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

Reading

The Clockwork Princess is the third book in a series by Cassandra Claire.  It is about a girl and her life as a shadow hunter (sort of a shadowhunter).  The biggest and most interesting part of this book and the series that ties the whole thing together is the love triangle between Tessa, Will, and Jem.  It shows how love can help or hurt you.  

In the book, love plays a big part as to how the characters act.  Love influences how people act all over the world.  If someone cares for someone else or something else, they would protect them and try to make them happy.  If someone hated someone or something, they would not try to please them, or depending on how much they hated them, may try to hurt them.  Love and hate influence how we act and who we are with in our daily lives.  You would not hang out with someone who you dont like.  Both influence our lives everyday in everything we do.  

The Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Claire

358 pages; around 4 hours

Life is a Highway

Life is a highway is an upbeat song about how life and how it is the highway to heaven, including all the good and bad things that happen along the way.  It has a trochee pattern because it has a /-- type of two syllable metrical foot rather than the other type of two syllable metrical foot, an iamb.  This song is a trimeter, meaning that it has 3 feet per line.  These things are important because they help the listener be able to hear the rhythm of the song and that can help give to song something that words can't completely do.

The importance of the metrical feet is because they help tell a story inside a story or add something to the story that is being told throughout the song.  The metrical feet in Life is a Highway help have that fast paced feel that you would get while driving on a highway.  This is achieved by having the rhythm be fasted pace along with fast metrical feet.  The sound each syllable makes and when it makes it gives the feel of the highway. This helps get the feel of the song and the meaning across as well.

http://www.metrolyrics.com/life-is-a-highway-lyrics-rascal-flatts.html

Life is a Highway by Rascal Flatts

Re-written paper

The paper that I am going to rewrite is going to be the literary analysis.  I wrote about my history as a reader and how i have developed as a reader over time.  I think that this paper was good, but that it could be written even better.  I am going to correct my ideas mainly, and strengthen my word choice. I know that if I do this, my paper will become much better. 

In the comments on this paper, they were mainly focused on my ideas and how the paper name and assignment was not as focused on in my paper as it should have been.  I think that I had a lot of good things in my paper, just not the correct ones.  I am going to correct this by putting in the correct information that is actually required.  I am going to correct and strengthen my word choice by putting in more descriptive and words that are not so repetitive.  I know that by the time that I am done, my paper will be fully developed and much better than it originally was.  

Jane Goodall

I think that this book has some major plagiarism issues.  I think that it is extremely hard to not plagiarize  while looking directly at a source.  I feel like this is a sign that she is getting a little old to write books.  She is 78 and still writing, which is really amazing, but if she plagiarizes in her writing and doesn't notice it, she needs to rethink how she does things. I think that it would have been better for her if she had put less information about the plants that came from sources, because her sources were not cited correctly. I also think that her editor should have caught the mistakes that she made.

I think that Jane Goodall and her co-workers should fix this as soon as they possibly can.  I think they could do this very easily.  They should first start by removing all of the errors in her books and correcting them.  They should reprint the new correct copy and put it out to the public in place of the old one that had all of the mistakes.  I then think that she should then apologies to the public for the mistakes that she made.  I feel like this would show everyone that she really did care about her mistakes and would try not to make them again.

Reading Time:
City of Bones, City of Ashes, City of Glass, by Cassandra Claire (reread these for the discussion thing)
around 9 hours total

Nervous Conditions Thoughts

I think that Nervous Conditions should be included on next years syllabus.  I personally did not find the book in my "Best Books of All Time" list because it seemed like nothing interesting happened until the very last chapters.  I think that the main layout for how we worked with the book was good, although sometimes it was overwhelming at times.  If everything was balanced correctly, everything would go quite smoothly.

I think that it should be included next year because it answers the questions that we focus on during the year very well.  There were many examples as to how to answer the question thoroughly and answering the questions were extremely easy.  I think that this book represented the answer to the question that we have been asking all year the best.  I think that this is important for how we view the book and how we answer the questions.

