This year has gone really good for me especially in English. I don’t know for other people but english has been one my easier classes. English has also been really fun for me. I got an excellent teacher that while teaching tries her best to also make it fun. The purpose of this blog is to show you guys how I have improved from 7th grade to 8th grade. By looking at and hearing about two of my assignments in the past two years you will be able to see the improvement I have done.

The first artifact I chose to demonstrate my improvement over the years is my performance task from 7th grade in second semester. In this essay we were supposed to write an argument saying what you thought what was better. Tap water or bottled water. It was really hard deciding but I had to go with tap water. I just thought tap water was much safer and healthier. I had to make a claim that was supported by enough evidence. As you can see in the picture of my essay my teacher did gave me a few comments. I did make a few of punctuation errors but I still think that’s one of my strengths. I think I might’ve just missed a few letters in the keyboard. I usually don’t make as many punctuation or spelling errors but when I do I was most likely not paying close attention. One of my weaknesses I believe to be is write conclusions. It is hard for me to restate the thesis and give the reader a good closure. In this essay I wasn’t able to finish and didn’t write a conclusion. The reason I didn’t finish was because I ran out of time and I was stuck on trying to figure out how to start the conclusion. Another one of my strengths is getting the reader hooked in. I think I gave a pretty good hook and introduction. I still think it could’ve been better though. By completing this assignment I demonstrated a global and civic minded outcome because I had to think about which was better for our environment when choosing between tap water or bottled water. I could’ve brought the people who read my essay on my side. I possibly helped out our environment just a bit.

The second artifact I chose which you can see above is my performance task from semester one in 8th grade. This essay was all about the debts of college and how it’s getting more expensive over the years. I explained how it’s been getting harder and harder for families to pay for college and how the cost has been going up. One of the things I think I did really well in this essay as well as in the first one is my introduction. I’m pretty sure I got the reader hooked and explained pretty well what I was going to talk about. In the first artifact I chose I think I did a good job but i think I improved and did even better in this essay. Something else I think I did very well are my topic sentences to start of my body paragraphs. By reading my topic sentences you were probably able to tell what they were going to be about. In this essay I made very few punctuation or spelling errors even maybe zero. That is one of the things I do best. It was hard for me to write a conclusion for both of my body paragraphs. Not just was hard to write conclusion sentences but also a conclusion paragraph. I still managed to get it done and make them good. I feel like I had a lot of evidence to support my claim in both paragraphs. An FLAGS outcome I demonstrated when completing this assignment would be effective communicator because I had to look at other articles from other people to know what I was going to write about. Then gave out an argument that was supported by evidence.

I chose these two artifact to easily show how I have improved from 7th to 8th grade. They are both performance task so that made it easier to show you. Just by the score you can see my improvement because in the first one I got 33 out of 44 and in the second one I got 40 out of 40. Another way you can see my improvement is by taking a look at my punctuation and spelling errors. In the 7th grade performance task I made about 5 errors and in the 8th grade one I’m pretty sure I didn’t make any. Last but not least you can tell the difference in the way I supported my claim. It got much better in 8th grade from 7th. By looking at my looking at and hearing about my work you might think I’m a strong writer but I think there is still things to work on to improve more and be ready for high school. One thing I think would help me is learn about more things I can add to my essays to make them even better. I could read student examples to see how others write.