Would To and Used To

A simple exercise last Tuesday tested our knowledge on a simple past tense difference, would to and used to. When I was doing the exercise, I didn't really understand the actual proper usage of used to and would to and the only way I determine whether I was correct was seeing if the sentence fitted.

After doing some research, I finally understood the difference between the two:

-"Used to" is used when you talk about a past state that does not happen anymore in the present

Example:

I used to work in a cactus farm two years ago until my accident happened

The "used to" in the sentence is acceptable because he is not working at the cactus farm in the present, so "used to" can be used


-"Would" can be used to talk about repeated past actions not past states

I would always go the pond Correct
I would stay in Georgia 4 months ago Wrong

-'Used" can also be used to talk about repeated past states


I used to live in Canada 3 years ago  Correct

Weekly Reflection 19/11/12-25/11/12

This week, we had a language session which we discussed collocations. Unfortunately, Miss Abena either didn't explain what a collocation was or I wasn't listening properly as I still don't know what a collocation is. We were given a worksheet where we had to match a noun with a given verb. This exercise seemed easy at first, but as the words we filled in I doubted whether my answers were correct as the remaining nouns didn't match the verb. I was also surprised to find that several collocations that I used to thought was right were actually wrong for example you can't "give someone a compliment" you can only "pay" and there were some which I presumed were wrong but was actually right for example, "cut a tooth"

Then came the second round of literature circle which went smoothly as last time. There was much talk about Madame, significance of the student's artwork, whether they were clones etc. We were able to keep track of this information via a shared Google Doc as it seems that these questions would aid us in examination preparation. I'm really satisfied with the group's overall effort and I know that with this dynamic effort we can give meaningful and insightful knowledge into our class study guide that we are currently creating Overall, Never Let Me Go was far better than I expected and it really showed to me that you should never judge a book by it's cover.

Later in the week, we analyzed a poem called Base Details. When I was analyzing the poem some stanza's in the poem gave away the what the entire poem was talking about in general. Basically, the author who is a solider imagines himself as a bad general and how he loathes the comfortable lifestyle that they live. I have learned through this activity that you should have some background knowledge on a poem beforehand, this allows us to read between the lines much more easily. Also, I have learned that there are just as equal interpretations of a poem. When we were doing the mat circle, I tend to easily shoot down opinions that contradict mine. I learn that analyze poetry is like looking at a piece of modern art, each person is entitled to their own opinions.

Overall, I feel that I have been successful in analyzing poetry this week. It's really quite interesting cracking the insides of a poem, revealing meanings and interpretations that give you that sense of awe and wonder.

Weekly Reflection 12/11/12-18/11/12

This week as we only had one English Class, we did quite a lot of individual and team assignments outside of class. This week, we began looking at our exam text, Never Let Me Go. At first glance, it seemed like a dull book, but after reading up to Chapter 4, the story has grown on me a bit and I'm interested to see where the story will develop.

During presentation time for our pre reading topic, disaster struck us all. Chua could not make it due to an eye infection and he had the actual presentation with him and what he left us with was a sloppy presentation that he made up in 10 minutes. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, we had no choice but to go impromptu. At the end of it all, we learned a lesson that we had to come prepared for any mishaps like this in the future.

This week, we began work on the study guide on Never Let Me Go that was planned last time. There was quite a lot of work ahead of us as we had to do various elements for our study guide.We were divided into lit circles and thankfully I got Brenon, Syahirah and Chua as teammates. Before we began working, we made a solemn "vow" to make sure that we all worked our hardest at any time. Then became the first session of many literature circles and unlike other groups we had a face to face discussion at the discussion room in the boarding house and I had to say I was quite pleased with the progress we've made so far. Everyone was very open minded and flexible and agreed to take on any task that we set as a group.

Hopefully during our second literature session, we can achieve the same kind of seamless discussion among group members either face to face or online.

