Portfolio

Dear Classmates,

            My writing portfolio is filled with the biggest things that I have written this year.  It contains my essay revision, my writing remix, and my hits and misses that I have chosen to do and why I have done them.  I have learned a lot about myself as a writer throughout the year and my strengths and weaknesses to my writing.  I feel as if I have grown as a writer and am now a better writer than I was when I first walked into the classroom in August. 

            I have written many  papers this year, but the one that I have chosen to revise is my literacy narrative, which was about why I love to read now and how I got started. It talks about what started my love for reading and writing and how it affected my life.  I felt like this paper was good, but it ended up getting a little bit off topic and it could have been organized better.  When I went to the writing center, I read it aloud and I saw some very obvious things that I should have caught earlier that I immediately fixed.  I also did some rearranging of my paragraphs that also really helped my paper.  I feel like it is much better now and the writing center was very helpful. 

            Aside from correcting that paper, I also chose to do my writing remix on it.  For my writing remix, I am going to do a painting.  I am going to paint a picture of the book fairy, who really helped begin my love for reading.  I chose to paint her because of two main reasons.  The first reason is that she really inspired my reading and helped me love it even more than most people my age did.  The second reason being because that is not something terribly complicated and I know that I can actually paint that!  I think that this will greatly show why I love reading so much (or part of the reason) and how it affected my life sense then.

            Most of my big papers were fairly good, but there are some that were really bad.  I have definitely had some obvious hits and some really obvious misses.  Some of my papers that were more hits were my Literary Analysis because I think that even though I got an 85 on it, I felt like I did a good job answering the question, even though I did get a little bit off topic and I needed to phrase some of the things that I said in a different way that made more sense.  My other hit was the final World War 2 paper that I wrote.  It was well worded, stayed on topic, and was well written in general.  There were still a few problems like every paper has, but overall, it was good.  The draft that came before that was HORRIBLE!!  It didn’t stay on topic, it was not formal, it sentence fluency was bad, the wording was bad, and just about everything else was not done well.  It took a while to figure this out, but once I did, I fixed it to make the final paper way better.  It turned out like a completely different paper!  Other than that, there were not other big misses.

            I have learned a lot about myself as a writer.  I have figured out what has worked for me and what does not work at all for me.  I have found out what types of writing I am better at and can turn into a better paper.  For example, I can write better on things that are more personal to me or have facts like World War 2 and the book fairy than I can on things that I have to analyze, like a poem or a short story.   I have also learned that it is very important not to plagiarize.  I have always known this, but it seemed to be emphasized more this year than it ever has sense 5^th grade.  I feel like this is very important and will be a crucial part of research that will help me throughout my writing life. 

            I feel like I am a pretty decent writer, but there are defiantly some things that I need to really work on.  For example, I really need to make sure that throughout my paper, I stay on topic the entire time.  I also need to strengthen my word choice for the more formal, research papers.  I think that this could strengthen my writing greatly.  I think that I am strong in the ideas part of it, meaning that I have ideas with evidence to support them, just every now and then I don’t stay with the same idea, I jump around.  I think that I have improved a lot and that I will continue to develop my writing skills throughout my time at episcopal. 

            I think that the three projects that I chose to do will be good because they all have obvious meaning and I know how to fix the things that I need to work on.  I think that I have learned a lot about myself as a writer this year, and I hope to continue to become a better one as I get older. 

            Your Friend,

                        Aimee Claire

For my writing remix, I chose to do a painting.  The painting that I did is directed towards a young audience.  I chose this type of audience because they would get the most out of it and be able to relate to it more than an adult audience.  In my origonal piece of writing, I was directing my paper towards a grown up audience.  Now the remix is directed towards an audience of children.
The painting is of the book fairy.  She would leave books under the pillows of one of my siblings every Sunday.  She had a significant role in my early reading life and how I developed as a reader.  I hope that as people see my painting, they will realize how lucky they are to have a good reading upbringing and they will continue to love reading and experience new genres.  The purpose of my origonal paper was to inform people of how I started reading and why I love it so much.  Now, the purpose is to encourage people to learn to love reading and continue to read throughout their lives.
The attitude of my painting is fun.  It is not meant to be some serious, boring painting that nobody will get anything out of.  It is meant to be fun to look at and to show people how much reading has an impact in your entire life.
I took a non fiction paper and turned it into a fantasy painting that was of a fairy.  This greatly affected the way people looked at my reading story because it was a new and entertaining way to think about it. Originally, my paper was not meant to entertain anybody, just to inform them on how I started reading and how that affected my life.  Now, the painting is meant to entertain people and encouraged them to read more.  I hope that it also shows them what an important role reading have in the lives of everyone.

The poem on the side says:

You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels
and coffers of gold.
Richer than you
I will always be-
I had a mother who read to me

by Strickland Gillilan

Learning to Love Reading

My favorite memory about reading is the Book Fairy.  For as long as I can remember, she came every Sunday night before we went to bed and left a book under one of our pillows.  After our baths, we would all race to our rooms to look under our pillows and see who got the book.  We would all climb in bed together and Mom would read the book to us.  This was the highlight of our week!  The Book Fairy did other things too.  She would always leave books for us for our birthdays, and at Christmas time, she would wrap a Christmas book every day in the month of December and put it under the Christmas tree for us to read before we went to bed.  Books were such a big part of my life, and all of these things really made reading such a happy activity for me.  I could hardly wait to learn to read on my own.

