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by maddiedrdg0910 on March 16, 2010 at 4:24 pm · Filed under English
Tag, you’re it…no tagbacks.
What’s that even supposed to mean? Well, obviously, you can’t tag them back. But if you relate it to life, which I’m sure all the little kids out there that play this are definetley doing, it’s almost unfair. Why should someone dump a responsibilty on you and claim that they don’t have to deal with it anymore? Well, life is one big game of tag. To go along with the fact that we have to deal with problems we can’t rid ourselves of, we have unchangable, undeniable rules that we have to follow. But when is it appropriate to break the “rules”?
We all know that there are unspoken rules everyone has to follow throughout their lives, as well as written laws. But why so many rules? It’s because it seems like eighty percent of our population thinks they’re invincible, indestructable, and special. They feel like they can do whatever whenever and think of the rules as valuless. However, for the twenty percent of us that have an understanding of right and wrong, well we follow the rules that have been made, whether it be unspoken or written. Well if there are so many laws, then when is the right time to break them?
Dr. MIcheal Fowlin talked a lot about the difference between what we’re supposed to do and what we should do. We’re supposed to follow the rules. That’s why they’re made. But sometimes, to get the best out of something or help someone, you have to break the rules. We should consider it further than that and break whatever rule is needed t get what we need to get done. So when does following the rules get to be too much? There are so many rules in life piled ontop of all the responsibilities we recieve. So how you handle them is your decision.
Tag, you’re it…
by maddiedrdg0910 on March 15, 2010 at 5:16 pm · Filed under English
What more would our world be than a conveyor belt constructing numbing egalitarianism without differences and variety? We wouldn’t be able to tell any one apart from others, and everything we made would be the same. For me, seeing new, exciting, and different things everyday is pretty much the only thing that gets me out of bed every morning. The same thing applies to English class. I’m sure Mr.Olivo wouldn’t enjoy reading around ninety stories that sounded like the all came from one person. I should have expected it, but I was surprised at how different the writing styles were in the stories that I read.
Today I compared Marykate’s story with mine. Wow, were they different. It might be in my head, but I feel like I had a little more description. However, in these circumstances, that could be a bad thing. I noticed that I spent more time going into depth in my descriptions while she made her story more true to the time setting. I could tell she put a lot of effort into making it authentic, and it payed off. However, she didn’t give the reader a good look into the character’s head. In her story, she said “‘Farewell sister,’ Anne said. ‘Goodbye Anne,’ Kathryn cried. The train whistle blew and Anne was awoken from her upsetting trance.” It almost confused me when she said “awoken from her upsetting trance”. To me, in the scene, Anne seemed perfecty alert and not wanting to leave her sister. If I had had more sight into the her head, the scence may have been a lot more powerful. Like I said, this could all be a good thing as we’re trying to write a historical fiction story, not make them cry.
Another thing that was different between Marykate’s and my stories was that her sentences sounded similar. When she gets going in a paragraph, I noticed that almost four sentences in a row all started with the same few words. But again, I’m not sure if that’s good or not. In my story, I made sure that my sentences had variety and different sounds to keep the reader interested. However, it may make it sound confusing and random at times. What can I say, I’m no author. In her story, she said, “She kept her head down and hurried along until she came to a small wooden gate. She opened the gate to see their lush garden, blossoming orchard, and their chicken, geese, and ducks. She was immediatley bombarded by her father.” The similar sounds make the reading a little dry. Her story line was great, and if she could just tweak her sentences a little, it would seem even professional. Marykate’s story had a lot of differences when compared to mine, but that’s only because we took different approaches.
by maddiedrdg0910 on March 14, 2010 at 6:53 pm · Filed under Science
How many people do you think would die if no one wore seatbelts? Hundreds? Thousands? I can’t even imagine the number of valuable, precious lives that were saved by taking one easy step as a precaution. We don’t expect to get into a car crash, but there’s always a chance we could. So, to prevent lives being lost we always think ahead and make sure to be as careful as possible. The same goes for earthquake-proofing public buildings.
