My world! :)

In English class we are still reading “The Giver” and it is getting very interesting. And now in the book Jonas the main charecter is 12 years old and at that age in this book they tell you what your job you will be when you grow up, so the teacher told us to write what we wanted to be in the future, when we grow up. Me in the future I would like to be:

I LOVE fashion and I think I am a very creative person and well I love clothes and I just think that fashion is the best way of expressing who you are. When I grow up I want to be doing something about fashion or design. Like interior design or be a fashion designer.

It’s show time. Everybody is nervous and excited. Pink, blue, red myriads of colors surround the woman as she steps on the shiny red carpet in the spacious streets of LA. That woman is the one and only Lady Gaga and she has a new outfit to show the world. It’s a monster outfit, covered with gold, and really creative. This outfit has something spooky and interesting to tell us; it has a meaning.  Throughout the years Lady Gaga has been famous for her wild singing skills and how she acts outrageously during her shows, but she also has been famous because of her great funky clothes. She is constantly wearing attractive colors to get people’s attention. Some of the colors are hot colors like lava-red, yolk-orange and sunshine-yellow. All these colors cover up Lady Gaga’s outfits as she wears them in her shows. She wears them because she wants to shock people and make them think. She dresses up as a different person so people can see that everybody is different. She is trying to tell us that she dresses weirdly. She uses lots of colors together because it is her way of dressing. Her style of her way of saying everybody is different. For example one time she was wearing an outstanding outfit covered with green puppet frogs. Some of the puppets were dead and some were alive. All the frogs were settled from head to knees on her outfit. She was wearing this wired outfit because it was her way of saying that she doesn’t like to wear fur or dead animals. All of those green frogs symbolized the dead animals that people wear. The name of the outfit was “Kermit the frog outfit”. All of her outfits are weird because they all mean something.

Furthermore, she designs all of these wonderful and expressive designs herself.  Lady Gaga designs attractive outfits almost every day.  She hops out of her big extensive bed every morning and she will create her dream outfits. She calls Haus of Gaga and screams at her designers, that she has created a wonderful new outfit that she will show the world the next time she performs. Her outfits are strange and different because she wants to make a statement about an important fact in the world. She doesn’t design these scandalous clothes because she wants to stand out. She does it because she says that she is being herself, and being herself for her is being creative, unique, and different from other people.  I asked some of my class mates what they thought about Lady Gaga’s art designs. Most of them said that she is a really creative and unique person, and although she has crazy ideas her style is cool, funky, and mostly unique

Perched in front of a shiny mirror she is thinking about what type of hair style she is going to wear. Is it going to be a feral hat? Is it going to be sticking up? We are sure that it’s going to attract people’s attention. Then comes the colorful and exciting makeup. When she was Stefani Germanotta and she was singing in crowded smoking clubs at night her hair was brown. Good looking and cute but now that she is Lady Gaga she has decided to change her hair style. She changed it from brown to a blond wig that she always wears with her outfits. Depending on what outfit she is wearing she will wear different style of hair. Now that she has the wig on, she starts to add a simple hair bow that she sticks on her hair to make it look cool as if that was her authentic hair. She put it up like a porcupine when it’s frightened, or when you get electrocuted and your hair goes mental. She constantly wears different styles of hair. She puts colour streaks on her hair or crazy and funky other stuff. Beside her hair, makeup is important to her style. Before she was famous she didn’t care of what type of makeup she wore but now that she has become Lady Gaga she is totally different. She wears lots of extraordinary makeup that attract people’s attention. In her Just Dance video clip you could see on her face she was wearing this zigzag more like thunder and it was silver. That was what people talked about when they saw the zigzag on her face. All her makeup is colorful and her eye shadow is ponderous. She applies her own makeup and she is into it. I asked my class mates what they thought about her hair and her makeup and almost all of them said that her hair can sometimes be a bit strange and funky or it can be charming and great, and about her makeup they all think it’svery attractive.

This last term in English class we are going to read a book called “The Giver”. This story is about a kid called Jonas that lives in a perfect community with his family.

I think that this community is to perfect and it’s not right because at a certain age, Ex: at 12 they give you a job for when you grow up. And you can only have 2 children 1 girl 1 boy and the kids are not even yours! Apart from all this, this book is realy interesting and mysterious.

This lats term, in English class we are going to start a new novel called The Giver. The teacher gave us a survey to fill in about the book. And then we had to write a blog bost about one of the questions from the survey.

I chose this question: Overpopulation is such a problem that families should not be allowed to have more than two children.

Then I answerd: I disagree because I think that families can have as many children as they want but they just have to know that they have to take care of them at all times. But I also agree because if you have to many children you spend more money on them by clothes, food…

Theses last weeks we have been focusing on voice and word choice from our six plan rubric.

First we did voice. We started by writing about our self in class for about 20 minutes. Afterwards we highlighted the main words that described our self. Some of the words that I highlighted where: kind, funny, dance, draw and sing.

So the class could understand more about voice we decided to make a sentence where it defined voice. It was: Voice is what it makes you unique, everyone has one, but not everyone can express it. It is what you want it to be, you can change it. It is what you need when you are stuck; it helps you live your life.

