Faith's English Blog

Today we read two articles about college student loans. I learnt one ways you can avoid student loans are by taking community college. If it is really necessary that you have to take a student loan, you should get one that you know you will be able to pay off so that you won't be in debt forever. Student loans affect graduates in many ways. It can prevent them from getting a house, take away from their paycheck, and more consequences. 

Today Mr. Rease was absent and assigned us work to do while he was gone. We completed excercises 1, 3, and 4 of Lesson 10 in this red vocabulary book and turned it in. A new word I learned today was immutable , which means unchangeable . To my surprise, it did not mean "something that can't be muted". But given the fact that it has the root word mut which is also in mutation , I see why immutable , means unchangeable ; it is because it is unable to be mut ated . 

Today we read two articles, analyzed them, and answered questions about them on a sheet of paper, which we turned in at the end of class. I finished my work a little bit before class ended. I remember one article was called "Get Ready For Robots On The Road" which was in support of driverless cars. And the other on was called "Putting the Brakes On Driverless Cars", which was not in support of driverless cars. On the topic of that, we learned that our teacher, Nr. Rease, owns a Tesla. We also learned that Tesla's prices can fluctuate from cheap to expensive throughout the year. In addition, I personally I think that whether driverless cars should be on the road is something I can't really pick a side on, because both articles had really good points.

Here is the draft of my poem since I did not get to finish it

Today we watched videos of tight rope acrobats performing tricks on the line. One of the acrobats grandfather died while performing and we saw the video of that event as well. Then we read a poem called "Constantly Seeking Abusurdity". In the poem, a tight rope acrobat was being equated to a poet taking risks when they are publishing their works. We answered questions about the poem on Illuminate, but since we were not able to finish them in the time frame left, we were limited to 5 questions and told them to turn them in. 

Today we did a 10 question test on Fences. It also had an 11th question we had to answer with a 3 paragraph constructed response. In my essay, I talked about how the title fits the play so well and had different literal meanings. In the play, the family was building a fences to protect their house, but each of the characters also had fences in their life they were building for their own reasons. For example, Rose was building a fence around her heart when she broke up with Troy so that he would not damage it anymore. 

Today we spent the entire class period working on our Fences Mini Project, which is due tomorrow. There were six options to do the project and the option I chose was to write a resume as if I was one of the characters in the story. The character I chose to do this for was Rose Lee Maxson. There were other options available but I knew I wasn't going to be able to do those well so I just chose the resume opetion. I'm almost done with Rose's resume and will turn it in by tomorrow morning.

 Today we were supposed to read a short story, but we didn't becsuse Ms. Cook was not there to read it with us. So today we wrote 15 sentences for 15 words from the vocabulary book and turned it in. One of the new and unfamiliar words I learned today was "germane". It is a verb used to describe something irrelevant to a subject or something along those lines. Sometimes I wonder if people actually use some of the words in this vocabulary book as part of their day to day speech.

I think that the play and it's characters were very interesting. The movie was pretty good because the actors were immersed in their roles and no scenes were left out. Someone who read the play before rhe movie could definitely follow through the course of events smoothly. Also, for some reason, Fences reminds me of the play "A Raisin in the Sun". I think this is because both plays are centric around black families who have issues and conflicts within them. 

Today we saw the first half of the fences movie, and answered the rest of the Illuminate questions while watching it. Surprisingly, the teacher was right about the lines in the play being the same as the lines in the movie, because that isn't something you usually see happen in films of literature. But something different in the film that I noticed is that the locations of the scenes changed. I thought they were outside the house the entire play, but in the movie, they went in and out of it, on the street, around the neighborhood, and other places. Also something I learned was that Troy is a morally ambiguous character because his thoughts and actions throughout the play make the audience question where his moral standing is. 

Today we read Fences Act 2 Scene 5. It was quite a long scene but the last of the entire play. The main character Troy, has died and his family members, along with his comrade Bono are attending his funeral. After we finished reading the play, we answered some discussion questions on Illuminate together as a class. Next week, we plan to watch the movie together as well. I'm actually looking forward to seeing it because I want to see if the actors will act out the scenes in the book differently from how I imagined it, or similarly.

In the book Fences, we read Act 2 Scenes 1-4. Troy confirms he was cheating on rose in a conversation with Bono. And six months later, the state of Troy's household is in shambles. He told Rose that he's cheating on her with another woman and Rose does not take that info well. Said woman Troy cheats on Rose with, Alberta, dies giving birth to the baby she had with him. Rose agrees to take care of the baby when Troy asks her to, but ends their relationship. And in Scene 4, it is revealed that the baby's name is Raynell. 

Yesterday I meant to say that we read scenes 2 and 3, not just 2. Today however, we read scene 4 and discovered many things, such as Troy's childhood backstory. It gave context behind why we went to jail, why he was absent in Lyons childhood and early teenhood, and why he is tough on his sons today. I could see a lot of missing pieces on his character start finding their match as I uncovered this info. In addition, our assignment was to make claims around these discoveries and provide textual evidence for them. I didn't get to finish it because the assignment got a bit difficult after we were told that we couldn't make claims about things we knew to be true. 

