First of all, this is my blog. It contains a lot of my writing from this year.
This is my first (and only) Personal Curriculum. I really liked this Personal Curriculum. It was really interesting to see what books I had read, and find new suggestions for new books to read. I would recommend Shelfari! This is my shelf. This is my shelf as of the end of Seventh Grade.
We had to read two "Multi-Cultural" Novels toward the beginning of seventh grade. I chose to read Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and The Secret of Gumbo Grove. We wrote essays on these books. We learned how to write a good thesis statement, and build an essay around it. Here is my Roll of Thunder, Here My Cry essay, and here is my The Secret of Gumbo Grove essay.
We discussed the poem "The Road Less Taken," by Robert Frost. We had to write a poem about a decision we made or would have to make, based on the poem. Here is my poem.
An Academy Authentic is an authentic (original) piece of writing that we had to write. We were supposed to write one once a quarter. I started my first Academy Authentic on September 11th. In honor of the day, I decided to write a piece about September 11th. Here it is! My next Academy Authentic is my Utopian poem. I thought it was pretty authentic, so I made it an Academy Authentic!
My biggest project in Language Arts this year was definitely the Utopia project. By definition, a Utopia is the perfect place, or no place. We learned about what a Utopia is, what makes a Utopia a Utopia, different people's views of Utopia, and at the end, we had to create our own Utopias. This is mine. I am pretty proud of it. It took a lot of work, and it really displayed my own voice and originality. It was really interesting to see different people's views of Utopia (though I like mine the best... ;P). Go here to see other people's Utopias.
At the beginning of the Utopia project, we did talked about the layers of life and figured out how to fit all the layers together to make a perfect society. To demonstrate this, we did a project called "Survival Stimulation." I got in a group, and we "crashed on a deserted island and had to create a society there." To see this society explained on a VoiceThread,scroll down.
We also studied speeches and debates. We learned how to real debates, and practiced doing them. Our practice debates didn't go very well. But when I teamed up with another boy (Alex B.) and we did a debate on censorship, things went really well. We did a lot of research and writing. This is the speech I gave. I was so nervous, but we won the debate!! Our speech unit was not as big. We simply chose something we felt strongly about, and wrote a speech about this. Here is mine.
We collaboratively worked with Mr. Mayo's English Class this year. (Well, not really. We talked about it, and did a little, but that was it.) Mr. Mayo's class lives in Washington D.C.! I wrote a blog post replying to one girl's questions about Colorado. Here it is!