There is no way of preventing an earthquake. It’s all up to the Earth, and we’re at her mercy. So if you think about it, why would you ever ignore something that we can’t control? There’s always a chance you’ll experience an earthquake, and no one would want to die in the process. I completley agree that we sould spend a little extra money on securing our public buildings. Not to do so would be like rounding everyone up for their deaths. The public buildings are where people flock like birds. So wouldn’t attracting people to somewhere that’s unsafe be awful? We need to make sure that if we bring people somewhere, we make sure it’s secure. Not only do we need to take responsibilty, but doing this would be easy also.
I would say that paying a little extra tax wouldn’t make a difference, but it would. In one sense, it would make a difference. A difference in the number of lives saved in a matter of moments. But it really wouldn’t make a difference in how much money we pay. If we can pay taxes for roads, why can’t we chip in a little more for safety. Over time we wouldn’t even think about it. But if we didn’t pay, we sure would be thinking about how many lives were lost when the next earthquake occours. Saving lives can be as easy as paying a tiny bit more money every once in a while.
by maddiedrdg0910 on March 9, 2010 at 5:10 pm · Filed under English
One of the most beautiful things about winter for me is what happens when it’s over. Deep green blades of grass peek out from the cold, white snow, resembling new life. The air is warmer, the sun is brighter, and everything just seems fresh. Its like coming out of hiberation. And of course, when such a great season arrives, we all have a way to aknowledge it.
My mom makes a huge deal out of spring. You can always tell that winter’s over when she breaks out the flowers. My mom grew up with flowers, worked at a florist shop when she was older, and now grows them in every inch of our yard. However, the definite sign for spring is when she put sprigs of witch hazel in a glass vase on the table. When I walk in the door, the yellow dots decorating the deep brown stems catch my eye. She always makes sure to put them in the most decorative vase she has because she loves to make a huge deal out of spring. Besides the obvious signs of spring, another change also lets me know when winter’s over.
My mom’s hormones run the family. If she’s happy, we’re happy. When she’s bugged, we’re bugged by her. When she’s depressed, we’re all depressed. When she’s angry, we all get angry at her. Which is exactly why I love spring. My mom loves warm weather, and spring is her favorite season. You always know it’s getting warmer when my mom is all smiles and hugs. In turn, the whole family is happy, including me. Spring makes everyone happy, and the good feelings are always a sign to let you know its coming.
by maddiedrdg0910 on March 8, 2010 at 9:47 pm · Filed under English
Imagine meeting a person who talked only in monotone, dressed only in grey, only did what was asked of them, and sat around staring off into space all day. Being around such a bleak, monotonous person would drive anyone insane. It would be like sitting next to a rock. The same goes for stories. Reading writing with a plain character can be painful. The main character in my story, Fae, has many traits, whether they be boring from her view or not.
Fae is a very responsible person. She makes sure to look out for her friends and follow the rules. When she is in the woods, it says, “When we were behind a thick fringe of foliage, she pulled a perring knife out of her apron. My eyes bulged. ‘Put that away!’ I whispered sharply.” She didn’t want to get in trouble, as a girl having a tool like that outside of her home was inappropriate. Also, when she was considering whether or not to take Brooke’s magic, she considered her whole family and the future. She also makes sure that no one will find out about Brooke, and she wants to take care of her. Despite this, Fae still sees herself as plain.
Fae is extremely modest. Her personality is outstanding, but she doesn’t think she’s anything special. When Brooke tells her that she’s a witch, Fae says, “I was the very definition of plain, and having a friend being anything but makes my monotony ever more prominent…It also made me wonder why someone as magnificent as her would ever want to be friends with someone like me.” All of Fae’s traits add up to make an interesting character, which in turn, makes the story interesting.
by maddiedrdg0910 on March 4, 2010 at 4:29 pm · Filed under English
I didn’t live in the 1600’s. I’m 13, a minor, and not even in high school yet. I’m not that old. I live in the 21st century, so naturally, I don’t know much about a time period as old as that. What’s even harder is that I have to make my story look like I lived in that time period, let alone knew about it. I have to create dialog, facts, setting, and a story line that make it seem as true to the 1600’s as possible. Writers agree that small details about characters and setting and be careful about dialog, which is pretty hard. But, with the help of some articles by Elizabeth Crook and Alisa Libby, writing historical fiction can be made a lot easier than it seems. They’ll save you the trouble and stress over trying to create a story from a time period you were born hundreds of years after. And researching information can make you feel like you’re drowning in text. Think of these pieces as your life rafts.