I think that when you give them the options of choosing what they do, you should make sure they understand the purpose of all the assignments.  For the annotating assignment, you should make sure that the kids realize what the point of annotating is and how it is supposed to help you.  This can help people who do things like me not spend 4 hours on just the first C layer.  I think that this partially happened to me was because I did not completely understand the point of the annotations.  I just wrote down what was happening in the book.  After you explained to me the purpose of the annotations, they helped me more during the rest of the book.

I think that the way that we worked with Nervous Conditions was good because it gave us some choices in what we wanted to do and what we thought we could do the best in.  I think that the fact that there was some variety made things a little bit more interesting for us because in most classes, we don't get to make a playlist for every chapter we read. I liked the way that this was done and I hope to do it again at some point.


Time spent on A and B layers: 2 hours and a half total (includes movie and writing time periods)

Cake and Spankings on Birthdays

I am going to eat a piece of cake every single day this week.  I have it all planned out.  On Monday, it is my little sister, Abbe's birthday.  So naturally we would have a cake.  On Wednesday, it is Richard and my birthday, but out little brother, David, has a baseball game, so we are celebrating on Tuesday, so we will have another cake.  One Wednesday, I am going to bring a cake to Latin just to make sure that I have some cake every day this week.  On Thursday is Pie day.  In math, we have to make something that relates to pie day and bring it to class to eat.  I am going to make a cake, so when I eat it, I will be eating my piece of cake for Thursday.  On Friday, I am going to eat some leftover cake so that I can make sure that I finish the week that I planned for cake eating.  On Saturday, I am going to make a cake so that I can continue with my cookie eating.  On sunday, I still have to figure out when I am going to eat cake.  I might just have to eat left overs.  I don't want to eat a lot of cake, so the pieces that I eat will be really really really tiny.  

Every year on your birthday, my uncle gives you spankings.  They were always terrible.  On more than one occasion, they have been so hard that the sibling being spanked has cried.  Both of them were boys and they were not happy at all. But it has all been done in the spirit of fun, and everyone loves it unless they are the ones being spanked.  One year, we got my uncle a paddle to spank us with and we all signed it..except me, so I couldn't get spanked with it.  When I was 12, I made a contract that said that he could not spank us past 13.  That year, I wrestled with him so much that it took about 20 minutes for me to get all of my spankings and he got so hot that he had to take off his nice work shirt and only wear is pants and an undershirt.  He was actually sweating by the time that he was through with me.  He got Richard really fast.  This year, my dad and mom said that it is a good thing he doesn't spank me anymore because they don't think that he could actually catch me.  And even if he did, he wouldn't be able to hold on long enough to actually spank me.  It works out quite nicely for me.  Being the oldest of all the kids in our family, Richard and I get to watch everyone else suffer the spankings.  It is always a pleasure to watch! 

How Different Places effect me

There are different places that I go that affect me in some way.  The ones that probably have the most effect are my home, my school, and my church, and track practice.  These are the places that I spend the most time and so they would naturally have some effect.

My home is where I have grown up.  It is where I have always been for as long as I can remember.  My whole family lives on the same street, and they are often at my house.  They influence me and show me how to be responsible and teach me to be the best person that I can be.  My school is where I am encouraged to work hard and make good grades.  It is where all my friends are and the majority of my family goes there too, so it has a big influence on me.  Church influences me to worship God and live my life as pure as I can and to put others before myself.  This is something that has been taught to me sense I was little.  I am also greatly influenced at track practice.  Every practice, Coach Dupe and Coach Cole have a quote of the day and they always have a meaning.  Every quote is designed to teach us a life lesson that we can apply to make us better people.  They are both more interested in the people that we become rather than how good we are at track.  We are encouraged every day to work our hardest and put forth our best efforts in everything we do, which is something that I have always tried to apply in everything I do in life.  I have learned a lot from each of these places, and I love them all very much.

