my trip to the future

It worked!  The time machine worked.  I appear to be somewhere in North America, maybe New York, in the year 2500.  The first thing I noticed was that there are no roads.  Probably because there are no cars.  Everyone owns their own tiny airplane and they just fly where ever they need to go.  If you need to get somewhere fast you just hop on the bullet express train.  It travels from the east coast to the west coast in 30 minutes.  The wealthy simply teleport using weird metal boxes.

                Within minutes of my arrival a group came by and picked me up and said they had been expecting me for quite some time and that I was late.  I guess they knew I would be coming.  They gave me a tour of the city and told me what had happened in the last 500 years.  Then they congratulated me on being the first and only to successfully time travel because it was immediately outlawed after the experiment.  I am currently relaxing in a luxury suit chilling with the president, John J. J. Smith III.

writing center

My trip to the writing center was more helpful than I expected it to be.  They told me of a few editing mistakes I need to watch out for in the future.  They were helpful in their methods and they recorded everything we talked about so I did not forget.  I liked the idea of reading it out loud to find awkward sentences.  I think I will use that method from now on in my writing.

                They were kind and very helpful.  They helped me understand how to better word my quotes it was very helpful

scorched 3 hours over the weekend

LOTF. journal 30 minutes

reading times

1 hour reading Lord of the Flies Thursday and Friday
1 hour working on reading focus journal Friday

free post+ reading/work time

I am so happy to be reading Lord of the Flies.  I have herd about it many times an have thought about reading it but never got around to it.  it seems interesting so far.  I had not realized that it was about boys stuck on an island until the in class discussion.  I cant wait to get further into it.
i cant get over how mean the kids are to Piggy.  i feel that if they took his advice things would go a lot better for them.  at the same time i feel it was stupid of him to mention his old name at all.

reading and annotating lord of the flies 1 hour
fall of five 3 houres

prompt

write about your topic from lord of the flies.  what role has it played in the book so far.  how important has it been and how important might it become.


My topic is leadership.  it was highlighted in chapter one when the children chose a leader.  They choose Ralph as leader over Jack who seems to be a natural leader.  Ralph was chosen for being tall and good looking and for blowing the conch.  I feel as though Ralph is a fine leader because he is good at speaking and people look up to him.  i feel that he was a bad choice because he dose not think enough before he acts and that is highlighted at the end of chapter 2 when it is revealed that a child is lost before the end of the first day. I feel that in some ways Piggy would have been the best choice for leader if people would listen to him.  he is the smartest and the most logical.  i feel that leadership will become very important in future chapters.

a little bit of fiction

I woke up.  Where was I?  I did not recognize the birds chirping or the room I was in.  What happened last night?  All I could remember was going to bed in my bed in my room in my house.  I was not in any of the above now.  I might as well go outside and look around, it is morning after all, I thought.  I walk through the dark house I was in as quietly as I could as to not disturb the silence.  When I got out side I gasped.  I was not in New York anymore.  I might not even have been in the U.S.  I was surrounded by jungle like trees, tall and covered in vines.  I could hear something that sounded like monkeys somewhere.  I decided to continue even though I was freaking out.  People don’t just go to sleep in one place and wake up in another place.  What had happened last night?  Soon I came to a beach.  I decided to follow it and see where it led, maybe to a town or something.  After a while I noticed a set of footprints going the same direction I was.  Then I saw two sets of footprints.  After a while a sickening thought occurred to me.  I looked closer at the footprints and saw that they were a match.  Then I looked at my own footprints and saw that they were also a match.  I had been following my own footprints which meant I was stuck on some island in the middle of the ocean.

deserted island simulation

I think the simulation went well.  My only problem with it was that I think we should have assigned more people to take care of the first graders.  I think that the first graders would eventually get out of control.  Then we would have to spend time finding them and situating them.  Also, it would be hard to make them understand the situation.  I think we would have done well the first few days.  We assigned a leader and assigned certain jobs to certain people.  I think we should have assigned more people to finding food.  I think we managed a way to make sure that people were hers and that leadership was managed very well.  I think people would have been a lot more scared and uncertain if this rely happened but I think we would have worked it out.  I think we should have explored the island a little bit more so we could get to know our surroundings.  I think we should have focused more on finding shelter so we would have a place to sleep and store food so animals and other things could not get to it.  All in all I think we did well with planning how to get situated on the island.  