Juxtaposition Essay Reflection

This week, we faced a particularly difficult task, which was to write an juxtaposition essay (which is basically comparing two things within the essay) I had some good ideas for this essay, but unfortunatly the chapter choice that Brenon and I wanted to pick was already taken and we got stuck with Chapter 8. There were quite a few challenges along the way to the completion of our essay.

- We were not able to find possible connections within the chapter and if we did we were not able to make a strong link between the two elements
-We didn't understand how to create a juxtaposition essay, we tried referring to other people's work but it didn't really help us understand how the essay would be completed

Although this task was particularly confusing and challenging, we were able to gain some new knowledge such as we currently roughly know how to create a juxtaposition essay and we have gained some knowledge on comparing and contrasting events to find their significance. For the completion of this task, we had to consult teacher, peers, online resources and offline resources. By working together with Miss Abena and with peers, we were able to get the support we needed to finish the essay.

In my opinion, I don't feel as if I have acutually achieved the success criteria as I am still in the dark about many things regarding to this lesson. If I am going to consider myself successful at this lesson, I would strongly suggest that another lesson be carried out on this topic to clarify and strengthen our understanding on the matter.

Interpreting Poetry For Dummies

Whenever I read a poem, I usually don't have much of a strategy. I would first look at the poem and obtain a rough idea on what the poem meant. Then I would usually read each line again and try to decipher the meaning of that particular line. I would usually read the poem about 3-5 times, each time trying to obtain the meaning further with each reading. On occasions when footnotes do appear, I would take the time to read it to help me further understand the meaning of difficult and old terms. I rarely use a dictionary when reading a poem, unless there is a word that is completely alien to me, then I would refer to the dictionary. Also, I will always read the poem in my head, never out loud because in my opinion, there really isn't much of a difference if you read it aloud or in your head. Furthermore, I do take notes on occasion when I am trying to decipher the meaning of a poem to help keep track of my idea. Lastly, I do encounter a few problems when reading poetry, for example on some poetry when the meaning is too encoded, I don't have the mentality to figure my way around, which leaves me slightly frustrated but I do feel that maybe after some practice on analyzing poetry, I can get around that obstacle when reading poetry.

This Week's Reflection (10/9)-(16/9)

This week was like any other week. We started the week off with an character analysis essay, as I have written a few before this, it was just a matter of brushing up some unused skills such as analysis skills and thinking and rationalizing skills. It was a bit of challenge at first reusing this skills after about a year or so but with some thought and practice, I came up with an essay that I was quite confident about.

After that, we did a poem called, "A Martian Sends A Postcard Home." A poem that's like a couple of riddles that were joined into a poem. I particularly enjoyed this day as we were more care free and not so serious about our work. We also took pictures of everyday objects at a different perspectives and made others try to guess them, some were kind of plain and some were kind of "dirty" :D We also made riddles that we had to make each others guess. I really wouldn't mind having these kind of activities again every once in a while, just to release all that stress we've been penting up after hours of essay writing, poem analyzing and novel discussions.

Creative Writing

84 of us line in a neat and orderly row. Some of us are white, some of us are black. There is no discrimination between the two as we band to sing to the gods who listen to us. We sing the voices of the dead and the living, a song of sadness or joy but alas as the curtains close, we only may stay silent in the shadow of our master as he receives his applause and kisses

This Week's Reflection (2/7-8/7)

This week, we started off with doing our commentaries with a activity where we had to match a section of commentary to the questions being careful to ensure each section was correct. In my opinion, it was a break from the norm and it helped give us an idea on how each section of the commentary should be structured and answered. After that, we began writing our commentaries which was quite a manageable task given that we had the questions to guide us through which I found to be highly useful.

Other than that matching activity, Miss Abena also read and showed us the children's book called The Gruffallo. Having the book read to me was quite an experience as books were rarely read to me but with Miss Abena's dramatic reading tone plus the animation that she showed us, it was quite an enjoyable week and just hopefully this reading session may happen again! 