Nervous Conditions: 2 hours total with all C layer things

Nyasha

Hi.  My name is Nyasha. I am Tambu's cousin.  I am really excited about her coming to live with us.  It will be nice to have another girl in the house.  When she first walked in the door, she looked kind of overwhelmed, but she was trying to hide it.  I don't get why she was so amazed with everything.  We don't have that much.  But I guess she is not used to living in such a nice house sense her family is so poor.  I feel like she feels how I felt when I had to go to her house.  I was really scared.  I didn't remember any of her language, and I didn't remember any of her traditions.  I just felt kind of out of place.  Now she sees how I felt.  I wonder if she will be ok with my smoking? I hope she doesn't tell my parents.  They would KILL me!  

It will be nice to have another girl to talk to.  I can get very lonely sometimes.  I am also excited to have another friend.  I don't have very many at school, but at least I have my cousin.  I hope things can be fun and not all awkward between us.  She will hopefully learn our language quickly.  I hope nothing happens to her and she doesn't die like Nhamo.  That was horrible.  I feel so terrible for her and her family, but I don't know what to do about it.  Maybe things will be better this time around.  

Self Evaluation

I think that I did ok with the first C layer section.  On a scale of one to ten, I would give myself a 6 or 7.  I did a lot of it last minute, because I kept putting it off because I had other stuff due sooner in other classes.  This made it particularly hard the night before it was due.

When I do the next sections, I will not due the majority of it the night before.  I will spread it more out.  I will also not annotate as much.  I had started off annotating a lot, but it took soooo much time and so eventually, I had to make it so there were only two or three annotations per page so that I could actually finish annotating the chapters due.

 I was most satisfied with my vocabulary test, because I circled words that I could use throughout my annotating, so I felt like I was the most prepared and did the best job on those.  I felt like the point was for me to be more familiar with the words, and I feel like that I now am.  I was not very satisfied with my annotations, because I felt that at one point, I was just writing things so that I could be done.  I didn't feel like I got anything out of it.

Reading:
Nervous Conditions: In class: 40 minutes
Nervous Conditions: Not in class: 2.5 hours
Nervous Conditions: Time spent working on projects: 4 hours total

Reflection

I started off doing a lot of research on my topic.  I know a lot about World War 2, just not about the after effects of it on Germany.  After I found some information I thought that I could use in my paper, I started making an outline of what I wanted my paper to be like.  This part was very easy because while I was researching, I was thinking about what I wanted in my paper and where I wanted it.  After I had my outline, I started working on my paper.  This was the longest and hardest part for me.  Eventually, I finished my draft and turned it in.  I didn't look at it for 10 days, and then when I looked at it so I could make it my final copy, I realized just how bad it was.  I ended up going and finding more information and pretty much redoing the entire paper.  I made sure all the formating was correct and then turned it in.  I felt like the most helpful thing was Dr. D's comments.  After I realized how bad it was, I didn't really know where to start fixing everything.  I started with her comments and they helped tremendously.  I don't think anything should change in this assignment.  

I was told by my peers that my biggest problem was formatting.  I fixed that easily.  Dr. D told me that I got off topic and to fix that/  I did everything that they told me to do and it made my paper better.  

I think that my ideas are the strongest.  They are there throughout the entire paper and it is supported with a lot of facts.  I'm not really sure what the weakest part of my paper is.  It might be word choice because I didn't use any big words or interesting words.  I used more common words.  

There is nothing else that I want you to know about my paper.


I spent about 2.5-3 hours total this week working on it

Writing and Reading Times

Writing: 1 hour reviewing and correcting little things
Reading: 1.5 hours reading different books about Spain to prepare for trips
                               reading Nervous Conditions and annotating

Researching Times

Writing Draft: 1 hour
Outline: 1.5 hours
Research: 45 minutes

Research Project

My topic is about World War 2.  I am focusing on the end of the war and the aftereffects.  If I focused on the aftereffect of World War 2 for the whole world, then I would end up with and 200 page paper.  To avoid writing 200 pages on the after effects of World War 2, I decided to focus on one country.  I thought that any country would be interesting to study, but I thought that not many people think about what happened to Germany after World War 2.  I decided that it would be really interesting to study Germany.  I have always found World War 2 really interesting.  I have studied it many times, but never looking at Germany and what happened to it.  So far, the answer I have come up with has been that after World War 2, Germany had to re-build itself completely.  I have found a lot of information about how they had been split into 4 parts, and how a different country ruled each part.  I have read a lot about how they were left with nothing.  There was also a lot about how they were finically and economically declining rapidly.  I have never really thought about the way Germany was affects so this was really interesting to learn about.

