In this class, we have a book called "Okay For Now" by Gary D. Schmidt. It is our class book. We need to go through the plot and read through the whole story.

Assignment Introduction

The first assignment, which is the literary analysis, asks us to write a long paragraph (4 to 5 pages) about how the plot shows the specific theme (chosen by yourself). The one I choose is anger and self-control, because I also had a problem with this when I was at elementary school. I need to read through the book, find out which pages and which part have talked about anger and self control, and make it a paragraph, connecting everything together.

Connection With Study Habit 

This assignment improves my study habits by allowing me to learn how to make notes on books and finding evidence. Because just like what I said, I need to write about what evidence in the book shows the anger and shows how emotions is been controlled. Therefore when I'm browsing through the book, and want to find something about anger and self-control. And having a long sticky note ready helps me at whenever I see the evidence. I will grab my self-made bookmark and stick it on it. Therefore next time, when I want to write or continue the progress, I can easily catch up without forgetting everything I've done before.

This is really useful because this works on other books, such as the book Narnia. I have made some notes on the book pages. They talk about the words I don't know, the words' meanings, or how the theme affects the plots in the story. 

This is how this assignment helped me understand how to make book notes suitable for myself and also for other literatures.

Teamworks Reflections 

I love English class. Although I do not feel anything about English before, I love English class for the first time, because it helped me not only understand other classes' assignments but also make new friends. 

I met a junior called Ryan Tan, he is a very good and brilliant guy. And we add others' lines for connections. We become good friends. We help each other with English assignments. And all of this is thanks to Ms. Tran's idea of letting us discuss with each other if we have the same theme. 

We both chose anger and self-control. When we first sat besides each other I tried to speak with him. We were both nervous but we soon chatted freely because we found that our sense of humor is similar and our idea of how to do the assignment is same.

We have been going through almost all of the project together. When I find the evidence I share it with him. When he finds the evidence he shares it with me. He even allowed me to use his computer for Ctrl+F, which is a tool that can help you find direct evidence from the book. It's really helpful and we've soon finished almost all of the evidence just within two classes. Ryan and I even have time to finish the notebook check together during lunchtime and that definitely helped us. Without his help I wouldn't have finished the notebook check. Without his help I also would not have finished the reading analysis.

Teamwork is important because it helps us to understand what we should do and also we can help each other out with the struggles we both meet. This is a very miraculous experience I had with teamwork in this assignment and I hope that in other classes I also have a similar experience.