This Week's Reflection (18/6-24/6)

Due to the fact that I was away on the IA trip, I was unable to post this till this point in time. This week, we worked on improving our essaies. In a pair with Syahirah, we worked together to recognized how well our structure of our essay was, Syahirah said that my essay's structure was ok and she couldn't find any major mistakes or flaws which was good but I had to get confirmation from Miss Abena first. We also did exercises on coherence and correlation went Miss Abena wasn't here, this exercise did help me understand how points in my essay were supposed to relate to each other, after checking my essay, I felt that the various supporting sentences supported the related topic setencenes but I could only be sure after checking with Miss Abena.

After completing a few exercises on how to write a good essay, I approached Miss Abena to write my essay and after some discussion with her, there were some major flaws in the essay. The major flaw that I thought was most critical that my essay was almost like an encyclopedia, I needed to interact with my reader more instead of spouting fact after fact. To improve this, I need to introduce my personal perspective to show that I have engagement with the essay.

Overall, my essay just requires some tweaking, but with some major improvements, I'll feel much more confident with my essay.

This Week's Reflection (7/5-13/5)

After what Miss Abena commented on how we did our reflections, it finally hit me that the reflection wasn't some place were we would say: "Oh I did this today, I thought it was good but I could us some improvement." It's about questioning and looking back upon your work as questioning why you did it? what have you learned from it? etc. So I will need to change how I am doing my reflections.

This week as me and Nazrel continued working on the project "Using Easybib and Evernote" I was quite frustrated with Nazrel as somehow I ended up doing most of the project while he sat there twiddling his thumbs, but eventually he did produce some good quality work after much nagging and pushing. We decided to finish up the voice recording at home and tidy up the presentation on Wednesday but Miss Abena postponed the presentation till Tuesday, so there might be time for extra improvements, I am quite happy with the Imovie I produced and I hope i can achieved the personal target on the rubric that I have set.

Also I've learned quite an interesting thing this week, Miss Abena showed us how to make our own Google site, It was almost overwhelming at first as this was my very first website, thoughts like How should I design the page? How should I organize it all? were rushing through my head. Google sites in my opinion are quite easy to set up, edit and manage, so it won't really be much of a hassle when it comes to looking back at what articles, pages or notes that I've put on the website when revison time comes around.

This week's reflection (30/4-6/5)

This week since there was a holiday, we didn't really do much in class. Firstly we did morphemes which were confusing to understand at first but eventually I got the concept that it was a word that coud be broken down into a smaller unit of word such as "re" which means to do again and "create" which is to make "recreate" means to make again. Then we did this activity that asked us to make notes on morphemes and recreate them in our on words, there were 10 marks in total and grammar, punctuation and spelling counted in them, This helped me improve my proofreading skills, I feel this activity is quite useful as it makes you double and triple check all the spelling grammer and punctuation, I wouldn't really mind if we had this activity again.


Also, we were assigned pair work and I was with Nazrel, our topic was how to use search engines effectively which was a pretty good topic, we decided to use Prezi as our medium for our presentation. In my opinion, I feel that the workload for this pair is quite one sided, so I require some way to encourage and motivate the pair as a whole to do what they should do and do it well. I perform best in individual work, because sometimes I feel that I place my expectation on how well people should produce their work and would sometimes get out of control and do all the work myself.But as the days progress I understand the value of working in a group, it helps ease the work process and fresh ideas and concepts can be introduced into the group. I still feel some unease when I work in a group but maybe I'm just stuck in my old ways.

I'm actually not very proud of anything I have done this week, as well there's wasn't really anything outstanding that I feel requires to to say, overall it was a good week, but nothing much to shout about. Although what do with some improvement this week is that I could possibly be using prompts and completing reflections on time, as this is the second time I've being called back to finish a poor reflection. Also, I feel that my group trust skills could use a bit of brushing up, I ned to tell myself that people are just as capable of producing top notch work and the sooner I adopt that mantra the better. How I would try to improve of those two problems are I would most likely give myself a constant remainder that reflections must be finished before the next monday, also with the group trust problem, I could give them a small task to do at first, and maybe grow on that if the work they produce is up to snuff.