One major thing that makes all the difference in your historical fiction writing is paying attention to small details. In “Seven Rules for Writing Historical Fiction”, Elizabeth Crook says, “It is not enough to say a character walked down the street. The reader has to be able to see the street, see the conveyances; he has to smell the smoke from the factories or the sewage in the gutter.” She says to, “Sweat the small stuff”. Writing in a descriptive form really puts the reader into a sense of mind that will allow them to see exactly what it was like back then. In my story, Fae mentioned that Brooke was sitting off the side of the road. However, Ididn’t just leave it at that. I explained that the road was pale and dirt, and that she was knitting. You usually don’t see girls sitting on the side of roads knitting today. Also, in the places most people live today, it would be a busy, pollouted, paved over two-way street. However, trying to shove every pieces of information you get into one paragraphs will send your readers int0 shock. So sprinkle little details evenly over your story. Paying attention to detail isn’t the only thing that makes for good historical fiction wirting, though.
We all know that rambling on about everything makes people want to shut their brains off. Nicola Morgan says to make it thorough, but not over-done. In her piece, she says, “Give only as much detail as you need to paint your picture but do paint it richly.” The goal here is to give the readers a detailed sense of what’s going on, but don’t go off and write excessively. If there’s too many words, they become meaningless, and the reader will feel like you’re repeating yourself in a new set of words. Not too exciting. Elizabeth says to “draw him into the story with the richness of your story-telling, but don’t ever make him think he’s in a history lesson.” In my writing, I told how the they had a curfew bell, but I didn’t go on and on. When I described Brooke’s features, I made sure I did a thorough job, but I didn’t drone on. Historical fiction can be thrilling to read, or it can be painfull. With these few tips, you can make sure you write a historical fiction story to the best of your ability.
by maddiedrdg0910 on March 1, 2010 at 9:20 pm · Filed under English
Ever heard the expression “The elephant in the room”? It means that something important or big is there, but we all choose to ignore it; to pretend like it’s not there. Well there’s an elephant in the halls of our school. It’s how we treat each other. We all know we do it, and we all know it’s wrong. Well if we are told over and over again that we need to change our behavior, then why do we choose to ignore it? We all seem like ignorant, lazy people if we don’t even attempt to fix our behavior. Dr. Michael Fowler’s assembely was a wake up call for me. It opened my eyes to the way act towards eachother and the way we should act towards eachother, and how compltely different they are.
Dr. Michael Fowler’s assembly was extremely influencial. The reason that it impacted me so much was that it was so raw and true. He didn’t hold back at all. He approached our problems head-on and tied in his own personal struggles. However, the thing that I appreciated the most was the fact that he took on problems from at least six different perspectives. Each one of them had completley different personalities, situations, problems, and characteristics. He took on the roles of a six year old boy, a gay football player, a teenage girl, an “emo” young adult, and more. Despite their differences, they all had one thing in common; they had problems that were made worse and even caused by the people around them. Everything that Dr. Michael Fowler did was shocking, but in a good way.