reading and working time

4 hours working on literacy analysis

15 minutes reading LOTF at home

work times

1 hour reading short stories
1 hour writing literacy analisis

reading times

2 hours reading the house of Hades on monday and tuesday

my short story

i enjoyed writing the short story.  it was especially heightened after reading so many short stories in class.  i thought it was interesting to try to come up with a story.  i kept having new ideas spring into my mind while i was writing the story.  it was like my mind kept jumping ahead to the next part of the story while my hands were still writing a earlier part.
one down side to reading all the short stories was that every idea i had, was way too similar to a story we read in class.  It was like my mind had examples that it could not move away from.  it was all very agrivating and yet fun at the same time.

story response

i thought that the sniper was the intimate irony story.  the sniper is engaged in a fight with this guy for like five minutes.  he tricks and kills him and later discovers that he is his brother.  I think this story was fun to read and it was an interesting story.  honestly i sort of expected it from the moment he  said he wanted to know who he killed.
the occurrence at owl's creek bridge was interesting too.  i find it interesting that the final part of the story is all a hallucination before death.  i think it was a realy exciting story with a dramatic resolution.

reading times

reading
and of clay are we created 30 minutes
the girls in their summer dresses 30 minutes
waltz of the fat man 30 minutes
30 minutes reading in class life of Pi
total 120 minutes

story plot

Exposition

                Character:

                                Mikel

                                Mikel’s mother

               

                                Mikel has a job at the age of seventeen and all the money he makes goes towards helping his mother pay for the apartment.

                                Mikel gets in a fight with his boss over breaks.

Mikel gets angry at his boss and refuses to go back to work so he gets fired.

Mikel realizes his mother will have to sell their house.

story response

The story Harrison Burgeron was really silly in my opinion.  I feel like it should have been more serious talking about the topic it was talking about.  Instead, it was silly like when Georg said you can say that again and Hazel says it again.  The emperor thing just popped out of nowhere and I got really confused.  It seemed silly to me how they were jumping all over the place.

I think A&P was creepy.  I don’t understand why Sammy quit for the girls.  Like they would really notice in that situation.  I feel like Sammy acted very impulsively.  It just seemed creepy and silly.


reading life of PI in class 30 minutes
reading short stories 80 minutes
reading newspaper 15 minutes
total time 125 minutes

short story

“He must have missed his plane,” is the one thought that keeps recurring in my mind.  “He got held up at the airport and will be home tomorrow.  He may even get home before I wake up and we can play tomorrow morning”.  I keep forcing this thought through my mind because if I don’t the truth will dawn on me.  I know that if I allow my-self to dwell on the thought that he did not come home tonight, I will realize that he is not coming home.

I don’t know what my mother and I will do if he does not come home.  He makes all the money for the family.  He pays the rent, the bills, and buys all the other things we need.  If he does not come back, we will lose our house.  My mother can’t work, she has anxiety issues and is not educated.  I won’t even be able to get to school.  I will have to go to that terrible little public school down the road, I don’t think I could do that with the stories about that place.  “He must have missed the plane, Dad will be home tomorrow morning,” I hurriedly push through into mind as I fall asleep staring at the celling.

A&P

I thought that the short story A&P was extremely confusing.  There were a lot of spelling errors that I noticed.  There were some silly mistakes like the writer forgot a space or a comma.  They made the story very confusing and hard to read.  There were some confusing irrelevant parts. 

                The story was interesting even with the errors.  The thoughts that were going through Sammy’s head were fun to read about.  It is an abnormal occurrence to have girls walk into a grocery store in their bathing suits.  I understand Lengal’s reaction but think he was kind of harsh.  It was funny to me that Sammy quit on the abstract thought that the girls would thank him and think would thing he was a hero.  If he wanted them to be thankful, he should have said something when lengal was yelling at them.