This Week's Reflection (23/4-29/4)

This week, we did more upon heroes and we watched a few videos about stopping racism and discrimination that were cleverly presented like a Sims game, this brought new light to me about how how severe the problem is in the world and if we don't stop it soon enough, the problem will become overwhelming.

Also we did a web hunt on the My Hero website, which frankly speaking wasn't a good activity. I didn't really learn much from the activity, I would suggest maybe a better way to teach other people about the My Hero website. Also, we discussed about who we would write as a hero and very surprising most of the people in my class didn't have a hero, including me, I suppose not many people have inspired me in my life, after some consideration, I decided to write on either Amelia Earhart, Scott Joplin or Steven Spielberg, I'm quiet eager to do Scott Joplin as he is one of my favorite pianist, but i'm having some trouble to find some hero qualities in him.

So I am currently trying to find some resources on Scott Joplin , but I'm having a bit of trouble. My question is, becoming the King Of Ragtime as a black pianist while all the other famous pianist are white men in any form a hero's quality maybe with a bit of thought and consideration, I'll find out

Understanding Morphemes

Words are composed of morphemes; they are parts of words that can be broken down. When combined they make more complex words. For example, "create" means to make. It is a base word. "Re" is a prefix which means to do again. When combined, they form recreate which is to make again, other examples include redo or remake. Their origins are said to be from Greek or Latin.By understanding morphemes, we can understand more complicated words. If we focus on mastering morphology, we can improve our reading and writing skills and increase our vocabulary.

Reflection (Holocaust Memorial Day)

Today we watched five video about Holocaust Memorial Day, most of the videos were about cases of racism and discrimination. When I saw the video, I was slightly shocked that racism and discrimination was this severe in this world of ours, such as the video where the islamic woman was not allowed into a school just because she was wearing a veil and the black guy who was beaten to death just for being black. In my mind, I was still happy that some people such as that old woman who intervened when two girls were bullying a Jewish girl, if people don't intervene when racism around them happen, our world will be a dark and cruel place, as people think one race or religion is better or worst than another.

If the people acted differently in the video such as the principal allowing the Islamic woman to enter, the woman helping the boy who's father was arrested since he was a Jew, maybe they would have done a little more goodness into this world of ours. Racism in our world now, isn't a very tough problem to solve, is we just dimiss any speculation and low our barriers and embrace each religion as it's own, we can make this world a much better place for this generation and the next.

Reflection (My Birthday Heroes) (17/4/12)

Today, we discussed on the topic of heroes. At first, I presumed a hero was a person who did an act of justice, but after some exercises my definition changed into a much lengthy version where a hero is someone who not necessarily have a special skill or talent who perform a selfless act(s) towards other individuals and society without expecting a from or reward or payment. Personally after all of the activities I feel that a hero can be both famous and unsung, whether it's a valiant act or it's an everyday job that makes people's life easier, they are are all considered heroes. Comparing to the studied poem and song: "First They Came For The Jews" and 'Superman's Song" there are some connections between the definition and the meaning of both poem and song.

In the poem "First They Came For The Jews" after reading the poem I understood that a hero would not let those unjustly acts go unpunished, he/she try to solve the problem as best as they could and not just sit idly by while other's suffer. In the song "Superman's Song" it became clear that a hero's life may not necessarily be glamorous or famous, that heroes don't do it for the money or the fame, a true hero does it out of the intrest to help others in need and that is what I feel what a true hero really is. 

Meaning Of Song and Poem

Today, Miss Abena asked us to analyze two pieces of work. A poem called  First They Came For The Jews and a song called Superman Song.  Well firstly the poem is talking about one not speaking out to injustice, like in the stanza 'Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew." The person clearly knows it's wrong but makes no effort to stop or change the matter, then when trouble falls onto the person's shoulders as in the stanza"Then they came for me, and there was no one to left to speak for me", they was no one left but him so he could not say it wasn't his problem and had to bear the full weight of solving the problem all by himself.