Dr. Michael Fowler wasn’t afraid to accuse us of what we all know we do, and for me, it just made it that more shocking. Every other assembly or activity on this subject didn’t change me at all. It just repeated what we’ve all heard before. I especially liked how he compared us to different types of animals. It painted a picture in my mind, and frankly, was spot-on. When he compared us to zebras, it was almost funny how right he was. The other comparison I liked was the moth. The whole idea of constantly trying to find the light, no matter how much time you have, made me want to work harder in school and life in general. Another thing I liked was when he came right out and said that at least four people in the audience didn’t get told they were beautiful. It only instantly proved him right when he said that there were kids in this school that were dealing with hard times. Dr. Michael Fowler was the exactly the type of person I want to be. He was honest, bold, and used the pain and suffering he lived through to impact the lives of hundreds of people. That is the light I want to reach in my life.
by maddiedrdg0910 on February 9, 2010 at 7:49 pm · Filed under English
It’s impossible for everything in the world to be perfect. We’d all be walking around in a world that meant nothing. If perfection was so common, what would that leave for the rest of the things in the world? If everything was perfect, than nothing would be special or exponential. It would make really good works seem ordinary. Plain. Because we have things in life that could be worked upon, it leaves us room to appreciate what we’ve done good. In English class, some of my writing is good, and some was rushed through because of a time deprivation. Here’s some of my best and worst writing pieces that I think deserve mention.
The writing in general was thorough. I liked this because not onlywas the grabber really descriptive, but the personal example made the writing more interesting.
Worst Writing: Things Out of Your Control Can End Badly
This piece was probably so under-developed because I did it a long time ago. I hadn’t worked on my writing for a long time, and it almost looks like I just pumped this one out to get it over with.
Best Grabber: Supported Stages
The whole idea of it was really moving for me. It showed how fathers are there for you throughout all stages in your life, and I did it in an interesting way.
Worst Grabber: Feuds and Friends
This grabber was too short, and wasn’t creative at all. I stated things that everyone knows. It wasn’t in depth, and certainly not “grabbing”.
Best Idea: Sanctuary
This project was a struggle for me – but it turns out the result was great. It was more of a creative writing piece, which I love. I didn’t live through the Great Depression, but I tried my hardest to make it look vaguely like a journal entry from the time.
Worst Idea: Sacrifice+Persitance=Rewards
I’m not into sports. At all. So in turn, I don’t know a lot about any famous sports players. I had to ask my dad to help me think of one, so it wasn’t as heart felt as it could have been.
Best Similie/Metaphor: Good as Gold
I loved this metaphor. It was extremely descriptive and really made a good connection between two completley different things.
Worst Similie/Metaphor: There Should Be More to This Than Just a Pretty Face
A lot of people won’t see any logic in this, let alone like it. It seemed confusing and unrelatable.
Honorable Mentions:
90 Degree Water – I loved the grabber for this piece, but Supported Stages won me over. The writing throughout the piece was extremely descriptive. It was one of my best pieces.
Never Judge A Book By It’s Cover – I really liked how I played the factor of an old saying into my own life; like I did with Come Hell or High Water. Everyone can realte to it. I also liked my despcription of the books – It really lets you see into my mind, but I’m not exactly sure if that’s a good thing.
by maddiedrdg0910 on February 3, 2010 at 8:38 pm · Filed under Science
Your status influences your whole life. We are born into suits we can’t unzip. The material is too tight; but frankly it can be used as a shell. Sometimes we don’t like our statuses, but they can also have their advantages. Wegener was a meteorologist, which helped him and hurt him in his Pangaea theory.
Wegener’s classification as a meteorologist helped him to figure out his theory. He took a simple perpective because of what he knew, which wasn’t much. He mostly though of the continents as a puzzle, which made for a great theory. He matched up types of rocks, species, and the fact that one bump of a continent fit into a concave area of another. Any other geologist would have taken a complicated, challenging perspective. He would have thought about how most of things Wegener discovered were impossible or too far fetched. Not only did Wegener’s position help him, but it harmed him also.
The discovery part was easy. Getting people to hear him was the challenge. People wanted to brush off his new theory; cover their ears and pretend he was crazy. Maybe if he was a geologist, people would automatically believe him. They’d think, “Wow, since he studies this stuff he must be right.” Wegener didn’t get as much appreciation merely because of his status. This hurt him in getting his word out, but helped him in taking a different perspective on everything.
by maddiedrdg0910 on February 3, 2010 at 7:32 pm · Filed under English
Sacrifice is part of life. But so are great rewards. Naturally, life is hard. You have to do everything for yourself if you want to accomplish things. But unfortunately, sacrifice is usually along for the ride. If you want to get places and accomplish your goals, you must make sacrifice. One of the most rewarding and honorable goals is making the Olympics. It takes courage, responsibilty, awareness, and most of all: the power to make sacrifices.