            I have always loved reading. I have been reading all of my life, and it is one of the best times of the day for me.  Even now, I read every night before I go to bed no matter how late I stay up doing homework and studying. It helps me unwind so that I can begin a fresh, new day the next day.   It is a great way to escape into a completely different world for a short time and to learn about other people. Reading has always been a part of my daily routine and special occasions in my family, and I believe that is why I love to read so much.

From the day I was born, my mom read to me every day.  Every day before our nap and every night before we went to sleep, my mom would rock Richard and me while she read to us.  We would always start with a fun book, and then the books would get calmer and calmer until it was time for us to go to sleep.  The last book we read every night was called Sleepytime Rhyme, and it was about mamas and babies going to sleep.  Books like Miss Spider’s Tea Party and Green Eggs and Ham helped me learn to count, my ABCs, and how to try new things. Books helped me get ready for my first day of school when I was 3.  My mom read The Kissing Hand to me the night before my first day, and it helped me understand that even though I wouldn’t be with my mom at school, we would still be in each other’s hearts, and she would be waiting for me when my day is over.  We still read that book the night before the first day of school every year!  I always get a special book for the first day of school and for the last day of school with a note written in it.

            My kindergarten teacher at St. James was Mrs. Spielman. She had a special little tree house in her classroom that her students could sit in to read.  It was my favorite place in the classroom, and I was in the tree house as much as I could be.  One day, she called my mom to see if I could be in an advanced reading group that would go with a special reading teacher every day.  I was so excited about it, until I realized that Richard wasn’t going to be in the group. Richie and I do everything together, so it was really weird not doing something with him.  The next day when it was time for reading, I went with about 4 other people to Mrs. Weinstein, the reading specialist.  I remember the first time that I went into the classroom. I didn’t really know what to expect, so I was a little nervous. I specifically remember that the chair was cold. Mrs. Weinstein talked for a minute like all teachers do on the first day you do something, and then she handed us a book and we started reading.  It was a book about a dog, and it was really good.  I was finally learning to read real books all by myself!  We quickly moved to small chapter books, and then to larger ones.  We would practice reading, but we would also do lessons that had to do with the plot of the book.   That ended up being my favorite part of the day all the way through second grade. Then the bell would ring and it would be time to go back to our regular class.  That was the only part of the class that I didn’t like.  When I’m in the middle of a good book, I don’t like to have to stop, and we usually had to stop right at a cliffhanger!   We read so many good books that other people in my grade didn’t get to read.  One reason I think this class was so important to me was that Mrs. Weinstein taught me lots of things about reading, like how to use context clues to figure out what something means if I don’t understand it, how to use descriptions to form pictures in my mind, and how to find clues in the book to show me when and where something is happening.  But the most important thing she taught me was how to enjoy what I was reading without just deciphering the words.  That allowed me to get so into books that I felt like I was a part of the story.

I often wonder why many of my friends don’t like to read as much as I do.  When I think back on all of the happy memories I have about books and reading, I know that I was really lucky to be exposed to books in that way.

Hits and Misses:

Hits:

·      Literary Analysis: I felt like I did a good job answering the question and I really enjoyed writing down all my memories of my favorite books and reading them with my family.

·      FINAL World War 2 paper (research paper): Well worded, stayed on topic, and well written. I enjoyed learning about all the things that World War 2 effected that I did not know about

·      Literary Narrative: Good word choice, stayed on topic, answered question well.   I liked writing about the short story.  I felt like I learned a lot about short stories and look at them in a completely new way now. 

Misses:

·      The first (turned in draft) World War 2 paper: didn’t stay on topic, not formal enough, bad sentence fluency, bad word choice, bad formatting.  I had the facts right, but the way I worded them and the way I cited the information was completely wrong.

·      The Blog post where we had to be a character from Nervous Conditions: I think that I didn’t really do a good job on this post.  I missed the main point of it and I did not write it very well.  I felt like this didn’t help me at all in terms of understanding the book. 

Not very many misses- I really enjoyed what I wrote about throughout the year and made good grades on all my major writing pieces.  

Reading Details

Cover Letter Draft 1:
1 hour

Looking at partner's cover letter:
30 minutes

Science Project websites:
2 hours

Family Crest Ring

There is nothing that I want more than anything else in the world, because I already have everything I could ever really want or need.  The only thing that I remotely want is a ring that has the Weaver family crest on it.  My mom is a Weaver and I really like the family crest.  I want it because I really love my family and it would be a constant reminder of all the people that I love and I will have it with me forever.

I would not to anything to get this ring.  I would do simple things though.  I might raise money so that I could buy it myself, but I would rather it come from my grandmother so that it has more meaning and value to me.  I could help her clean up her entire house, clean up my house, or something simple that is not dangerous or anything that I might damage in some way.  I would not do anything for it because I would think of my family often anyways, but it would be nice to have a physical object that I can hold that could remind me of my grandparents, my mom, my aunt, my siblings, and the rest of my family because I love them all very much.

Reading:

I have started studying for the AP world history exam that is coming up kindof soon.  I've been reading the AP Prep book to help me prepare.

Kaplan AP World History
116 pages- at least 5 hours (annotating and combining notes too) 

Calloway Gardens

Twelve hours in sitting in the car
I finally get out and look up to see the stars.
I look at my brother,
His face facing away from me
looking at our cottage.
We are all excited.

We walk towards the chapel,
standing in the middle of the forest.
The boys have made toys out of sticks
and are sword fighting with them.
Suddenly, we stand stunned
by the beauty of the chapel.

We walk off the path towards the creek.
My brothers seek something to climb on
They crossed the creek quickly on the log.
We all got wet.

I remember this trip really well.
We all had a swell time,
and can't wait to go back again soon.

Assonance
Alliteration
Sibilance