The song Superman's Song, gives a clear distinction from idol to hero is talking about how sometimes, a hero's life may no be flashy or glamorous as everyone thinks by comparing Tarzan, who is very popular, a ladies man and has almost everything in his life, his life had no meaning or purpose, he basically just wasting his life away entertaining Jane and swinging from vine to vine. Superman on the other hand, was counted as a hero as he was never paid to fight the criminals, no one forced him to fight crime, he did it out of his own desire risking his life and limb for the safety of the citizens. 

My Birthday Hero (2)

People usually regard April 1st as a day of practical jokes and wild merriment, known as April Fools Day. But what not many people know that on this same day of laughter and merriment, Russian composer , pianist and conductor Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was born.  Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of romanticism in Russian classical music. 


When he was at the tender age of four his parents were amateur pianists, his mother decided to give he casual piano lessons but it was his grandfather, Arkady Alexandrovich Rachmaninoff, who brought Anna Ornatskaya, a teacher from Saint Petersburg, to teach the 9 year old Sergei in 1882. His parents arranged for him to live in the home of his piano teacher, the severe Nikolai Zverev. The young Rachmaninoff showed great skill in both piano and composition which he studied with Anton Arensky, and while still a student he wrote the one-act opera, Aleko, for which he was awarded a gold medal in composition. Through the following years, he produced many other compositions such as The Sleeping Beauty which won him yet another gold medal.


Of course, Rachmanioff's life wasn't all peachy keen, he suffered several setbacks after the death of his idol Tchaikovsky, criticism about his composition The First Symphony he then fell into a long deep depression that lasted three years. After an autosuggestive therapy which cured his writer's block he produced the symphony Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor Op. 18 which till today is the most popular and most frequently played concerto in the his repertoire. He moved to America but suffered homesickness, he produced a few more pieces there such as Symphony Dances.His last concert performed in the University Of Tennessee, He finally died on 28 March 1943, due to melanoma.


To me Rachmanioff was in certain cases considered a hero to me, even though he suffered a very deep depression, he still had the willpower to recover and continue producing wonderful compositions for the world to hear also even though he had received criticism for his First Symphony, he still was determined to produce more compositions, to prove to the world that he was a good composer and pianist. What we can learn from him is that failure is the mother of success, that we must have encountered failure before we can achieve success. 

My Birthday Hero (30/3/12)

On September 15th, I share the same birthday with famed historian cum novelist James Fenimore Cooper. He was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. He is best remembered as a novelist who wrote numerous sea-stories and the historical novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales,Among his most famous works is the romantic novel The Last Of The Mohicans often regarded as his masterpiece. Cooper was one of the most popular 19th-century American authors, and his work was admired greatly throughout the world. While on his death bed, the Austrian composer Franz Schubert wanted most to read more of Cooper's novels. Honere De Blaze, the French novelist and playwright, admired him greatly Cooper's stories have been translated into nearly all the languages of Europe and into some of those of Asia. When someone mentions the word hero, I think of someone who has done an great act of justice, but honestly, I don't really feel that a novelist and historian would be fit the description of a hero, although he has wrote many famous books, he hasn't really done anything to brand him as a hero, so James Fenimore Cooper is a renowned novelist and historian which I admire that I share a birthday with, he's not considered a hero in my viewpoint

Reflection Hunger Games (DD) (28/3/12)

Today, the literature circle was much better compared to last week, The literature circle this week has more interest and vigor compared to last week where it was lazy and no one was really doing anything. Today, mostly everyone contributed and we had a much better discussion compared to last week.

The standout group member was Victoria, as she made an excellent summary, but I felt it was a bit too long while Jack was the weakest lik, staying quiet throughout and I felt maybe he did his work just minutes before lesson time.

How can we increase group motivation? I feel that the lit circles are really dead, we needs some pep in our lit circles

The Hunger Games Lit Circles (23/3/12) (Vocab Enricher)

Role: Vocabulary Enricher

Story Title(s):__The Hunger Games____________________________ Date: 23.3.12  

• List five words whose meanings are unclear or confusing
• Write the sentence from the book which contains each word
• Look up the dictionary definition for each word

Read the word and the sentence and see if the other group members know the definition before you tell them.