Making the Olympics is an honor. Sure, everyone has a shot; but only if you have the self-power and are willing to make sacrifices. You need more than a killer body and strength as powerful as that of Mike Tyson. What’s on the inside accounts for a lot of what’s going on on the outside. Making the Olympics to me is like defying gravity. Its showing people that more can be done. That anyone can do what they want if they set their minds to it. One individual that really inspired me was Nancy Kerrigan.
The moment I heard about Nancy Kerrigan, it made my heart swell. She was an amazing athlete, but was attacked by her opponent’s hired help. They blew out her knee, leaving her unable to win – or so they thought. Nancy Kerrigan won the silver medal. She didn’t do anything wrong, she was just challenged. She overcame her obstacles and the result was amazing. This is why she is my most influencial role model. Making the Olympics is an extremely demanding, honorable task; and not everyone has what it takes.
by maddiedrdg0910 on February 3, 2010 at 3:27 pm · Filed under Science
Flex Assignment:
1.) I have to admit that in the beginning, Earth Science was pretty dry. It kind of bored me, mostly because we didn’t do any hands on projects. But as the year went on, our topics got more and more interesting. I’ve always wondered about the Earth and Solar System, and we learned all about this in class. I found out about what causes orbits and our solar system. Also, I wanted to know about galaxies and facts about our universe, which we also learned a lot about. This was all so interesting to me because I was always so curious about it.
2.) The most important thing I learned about this year was our solar system and what causes orbits. Before this class, I didn’t even know what inertia was. Over the course of about a few weeks, I learned everything I needed to know about orbits and our solar system.
by maddiedrdg0910 on February 3, 2010 at 12:00 pm · Filed under English
I personally love reading. It allows my mind to wander; it takes me away from reality and dumps me into plot of my book. I’ve read some life changing books, but I’ve also read some awful ones. Of course, this is only my opinion. Another kid might have thought that the very same book was the best one they ever read. So, if we both reviewed it, the results would be completley different. This is exactly what we did in English class; we reviewed the books we read.
Beastly by Alex Flinn is dark; defying. The cover portrayed something deeper than it was, something that I thought would be filled with pain and despair. Boy, was I wrong. It was too cliché; expected. It’s the same thing that always happens – boy is beautiful. Gets punished. Learns his lesson. Happy ending. – Maddie D
”The story “Staying fat for Sarah Bryne” by Cris Crutcher is a good book for young adults. I probably wouldn’t recommended this to children because of the behavior and language. Overall the book is a strange and entertaining story about relationships with your friends…even your foes.” – David S
“Twilight by:Stefenie Meyer is a romance book series. Bella and Edward are completely opposite. Edward is a vampire and Bella is human. Their love is forbidden due to their separate worlds, in this book you will find out what happens when their worlds collide.” – Haley K
“The lovely Bones by: Alice Sebold is dark and suspenseful. Once you read a chapter of this book, you can’t put it down. It’s a great novel describing how Susie Salmon gets killed and how their solving her murder. You think something would happen but it changes and makes you wonder what will happen next.” – Melissa A
“The Sight, by David Davies-Clements is a book about a wolf pack battling the powers of the Sight. The author does a magnificent job holding on to the reader through the story. This book is ideal for readers who love mysterious characters and an epic love story.” – Grace S.
by maddiedrdg0910 on January 26, 2010 at 5:41 pm · Filed under English
What would American Idol be without Simon? What would America’s Next Top Model be without Nigel? If we didn’t have commentary, how will we know what people are thinking of us? Judegment and comments are just one of life’s many things with downsides and brightsides.