Later on that week we wrote a same story using different voices.

After voice we did word choice they are both similar. We added adjectives to our writing and also synonyms. Synonyms are the words that have the same or similar meaning. If we put synonyms in our writing we will get the reader to have more interest in the story. After in word choice we defined:

Verbs= action, words, e.g. run, sing, dance, jump…

Nouns= people, places, things, ideas and states of being.

Adjectives= words, colors and numbers that describe a noun.

Adverbs= words that describe a verb, they normally end in “ly” like: quickly or happily.

This week we have been focusing on organization from our six plan rubric. This is what we did:

In a fact chart we had to put our three topic sentences from each of our paragraphs. I wrote: Style through clothes, style through hair and makeup and the use of colours.

Then we had to write some facts about each topic. I wrote: big clothes, funky hair.  When we had our facts for each one, we wrote questions down that we wanted to know about our topic. Like: why does she wear wired clothes?

I made my own survey because I wanted some of my class mates’ thoughts about my topic. And I asked questions like: who does her makeup and hair?

Lastly we did transitions to make the sentences be more interesting to the reader. Transitions are all the connections and links when you write. We had to put transitions in our paragraph. Some of the transitions that I wrote in my paragraph is: However, immediately, also.

Now that we have finished organization we are going to start with the next one, voice.

This term in English class we are going to write a magazine article. In class we have been learning the six plan rubric. And this week we are starting to focus on the first one, the first one is IDEAS. These are the following steps that we did.

First we had to pick a main idea, mine was fashion, but fashion is a big topic so we had to narrow it down, and now I am doing Lady Gaga’s fashion. After choosing our idea, we had to make some notes and we came up with things that we are going to talk about.

Big outfits, weird clothes, hair style, colors, makeup.

Then we put them into three groups:

Style through clothes, style through hair and makeup, use of colors.

Then from all these words we did the topic sentence.

Hot colors, big bows, funky hair style and lots of makeup, Lady Gaga never gives up on her fashion.

Through out this work I learned that all types of Ideas are big and you can always narrow them down to have a better idea and the reader will know what you are talking about.

In the past few weeks in English class we were reading a book called Esperanza Rising.

In our final assessment for the book there were four questions and am going to talk to you about question number one. And the question says:

Develop and adapt active reading skills and strategies:

 In class they gave us all these strategies we could use:

Ask Questions

Making Connections

Summarize

Predict

Clarify

Visualize

And in the question it says that you have to pick one of these strategies and the one that helped me to understand better the book was making Connections.

I chose this one because first Esperanza in the book was rich and then she was not rich anymore and now she had to wash, sweep the floor and cook and of course she never did this before. I made connections with the book and with Esperanza because one day we did an activity that we had to do the same things that Esperanza had to do so we did three groups one was washing and rinsing the clothes another group was sweeping the dirty floors and the other group was cooking tortillas. And when we all finished we felt like if it was really us in the book. And this helped me to understand the hard work Esperanza and the other ones and how much is done and how tiring it gets.

We used this strategy making the chores that we did, we also made connections on the blog were we said how we felt after doing all those chores, in the wiki asking questions and in class discussions.

Making connections changed over time because when we started the book I didn’t make lots of connections but then I got more in the book so I started to do more connections and at the end I didn’t do lots of connections.

Next time at the end of each chapter I might do a connection with what the chapter was about, and then I would connect it with something in my family.

A strategy that I didn’t use, and that I would like to do next time is summarize so what I could do in the next novel that we are going to and I am going to write a summarize of each chapter that we read and I am also going to describe in a summarize each character.

Understand and respond to ideas, viewpoints, themes and purposes in texts

I chose Esperanza’s view point because it changes a lot throughout the book. She changed a lot throughout the book because she was a rich person and she lived in a big ranch and her dad was the owner of a big field and had lots of fruits and vegetables, but since Esperanza’s dad died all her life changed, because when her dad died in those days men where the only people that could take care of the fields and so Esperanza’s mom couldn’t take care of the fields, so Esperanza’s uncle (Tio Luis) said that he could take care of the fields, but that meant that he had to marry Esperanza’s mom and she didn’t want to, so the uncle took care of the fields and Esperanza, her mom, Miguel, Alfonso, they all escaped from the uncle and so they went from Mexico to America (California) and they went there to work in the fields in San Joaquin, when they got there, Esperanza changed because she become from a rich girl to a worker girl so she wasn’t used to it, she had to do what the workers in her fields back in Mexico used to do, she had to sweep, clean and cook. And she changed a lot because of that.

I believe that you always change throughout your life and you can sometimes be rich but then something will happen to you and you become poor, or other things happen to you, and also throughout your life you also change your mind and you make different decisions and you start to believe in less things or more things.

Relate texts to the social, historical and cultural contexts in which they were written

I chose to find information about the Quinceañera:

In Latin American cultures, it’s a coming of age ceremony held on a girl’s fifteenth birthday; in America they do it as the Sweet Sixteen celebration. The term Quinceaños refers to the many other coming of age ceremonies, the Quinceaños is associated with the quinceañera becoming a lady. And during the celebration, the young lady dances with her father.