My research topic is about World War 2.  I am focusing mainly on the aftermath of the War on Germany.  I was originally going to do the aftermath of World War 1 on Germany, but after some research, I found out that the main aftereffect of World War 1 on Germany was the start of World War 2.  I have always loved studying World War 2, but I have never looked at it in this way.  The main answer that I have found was that the aftermath of World War 2 on Germany was that Germany was left with almost nothing.  They were finically and economically dead.  Their people were all poor and had few possessions and were struggling to get food.  The country itself was split into 4 separate parts that were controlled by the 4 main powers on the Ally side.  The interesting thing about that was the berlin wall and how it affected the other parts of Germany.  I have never looked at Germany and what happened to it after World War 2, so this is really interesting for me to learn about.

Minutes:
1.5 hours on annotated bibliography- making sure I have everything required in them; finishing up the 10 annotations due; trying to fix the formatting (actually fixed it correctly in class)

1.5 hours doing research and finding good, reliable websites; going back and trying to find authors and publishers for some websites and determining if they are reliable

The Fellowship of the Ring: J.R.R. Tolkieng
52 pages; 1 hour

Finishing A Marathon

This weekend, I finished my first marathon.  I didn't even train for it, i just ran it.  It was really easy, but that was probably because I started at mile 22 of 26.  My friend's dad was running in it.  His name was Mr. Sergio.  He did it last year too.  The Louisiana Marathon goes right in front of my house.  All morning, every time that I walk out my front door, there are always people running by with police men at every section between the blocks.  They go past our house at around mile 11 and then the run some more and come back around at close to mile 22.  I ran with Mr. Sergio when he passed out house the second time.

I got to run to the end of the neighborhood, over the over pass, then all through downtown.  We talked about all sorts of things, which surprised me a lot because I figured that someone who had already run 22 miles wouldn't be in the mood to talk.  We talked about school, sports, and other marathons.  I told him about the disney marathon that my friend once ran in.  It is a marathon where they run throughout Disney World.  I don't know where they start, but I do know they run from Epcot all the way to the Magic Kingdom on the interstate.  They get to run through the parks, meet and take pictures with characters, and get to see all of Disney World from a different view that not many others do.  It is not a serious marathon like the boston marathon is.  I think that it would be fun to do the Disney Half Marathon one day with my family.  I had lots of fun running with Mr. Sergio and am glad that I finished my first marathon!

Work Minutes:

In English Class: 1.15 hours approx. finding information and doing annotated bibliography
In Social Studies Class: 1.15 hours finding sources and information
Out of Class: 1.5 hours approx. finding information
Annotated Bibliographies: 50 minutes

Research Update

So far, I have found basic facts about World War 2 and the basic aftereffects.  I have mainly been using google as a source.  When we first started, I was going to do the after effects of World War 1, but after I did some research, I figured that the biggest, and main after effect of World War 1 was the starting of World War 2.  I didn't think that I could write that much about the after effects of World War 1 and not go into Word War 2, but still have enough to write about and stay on topic.  So, I decided to change the after effect of World War 1 to the after effects of World War 2.  

At first, I didn't know enough about my topic to do a good search on the databases.  I was to broad and the searches came up with all types of World War 2 stuff.  It came up with things about the beginning of the war, how America got involved, how World War 1 was different, etc.  I decided that if I went on google and learned more about my topic, then it might be easier to do a more narrowed search in the databases.  I am still using google.  I find that it works better for me and that I don't have trouble finding information.  The databases don't always work for me, and I find better stuff that I can use in my papers on google.  I have found lots of stuff so far, and I hope that they will help me to write a good paper.