Today we started reading Act One - Scene Two of the book Fences. We were introduced to new characters in this scene: Cory and Gabriel. Cory is Troy and Rose's son, as well as Lyon's half brother. Gabriel is Troy's seven years younger brother. He has a metal plate in his head due to the fact he lost a part of his brain that was blown off while fighting WWII. In this scene, we learn that Troy isn't really fond of Cory's choice to play college football because he doesn't want his path to end up in rejection and failure like his did.

Today we started reading a book named fences and almost completed Act 1 - Scene 1. The characters we discovered so far are Troy, Bono, Rose, Alberta, Lyons, and Lucille. Troy and Rose are married, Bono is Troy's friend of many years, and Lyons is Troy's son from another marriage. Alberta is the lady Bono suspects Troy is cheating on his wife with, and Lucille is someone Bono probably lives with, or visits often, judging on how he mentioned about her in the story. I wonder if we will get to see more of Lucille in the story as we read it and what literal and metaphorical fences the book will be referring to. 

Today there was no school because it's a teacher's workday. I'm glad I don't have to go today so my exposure to pollen can be limited. At the moment, my allergies are so bad I can barely hear in both of my ears. For my AP US History class we were instructed to check in on a document and do the work for today on the March 10 slides. Yesterday I finally turned in my work for last month so hopefully my grade will go up when my teacher is done grading it.

Today we didn't learn anything in class today because we spent the whole period taking a benchmark. There were two texts in the test: Young Goodman by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and The Bill of Rights. I don't remember what happened in the first text. However I do remember that the second text talked about the first 5 amendments. After the test, I spent the time I had left in the class to do my homework and classwork for AP Us History. 

Today we read and analyzed a 8-line poem by Robert Frost, called "Nothing Gold Can Stay". It appears that this week we're going to be covering just Robert Frosts poems. What I learned from the poem was that the author was trying to say nothing good lasts forever. Most of the class agreed with that statement, however Ms. Cook said that she didn't. And Mr. Rease said that the fact that nothing good lasts forever is what makes life enjoyable.

Today we read and analyzed a 59 line poem called "Birches" by Robert Frost. It was about the author being reminded of his carefree life in his childhood when he saw birch trees in the forest, The time that the poem occurred in was never mentioned or explicitly given, but since it was said that a ice storm was what caused the trees to hang limp, we concluded that the time was around Winter. I learned him wanting to climb the tree was symbolizing him wanting to go back to his childhood. This was because he has various responsibilities in his adulthood that he doesn't want to deal with anymore. And my personal connection to this poem was that I related to how the author felt, even as a teenager. 

Today we read a poem called "Out Out" by Robert Frost. It was about a boy who bled to death after accidentally cutting off his hand with a saw. We analyzed, found the literary devices, made comments and a personal connection to the poem on a orange paper and turned it in to the teacher at the end of the class. My personal connection to the poem was that I injured my finger a while ago trying to open a half open can with my bare hands, knowing that I was unable to do something like that proficiently. I should have used the situation where I spilled hot tea on my self and received burn scars trying to get it from the microwave as a baby despite being told not to, but the other situation I described should fit as well. One of the themes I got from the poem was that "Life goes on for others when someone dies" Because when the boy died, it said "Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs."

Today we did the presentations for the rest of the groups. Then we continued to work on our quiz for the reading Ambush. While doing the quiz, I finally learned what the term for a story that happens inside a story was, though it wasn't what I expected. It's called a "frame story". I don't think it's fitting though because a frame is something that surrounds something. So how can a story that's being framed by another story be called a frame story? Shouldn't the story framing the story be called the "frame story"? It didn't make sense to me.

 Today in class we presented whatever assignment we were given based on the roles we were given from yesterday. My group went second and I presented first. I said my name, my role, which was the connector, and talked about my connection to the reading. In summary it was about my aunt who is also a US soldier but was drafted in the Iraq War and not the Vietnam War. And then my group member Nathaniel presented his illustration, as his role was the illustrator. Another one of our group members was supposed to present with us, but she didn't get to because she was not done with the assignment yet. Also, there was an internet outage at the school, so I had to wait until I got home to do my blog post and homework and instead of at school as I do most of the time.

Today we engaged in group activities where each group member had a role to complete for the entire class period. These roles my group members were the Illustrator, and another one I forgot. Though I do remember that she had to pick 6 key vocabulary words from the reading and describe something about them. I also remember what my role was: To be the Connector. Basically I had to write in at least two paragraphs what my connection to the reading was. I wrote that my connection to the reading (Ambush by Tim O'Brien) was that my auntie was in the military just like the author, but she is currently drafted or based (not sure which word to use) in Korea.