Reflections On My Classmates I movie's

William and Cameron- Khufu

In Williams presentation I think that they explained the time period and time he ruled really well but I think that William and Cameron didn't make Khufu's accomplishments clear enough to the listener. They did a good job explaining his creations but they didn't explain why he built them. Their images where relevant to their speaking roles but camerons background noise only proved to be distracting and through off the whole presentation. So I think that overall their I movie was ok. If they just work a little on the other things they could make a better presentation in the future.

Dania and Johana- Refrotiti

In dania and Johana's presentation I think that their information was clear and they explained everything really well. There were no background noises so you could clearly hear their talking and their slides were explaining what they were saying. Over all I thought it was a great presentaiton.

Ayaka and Raisa- tutankaman

I movie reflection Ramses II

In Humanities over the past few days we worked on making an I movie on one of the Egyptian pharaohs. My partner and I worked on the pharaoh Ramses the Second. In this blog post I am going to reflect on how well I think I did, what worked and didn't work, and the collaboration of the team.

Based on the rubric I think that me and my partner did a good job. Our content matched the rubrics demands we spoke with clear loud voices. What we could work on is stating our citations and putting in transitions. When we did our presentation our pictures didn't have transitions, only the main transitions did. I think that we need to put way more transitions in our presentation that way it looks more appealing. We also need work on citing our citations. When we were making our presentations we felt like we were being rushed and my partner and I felt a lot of pressure. After we finished the speaking and pictures we started to relax and release the stress that we had. We had forgot though about the citations. The next day when we checked on the presentation we found that there were no citations. We tried to hurry and use MLA to give us the correct citation but we ran out of time so we just listed the rest of the citations.

In the project we had a whole bunch of difficulties. Our first was with the research of Ramses II. We had three prompts that we had to answer in our I movie; What time period did the pharaoh live in? What were his contributions to Egypt? How did his monuments reflect on his religious beliefs? The first question was the easiest to answer. New kingdom. The second one was not so easy. Ramses really didn't make any great impact on Egypt. The only thing he really did was protect them from other countries so my partner and I decided that that was his contribution. For the third question we had a similar answer. Next we had technical problems. We recorded in Garage band so we couldn't export the recording to I movie. We thought that we would have to start all over again but then after I realized that it would take sound from I tunes I exported the recording to I tunes then to I movie.

If we got a grade for partner ship I would honestly say that we shared a 50-50 parter ship. Even though I think that I may have been to worried about letting my partner down and because of that I may have tried to do all of the work. So if we wouldn't have made those bonehead errors than our presentation could have been even better than it already was. The lesson learned from this; When you think you finished and you start to take a break look back at the work and fix you mistakes.

http://www.youtube.com/user/vjarvis17#p/u

City Connection Reflection

In class we did a project on a city we have lived in. The project contained information about; your cities history, Statistical information about the city, Environmental factors, Topography, Historical factors, Maps of the city, and our resources.

My project was on Houston and I think that the things I did well were; getting maps to show people where Houston was in the world, speaking clearly, not reading off the slides, and researching information on the slides. Even though I had all those good, I can improve on; picking the fonts for the writing on the slide and getting a good picture for the background. The font color that I chose for my writing was too bright or blended in with the background. Because of that I had to add a highlight to my writing and it didn't go to well with the background. So in the future I need to watch out for that.

Doing this project taught me that when you give a topic you need to add as much detail as you can but not to much to where it is boring. For example when some of the kids were presenting they wouldn't give enough detail about the topic that they were talking about so it would leave me with a lot of questions. Also I learned that if you are going to present you need to know every thing that you are talking about that way if people ask you questions then you will be able to answer them. Some of the kids in my class wrote something on their slides but didn't fully understand the topic so when the person was asked a question they couldn't respond.

From my friends presentation I learned that all towns are created because of something. People never just stay in a place and build a city unless the area has some resources that people need. Also, almost all cities start out little using trading but then when somebody trades to other places then people want to go to that city that way they can get some of the item that was traded then sell it starting a business.

To meet each requirement on the rubric I first looked at the rubric then went down the list and found as much information as I could on the topic. Then I would rephrase the writing for written information then put it on my Power Point. After I made sure that I had all of the basic information down, I went back and tried to put extra information in each topic.

Overall I think that my presentation went well. I was confident and I felt that I had done the highest quality job that I could have. If I could do that project again the only thing that I would change would be the color of my font.

Learning Profile Reflection

     Different people have different ways of learning. Some prefer to work in quiet spaces but some people need to have noise to work. Some prefer to think logically while others would rather think creatively.  Each person has strengths and weaknesses and I would like to share mine along with how I would prefer to learn.

     I learn best when people write things on the board or there is something for me see because if I just hear it then I may not really understand it but if I can see an example or steps then I will understand it better because I can see the steps and explain it to myself.

     I am not a perfect student, that I will admit. So I as a student can improve by not talking as much during class and staying on task because usually what happens is that I go to class and people talk to me so I respond and I start a conversation with the person so I don't end up getting enough time to do my work so I ends up as home work and that really annoys me.

     Strategies that I am going to try starting Monday are: avoiding conversations until I finish my work, telling the person talking to me to "Hey why don't we talk about this later after we finish our work.", and advising the people around me to work so that way they don't have the same problem I do and it helps me because if everyone is working there is no one to talk to so I would get my work done.

     Last I would like everyone to know something about me. My friends and I always try our hardest at every thing we do so if anyone says or thinks different then they're wrong. We give our all at everything despite if we like it or not. We don't give up.

