot from 7th to 8th grade. I have improved the way I find evidence. I know how to defend my argument with my different sources. I know how to refer and make connections to my text. Before, in 7th grade I didn’t really know what type of evidence I really needed. Now Mrs. Lepre, showed us again what evidence means and what important evidence we need to help support our claim. She showed us how to cite our sources they way high schoolers do. She has been showing us some high school level things, like citing sources, finding evidence, how to write a good counterargument, what they will expect to see from us, and etc… My weaknesses that I still need to work on as a writer for high school is to work on my conclusions and my counterarguments.