Trying to figure out if something you’ve done is good or not when nobody says anything about it is pretty hard. Unless you’re a mind reader, you figuring out what people think of your writing is like a game of sherades. In English class, we commented on other people’s essays. Because of this process, we could find out what people liked in particular in our essays and what we could have done better.
All of my pieces recieved a variety of numbers of comments. Some got one, some got five, and some got none. There were a lot of different reasons for why this could have happened. Our blogs have long, stretched out pages with tons of writing assignments on them. I think some got more comments because the writing was good, but not perfect. This would leave opportunity for the commenter to leave tips and suggestions, along with a “job well done” for what they did right. Also, the three essays at the top of my page got the most comments. If my grabber was done right, it would have caught their attention and made them read on. That’s probably why my first essay got the most comments. One comment I recieved from Hailey said, “I loved your grabber and introduction paragraph for this post…it really caught my attention.” My earlier posts recieved either less or no comments because I did a good job on the ones before them. All my peices recieved different amounts of comments and for all different reasons.
by maddiedrdg0910 on January 26, 2010 at 4:41 pm · Filed under English
If people say to “never judge a book by its cover”, or “looks don’t matter”, then why does everyone stress so much over their looks? Girls spend 30 unnecessary, useless minutes in the mirror each morning just because they are so worried about what people will think of them. Some people don’t care about if you’re pretty or not but the majority of us judge people solely on what’s on the outside.
Everyone is way too focused on beauty. There’s beauty pagents, beauty schools, and beauty shows. Beauty effects our emotions, actions, and life in general. If people think you’re “beautiful”, it might go to your head and affect what you think of other people. If people don’t think you’re beautiful, it can affect how you see yourself and really change how you act around other people. It’s like our final round of judgement – after people have scrutinized our intelect and personality, the shape of our skin counts for most of the points. Although it shouldn’t, beauty plays a major role in how we see ourselves and others every day.
Aesthetics is all about beauty and our feelings. The definition for aesthetics is the study of the mind and emotions in relation to the sense of beauty. It’s a study of how we see everyone from the outside and how it effects our emotions and mind. What’s on the outside really shouldn’t affect whats on the inside as much as it does.
by maddiedrdg0910 on January 24, 2010 at 7:05 pm · Filed under English
Apart from evolution, humans are known for progress. If we didn’t make progress, we’d still be in dusty, crude animal skins writing on the walls. We successfully changed from horses and carts to high definition t.v. and credit cards. Everything we do gets better with time, from inventing a cure for cancer to learning how to write better. As a student, you progress from the moment your mom carried you into day care to the day you step out of your graduation ceremony. One of the places I progressed most in school was in English class.
When I first came into school, the thought of writing more than one paragraph at a time freaked me out. By now I’m writing up to six paragraphs a night. When a new idea or standard is introduced to us, our first instinct is to reject it. But as the standards get harder, it only makes the ones before that seem like nothing. Our Always and Forever rules keep getting harder, and at the same time keep making the ones before easier. On the first day of sixth grade, our homework was to write a letter about ourselves. Everyone freaked out, as if writing a page about yourselves is that hard. Now, being in eighth grade and writing at least three paragraphs in every assignment, it seems easy. Looking back on that first day almost makes me laugh. I have progressed a lot not only in English, but in school in general.
I think the fact that I had the same English teacher for sixth and eight grade was chosen by the gods. I started out writing so raw, like a blank, open slate. I had no idea what I was doing. At all. But I learned a lot over the years. In sixth grade, I learned the basics. In seventh, I learned new techniques. But eight grade was the year where I learned how to put myself in my writing. It was the most progressive year of them all. So far, we have written almost fifty assignments. In the beginning, I wrote plain, boring, safe essays. But over time, as we learned how to write better and learned new techniques, my writing has increased tenfold. However, there are still some things I need to work on. For instance, I tend to get off topic. That usually happens when I don’t have enough to write about. When I do have enough to write about, I carry on a lot and just repeat things in a different set of words. As everything else does, I will progress in my writing more and these flaws will be tweaked out. My whole life is a work in progress.
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