Word	Sentence	Definition
1.primrose	Mother had just placed the primroses in the vase of flowers	A common European flower that is of a pale yellow colour that blooms in spring
2.mouser	The mouser had just caught two mice	An animal that catches mice, esp a cat
3.lynx	Bob and John fled when they saw an angry lynx	A wild cat with yellowish brown fur can be commonly found in North America and Eurasia
4.verve	Maria sings with much grace and verve	vigor and spirit or enthusiasm
5.tesserae	He gave a tesserae in exchange for the meat	A small block of glass, stone etc used in the construction of a mosaic tile. (Ancient Greece/Rome) A token made of wood or bone tablet

This Week's Reflection (19/3-25/3)

This week, we concentrated on literature essaies, this presented quite a challenge for me as I've said before that I've only written one literary essay and that was quite a while ago, I needed some guidance and support to help me start my essay, on the course of the essay, I struggled with a few key terms such as  thesis statement and topic sentences, but with some support from both Miss Abena and Miss Sandra I was able to grasp the terms much more easily.

Also the original question: "How does Boyne present friendship in the novel?" was a bit challenging as I couldn't really grasp the question well so I requested a change to an easier question. The process of writing the essay after the change in question went more smoothly and with some guidance and support from Miss Abena, the essay came out pretty well. My problem when it came into the essay was that when I looked at a point, I understood it had a deeper meaning but it was harder to explain on paper, so Miss Abena would always say how I can i support the claim that I'm making? What factual evidence can I provide? After some advice I was able to finish the essay and was quite pleased with the general positive reviews about the essay.

I feel that my problem requires better understanding of the novel I'm reading and with more practice essaies, I used to thought than getting an A for an essay was easy, now with all this new information that has been presented to me,  I will need more effort if I'm going to achieve a higher band.

This Week's Reflection (12/3-18/3)

This week, we started on a Literature Essay on the Boy In Striped Pyjamas on the novel question "How does Boyne present friendship in the novel." I struggled on this question quite a lot and I requested Miss Abena for a change in the question into "How does Boyne present violence and inhumanity in the novel?' although this question became much easier, I still struggled to understand about thesis statement, topic sentences but eventually after some explanation by Miss Abena and Sandra I got what they meant.

As this was my second literature essay, I needed some assistance within the process of writing the actual essay, I would always go to Miss Abena to ask for comments about my essay and I would always go back to my table with some problem with the essay. Literary essay's in government school and international schools are so different as in government schools literature essay are easy and the points in the novel are very explicit while here I would have to read and examine and analyses points to provide an answer


With some guidance and suport, I can achieve my target of writing a well written piece.

BISP Lit Essay (Intro and Opening) (13/3/12)

In the novel, The Boy In Striped Pajamas, there have been many cases of violence ad inhumanity between parties like the Jew prisoners and Nazi soldiers. Boyne presents this by the methods of writing he use to describe the treatment and of the Nazi soldiers towards the Jew prisoners.

There are three situations in the novel in where the violence and inhumanity between the Nazi’s and the Jews were most prominent. The relationship between the Jews and the Nazis in the concentration camps, the way which Bruno’s household member treat the Jews who work in the house and Shumuel’s past experiences and flashbacks and current situation also have the presence of violence and inhumanity.