     Those are some things that I would like you to know about my working habits. I hope that you learned a little about my personal character. I will defiantly work towards those goals that I have set for myself and I won't stop working towards it until I have accomplished it. Even when I accomplish my goal I will still try my best to keep repeating it.

2011

     Two thousand and ten is over and now two thousand and eleven is here and I would like to share two things with you. First I would like to share my new year resolutions which were: stop saying that writing was hard and thinking I was bad at it, and be more confident when I talk to adults. Secondly I would like to tell you about a talent that I have, music.

      One of my new year resolutions was to stop saying that stuff was hard and then think that I was bad at it. For me this is a problem because I will be told to write a story or blog post in humanities. Writing for me is difficult so when ever I would write something at home I would always think that it was hard so it made it harder for me to write and wasted time. When I finally got the paper done and had to show it to other people I would always feel that what I wrote was not good and that I was just generally bad at writing. I didn't like that feeling so I made one of my new year resolutions was to stop thinking that writing was difficult and that I was bad at it.

      My other new year resolution was to be more confident when I talk to adults. This is a big problem for me because if I am not confident when I talk to adults people wont take me seriously. One time me and my friends wanted to go and break dance but the dance room was locked. Then I went to the person with the key and I was shy about asking for it so she didn't give the key to me and my friends so we had to go the next day. It really bugged me that I didn't get the key for my friends but it was my fault because when I talked to her I was talking really quietly to her and I talked really choppy so that didn't help. I hate that feeling of not getting taken seriously so I made it my new year resolution to be more confident when I talk to adults.

      Finally, I would like to tell you one of my best talents, music. When I was five years old my parents took me to my first piano lesson. Music wasn't that hard to me and my sister and I picked it up very quickly. By the time I was six and my sister was five we were already performing in concerts. I played a blues song and my sister did as well. I played so well that I could play the song faster that the metronome which was how it was supposed to be played. My teacher had to make me play the value of a half note (Two beats) in a single click from the metronome. I continued piano until I was eleven then stopped because we got to busy but I still played more instruments. Now I play the trumpet in band and can play a little on the guitar. My favorite thing to do in the car is listen to music and try to find the beat. If I cant find the beat I replay the song. As you can tell, I love music a lot. That is the one thing in my life I could not let go.

      That is a little about myself and my goals for two thousand eleven. I will defiantly try to accomplish those goals. Now that you think about it writing isn't so bad. I just did it now.

Working with a partner on Literature Discussions.

Literature Discussions working with a partner benefits us because we get to help each if we need help. Also working together helps fix spelling and grammar mistakes because if we go over it and don't catch it then our partner will. Also it helps us make up better questions because if you take somebody's idea and add on to it then the idea will be better than the original so together we will make better questions.

Challenges that we faced this week was our questions both of us were trying our hardest to think of questions but no matter how hard we tried we couldn't come up with a good enough question. This, for me and my partner, is the hardest thing on the Literature Discussions. We resolved it when my partner was telling me that he read all of the chapters assigned and at the time I had not so I accidently  asked him a question about why something happened and why she decided to make her decision. With a little revision to what I said I ended up making a question.

While working alone I only thought that Charlotte was only a person that based how she thought of people by their actions but when I worked together with my partner he helped me see that Charlotte not only does things because of obedience. When she told on the crew I thought that it was out of obedience but my partner said that it could be out of fear when he said that I thought about how obedience is not the only trait that Charlotte has. Then I thought that about her seeing Zachariah get beaten and I started to think about her feelings. Now when I read the book I try to think about her human emotions instead of what the book originally described her as.  

Literature Discussions

     Literature Discussions is when a group of kids who have the same book group up to meet and discuss the books that they are reading. Literature Discussions benefits us reader because they actually get to talk about it and it helps to understand the book. Also we get to relate to the book and see how things in the story can sometimes happen in real life. Finally the discussions help us make predictions about what will happen next in the book basing it off of discussions.

     Literature discussions helps us to understand the book better because if we don't understand something completely then we discuss what the book really meant and then come up with a group answer.  Also if we have a question about the book then we have other people who can explain what happened in the book rather than just having to guess at it. Finally Literature Discussions has helped us to understand our book better because we work together to find and identify the plots and all the parts of a story which helps our understanding because we have to rethink about what has happened. Which could lead to making us predict what will happen next.

     When we are in our Literature Discussion groups we realize that books aren't a bunch of words scrambled together but it uses real life situations that could happen to us. Then when we read the book and read about a similar event that has happened to us we connect to it which helps us to understand the characters feelings and thoughts because it would be most likely what we felt or thought. So when we bring the connections to the discussion everybody gets to hear the connection and it then helps the whole group understand the characters thoughts and feelings better.

     Finally, Literature Discussions is helpful because it can help us predict what will happen next in the book. Before you come to a discussion you may have a thought about the book that you feel strongly about then after you will have a different idea. That is because Literature Discussions helps us hear everyones ideas so after the discussion we gather all of the information up and use it to make one big prediction. An example is when I read chapters three though nine of my book called The true confessions of Charlotte Doyle. Before I came to the discussion I believed that the crew were only trying to frighten Charlotte with the craving of a scull and the gun but the rest of my group had other ideas. They believed different things then I  their Ideas and mixed them with mine to get the prediction that the captain would kill one of the crew mates and when I read chapter ten I was right. My predictions for the book now are that the captain will be mad at everybody including Charlotte even thought she didn't do anything and the captain will hurt them all.

     There are many more reasons why Literature Discussions benefits us. But those are the most important reasons to me why Literature Discussions helps us understand our books.