Quarter 3 Reflections

My biggest improvement in English Language Arts has has most likely been in my note taking and annotating skills. During this past quarter we read and annotated both Night and To Kill A Mockingbird, which consisted of a lot of learning about how to do it and when to do it. At the beginning of this quarter, I was awful at annotating and I didn’t do very much of it. I got some practice with Night, but the main one was To Kill A Mockingbird. By the time I was finished reading To Kill A Mockingbird, I had piles of post-it notes, full of annotations. This felt like a huge accomplishment for me, and I feel like I couldn’t have done it before. Now, I have found myself annotating my independent reading books outside of school. These annotating skills from this past quarter might last a lifetime.

I cannot think of anything specific that I am proud of from this past quarter but there are many small thing that I have accomplished last quarter. I have read and annotated To Kill A Mockingbird, which feels like an accomplishment to me because I heard about it being so difficult and I was nervous about doing it at first, but it turned out to not be too challenging. I also read my books for Battle of the Books, which is a bit of an accomplishment because it is something not everyone did. Nothing very big happened to me this quarter, I just focused on getting through it, trying my best and getting good grades. By next quarter, I will have completed the Battle of the Book competition. I will have done the talent show also. And, I will have also finished my 7th grade year at Heritage Middle School and I will be moving onto the 8th grade, which is somewhat an accomplishment.

The most challenging part of English Language Arts this quarter was probably socratic seminars. I tend to be a quiet person, especially in front of people, so the idea of speaking in front of the class isn’t appealing to me. The first socratic seminar I was not prepared for. I didn’t do the organizer for it and I barely had my thoughts together for it. I didn’t speak very much at all during that socratic seminar. The next one I did better in with the aspect of being prepared. But, even until the last socratic seminar, I couldn’t find the voice to speak. This challenge of speaking I still haven’t gotten through, but I plan to work on it. I will work on finding my voice and speaking more in front of people to truly prepare myself for the next socratic seminar.