The Quince años ceremony came from French culture during the later part of the 1800s. In Mexico, this period of century is called Profriato, which is comparable to the Victorian era in Anglo-speaking countries. The Mexican president Porfirio Diaz brought this celebration to Mexican culture due to this admiration of French culture; this includes the Vals (European music) and the term Chamblean.

It begins with a religious ceremony in which the Quinceañera affirms her faith. It is customary for the Quinceañera to receive gifts that are religious in nature, such as a cross or a medal, a bible, rosary. The presentation of these gifts by her Padrinos and/or her family members, along with their blessing by the priest, often forms a part of the ceremony. The Quinceañera girl/woman carries a doll (representing the last doll of her childhood) intended to represents her childhood. The doll is dressed like the girl’s.

Father exchanges her flat shoes for heels after their dance together.

This helped me understand what she was talking about that she would have a big Quinceañera party and also I think that she recived a doll all the years in her birthday present and that is why when you do the quinceañera you have to bring a doll that you kept when you where smaller.
Analyze how writers’ use of linguistic and literary features shapes and influences meaning:

In the book Esperanza Rising there were lots of similes, and examples of personification.

And in this question it says that we have to choose one simile, one example of personification and one metaphor.

The example of personification that I chose is: The wind blew hard that night and the house moaned and whistled.

This personification means to me that the wind blew hard that night the house made lots of noise and was like telling Esperanza and her mother that there was lots of wind.

One of the similes that I chose is: “…picked up an almond still in its flattened pod. The soft and fuzzy outside hull looked like two hands pressed together, protecting something inside.” To me it means like they are holding hands in a way where they show love and that inside they are protecting something special. It also looks like a chest and inside there is gold, and also like two hands praying, or also like tulips.

The second simile is: “He wouldn’t be grinning like a proud rooster then.” It means to me that the uncle was a proud and an important person. And here is a picture of the uncle.

I like how these literary features make me understand, and make it more interesting to the novel because I like how they compare people with similes and it makes it funnier and stuff.

Today in History class we talked about important people and people that have power, so the teacher told every student an important person and what we had to do was, that we had to find information on the person that the teacher told us and I had to look for information of this lady called: Lady Jane Grey.

And this is all the information that I found about her.

Lady Jane Grey was a claimant to the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Ireland. She was the monarch of England for just over a week in 1553. She was executed on 12 February 1554. Popular history sometimes refers to Lady Jane as “The Nine Days’ Queen” or, less commonly, as “The Thirteen Days’ Queen”. Lady Jane had a reputation as one of the most learned women of her day.

Lady Jane Grey is a famous sidelight to British royal history. At age 15 she was married to Lord Guilford Dudley as part of a plot to control the English throne after the death of her cousin, the boy king Edward VI. On 10 July 1553, four days after Edward’s death, Lady Jane’s supporters proclaimed her to be Queen. It soon became clear that Edward’s half-sister Mary Tudor had far greater support, and after a “reign” of nine days Lady Jane Grey relinquished the crown. She and her husband were charged with high treason, and in 1554 they were beheaded.

Lady Jane Grey was powerful because she claimed the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Ireland and she only did it for 9 days and I think that is pretty awesome so that is why she is powerful.

 Today in class what we did was go out side and the teachers told us that we had to sweep all the dust on the play ground, we had to cook tortillas and we had to wash some clothes, and they said that this was the things that Esperanza had to do when she got to the united states.

1. How did you feel about this kind of work before you started? How have your feelings changed?

I felt excited that we where doing this activity because we where actually doing what Esperanza had to do in the united states and it is like if we where actually the people that where doing the job in the book so we did the jobs of sweeping, making tortillas and washing the clothes.

My feeling had change in the way I thought it was going to be easier but it was a bit hard and now I know how much work you have to do and who tiered you get.

2. What did you learn about yourself while doing this kind of work? Was it easy? Was it difficult?

I learned about my self that if I was Esperanza I could of done the same thing as her because I don’t do this a lot so I learned about my self that I’m never going to give up on anything.

I think it was difficult but at the same time easy, it was easy because I have done sweeping, cooking and washing many times and I already new it so it was easy, but it was also difficult because I was really tiered all the time because we had to sweep hard and wash hard, and these two things sweeping and washing I think it was the hardest because you had to do it correctly like scrubbing the soap out good and rinsing it… and the sweeping because you had to put it all in a big pile and then you picked it up and then the cooking I didn’t think it was really difficult because I cook a lot at home so I do it very quick and I am used to cook so I didn’t find it really hard.

3. How did you feel while doing this work? Did you enjoy it? Were you proud? Were you embarrassed? Why?

I felt tiered because of the sun and because all of the work that we had to do and staff.

I actually did enjoy it a lot because I had a lot of fun with our group and I think every one from our group enjoyed it because I don’t know how to say it but it was really fun I think, and also the teachers said that it was a fun activity.

I was proud of my self because we done all the work really good well almost all the work.

And I feel a bit embarrassed because while we where doing all these three activities there were some people well workers at the school looking at us an laughing because we did it really bad but I didn’t really care.

If you try and do it try and answer these questions.