I have read 30 minutes in class, and have spent 1.5 hours annotating short stories I spent 1 hour of free reading

blog response

i read Jacob’s vivid detail blog and thought it was amazing.  I love the way he used the vivid details.  I think I would be a much better writer if I could write like that.  He took an average moment of his week and turned 

it into a major event.  I felt like I was almost there.

It took me a few seconds to figure out what he was even talking about.  When I figured out he was talking about running on the Dupe Trail, I was amazed he could put that much detail into it. If any of you reading this have not read his post, I highly suggest you do.

http://englishunoblog.blogspot.com/2013/08/i-was-running-through-darkness-tripping.html

eBook

I think I would need another proofreading before my literacy narrative goes public.  I need someone else to look at it for spelling mistakes that I don’t catch.  I would also like to revise it one more time considering I have already noticed mistakes.

Over all I am very excited about the eBook.  I can’t wait to read everyone else’s story.  I saw some really good narratives and I would love to see some more.  I am also excited and nervous to have mine published.  I can’t wait for people to read it but I am nervous about criticism.

I am very excited about my literacy narrative.  I am extremely happy I was able to think of my topic.  It took a while and I got worried I would not come up with something.  I think this is a great topic that relates to my writing.

I wrote about my 4^th grade experience where I accidently wrote about a fight my dad and I had that morning.  I can’t wait to get further into this project.

work time
1 hour in class working on literacy narrative--1 hour reading on bus--30 minutes working on literacy narrative at home.

dialog

Carl: hi.

James: how you doing?

Fine.

How has your day been?

It has gone well.

What have you done?

I had an easy math test and rain canceled practice.

You did not wait for the rain to end?

No, too much lightning.  It was raining very heavily.

Really? Why didn’t I hear it?

Probably listening to music.

What makes you think that?

I am just guessing. See you later.

Will you?

independant reading

I am nearly finished with the book I am reading the rise of nine.  I have read one hour on it this week.  I watched the video for the other post for 20 minutes (I watch it twice).  Finally, I spent 40 minutes working on class work.

I like the book and cant wait to start the next book I will read.  the author is very good at describing battle scenes.

I watched the second video, this is water and thought this is not what I thought it would be based on the title.  instead it was all about thought and how you choose to see other people.  It mentioned the everyday life of a normal person to get us interested.  then, it goes into how we choose to see the events around us.

it states that everyone naturally thinks they are the center on the world and everyone else should do what they can to help your problems.  then the narrator says that we can choose to think about what has happened to others to make them the way they are.

crouded bus

One morning I was running late to the bus and when I got there the bus was packed full of people.  I was surprised because it is usually not crowded at all.  I made my way towards the back of the bus trying not to hit anyone with the things I was carrying.  

Then I had to look for a place to sit. I looked for a few seconds until I found one at the very back of the bus.  When I sat down I dropped my phone on the ground.  When I tried to pick it up my bag flipped over my head.  I put my bag on the seat next to me and then got my phone.  Then sat for the rest of the uneventful bus ride.

reading responce

   I am reading the Rise of Nine by Pittacus Lore.  I like the book and am reading it because I have read previous books in the series.  I have only read from page 164 to 303.  I read a hour and a half on Sunday. I spent 10 minutes reading in class and 20 minutes on Thursday. 

The main characters are a group of aliens hiding on earth from other aliens.  I choose this book before I choose a question so it is just fun reading.  As the book goes on you begin to realize that people have different approaches to problems.

the knife of never letting go

The knife of never letting go

One thing I noticed was about The Knife of Never Letting go is that the author spells what Todd says like he wants us to read it.  He writes the book so that Todd has an accent that we can read.  I think it was interesting and I had never noticed that in any other book before.  I like it because it helps to develop the character of Todd to the point of how he speaks and who an education in english is not taught on New Earth.

            I like the idea of giving characters a voice in writing and I think it would help develop a character and make the reader think about the character.  It helps he reader to know how a character was educated, where the character is from, and the life of the character.

the rise of nine- 2 hours Sunday

Adam

class expectations

I hope to try to stay on top of homework this school year.  I have herd the class is tough and the teacher is tough but I have managed to stay on top of it so far.  I hope that if I can stay focused then I can stay on top of the homework.  So far I like the class and the teacher.

 

 

Adam