Using Evidence/Quotes Effectively

LOOK IN ENG FILE- BISP NOVEL-USING QUOTES/EVIDENCE EFFECTIVELY

BISP Ending Prediction (22/2/12)

I feel that there are several possible endings for the characters in The Boy In Striped Pyjamas

Bruno
-He goes back to Berlin and leads a normal life
-He stays in Out-With and continues being a friend with Shumuel, but I think something will happen and the relationship will either end or continue
-He discovered the horros of the camp

Gretel
-She goes back to Berlin and leads a normal life
- She discovers the relationship that Bruno and Shumuel has and either tells other people or keeps it a secret

Mother
-She goes back to Berlin and leads a normal life
-She has an affar with Lieutenant Kolter

Father
-He continues working for the Nazi's
-He withdraws himself from the Nazi's

Maria
-Follows the family back to Berlin

Patel
-Presumely dies in the camp
-Continues working in Out-With

Kolter
-Goes to Switzerland to stay with his father
-Continues working in Out-With

After Chapter 18 Update:

I feel that Bruno would discover the horros of the camp when he and Shumuel look for his papa, or perhaps he might end up getting trapped in the camp and no one would know eher he went and he may end up as a Jewish prisoner and presumedly be trapped there for the rest of his life or dies. The rest of the characters remain the same.

After Chapter 19 Update:

Bruno and Shumuel accidentally entered the gas chamber when a gassing was taking place. Bruno and Shumuel  and the end pages is confimed dead due to the toxic gas that was released into the chamber. The rest of the characters remain the same.

Afer Chapter 20 Update

Several months later, they are still looking for Bruno and Mother and Gretel head back to Berlin. Father decides to go back to the scene were Bruno's clothes were found and found that the base of the fence was not properly attached, his mind came up with a horrifying conclusion that Bruno had wandered into the camp and died there. When I read this, I was shocked and a bit emotional that the main character a little boy of the Commandment who still had so much to offer, died in a Nazi gas chamber which gives a sense of irony

BISP Lit Circles Reflection (Illustrator) (21/2/12)

Today we did yet another lit circle on chapter 16 and 17 of the BISP novel. I think most of us were a bit tired today so today's lit circle we did not really discuss that much.

Starting with Nazrel, he did an OK job being a discussion director but basically slogged the group through task and didn't really live up to his role. Then Victoria was a good summarizer, she explained the story in a nutshell perfectly. Rui was also a good quote finder, explaining and elaborating the quotes well. I myself did a pretty good job today, and my illustrations caused some laughing and giggling due to its slapstick from of humour.

Overall, not a very good lit circle, could have been much better

BISP Lit Circle (Illustrator) (20/2/12)

Role: Insightful Illustrator
Story Title(s):__The Boy In Striped Pyjames
Date: ___20/2/12


Insightful Illustrator’s Role: -

• Vring an image related to the short story; it could be directly linked or something the story reminded you of – an emotion; an event; an idea…
• It can be:-

• a sketch
• a cartoon
• a stick figure scene
• a diagram
• an image from a magazine or the internet
• a mood board etc.

• It can be based on:-

• a character
• the setting
• an exciting part
• symbolism
• figurative language
• a twist or surprse
• a problem
• the theme etc.

• It must be detailed and show thought and effort
• Follow the instructions below when contributing to the discussion

My Drawings

Chapter 16: Back From The Dead

Chapter 16 (ii): The Border Difference

Chapter 17: Mother and Bruno's thoughts

This Week's Reflection (13/2-19/2)

This week we did many activities that involved the BISP novel, some activities included a drama and Literature Circles. I have learned many valuable skills such as improving listening skills, understanding how to effectively record grammar and useful tips on combating spelling errors. I feel that as the weeks grow further my understanding of how to master the English language has totally changed, back in government  English was so easy i barely glanced at my textbook, but now being thrown into this situation with the English level harder than I thought, I feel that English now must be taken seriously as a subject and I shouldn't underestimate it.

I am particularly impressed with my drama performance as I thought I had set my personal target too high but with a bit of hard work and effort I was able to achieve it, also I am happy that I was able of control and guide my drama group into performing a nice drama of Chapter 11. Some things that were a bit lackluster this week were my listening skills as I would get distracted during the Lit Circles and Rui had to snap me out of my daze a couple of times, I can correct this by ensuring that I maintain contact with the speaker at all times, to ensure I don't get lost along the way.

Overall a good week and I'm hoping that next week I can improve and learn additional new skills.