Final Blog post

This year in English particularly I have had a positive experience I have read a lot and personally sometimes it was overwhelming to have to read 2 books in one night. Hamlet for me personally was the book that I gravitated towards, it was a positive experience for me reading it all because it was not cut and dry it had substance. The idea of doing blog posts instead of formal essays I think was a huge bonus for me personally. It also allowed me to enjoy what I was reading rather than worry about having to read it just to spew out an essay at the end of the book. It was refreshing for once to have an English teacher change things up in a genuine way; I feel that a lot of English teachers just try to spew out their curriculum and not be genuine in teaching it and that was not the case this year. In recent years I definitely read more in school just because of school assigned books and that I do other things outside of school like listen to music and watch movies. especially senior year because of all the activities that we want to take part in. I did feel that i had a certain level of control senior year English because of the independent reading and things like that. We coukld have watched more movies.

Final Blog Post

Throughout the year, I was delighted about doing the independent reading because it helped me learn about my preferences of books. I was really able to explore and read as I pleased without feeling like I was being forced to actually read one. It was a nice leisure from any actual school work. In school, I have never really been a big fan of English classes because we are forced to read books that we barely understand half of the time. I did not mind writing essays because I like the see different perceptions about the book. Simply not the actual book.

The books I read influenced my experience in a positive way because it helped me find what I enjoy and what I consider a good read. I have always liked reading but never had the time to do so. I’ve been occupied with many difficult tasks this year so having free time was a challenge for me. Doing this once a week helped me actually read a book that made me feel all types of emotions. It was a positive distraction from the stress of school this year.

I have definitely read a lot more this year due to me being able to expand the horizon. I was introduced to many books, in school and out of school by friends. I was shown many lovely poetry books that i really adored. Those books really changed my perspective on the world and opened my mind. My writing experience has felt more real because it is truly coming from my opinion and not a specific topic or book. It was more raw in a way, there was not necessarily any point to hit or a standard to be held to. Most of the time I was able to construct my thoughts out onto paper. Also with editing, because you took the time to talk to us personally and helped me understand what aspects my writing was lacking.

This year i felt like I definitely had more control over what I learned this year. The past years there was a strict curriculum, and I really liked my teachers the past years but it was just very boring. You gave me many options despite there being a set curriculum. This year felt a lot easier than the other years. The work was a lot more manageable. One thing i enjoyed was the book club but not the final project. It was kind of hard to not do a set project on a book that was boring. But overall I enjoyed the book club. I thought you did really well and I would not change anything about your curriculum. It was very simple and easy to handle with the whole year. Thank you for making me enjoy English this year and not making it stressful.

English class 2017

Tamara Raad                                                                                                                            Mrs. Black

English Honors class 2017    

          This year in English class we have done a lot. From new independent reading books, to blog post, and out of the box projects based on our group readings. We've done a lot and its helped me think outside the box. This year what I've taken away from English class will help me when I go off to school in the fall. Although I've become bad with on time work, I still get it done. But I know that I can not do that for college and getting a push from Mrs.Black helps me actually stop being lazy and get my work done. I've taken away many things from our English class that I will continue to use, like my diction and how to focus on the important things and how to use it towards my advantage, like reading The Handmaids Tale, my group took away what the significance of the book. But most importantly we asked ourselves why did the author write this story? Then think about how the main character and her life relates to our present time. That is how we came up with our project.

Throughout our English class this year we've made a lot of decisions and ultimately many of them did make an influence on me. For example with the journals on Friday, I liked them because they allowed me to take a break from everything else and seeing how we have English first period and allowed me to start my Fridays calmly. But most of all I like that we got to pick what we want to read and then we just have the period to read and write. I personally found it relaxing and it made me actually want to read rather than be on my phone. Having to read actually made me read more then what I normally would have to because with all the books we had at once made it a bit confusing at one point because having to remember various main characters at one time and doing group reviews with them and then after a certain period of time going back to our independent reading books, did make it difficult but if it wasn't for this class I personally wouldn't have bothered to pick up a book.

This year I would have to say my writing improved because with all the practices I get in our English class and also having to constantly write essays in Spanish class using our everyday English class outlines it helps me improve my grammar and the way I choose to describe the topic. But thats why I feel yes and no I did get a choice over what I wanted to write about because ultimately I was writing how I felt and my thoughts but there would be somethings like, our blog posts, I felt that sometimes they were just repetitive because it the same book and the same questions we have to answer and it makes it boring to have to rewrite basically the same thing over again. But if it was on various books like our book club books and then our independent reading books then it would have made me want to do more rather than less.

I personally have to say for once in high school,  I actually had an English teacher that made me want to write because if I wasn't thrown essay after essay in my last three years I would bother to like writing but I didn't, so that was something I liked the most about English. But also this year with the independent reading books it gave me that push to want to read. But if I could change anything it would have been me procrastinating and just giving up this year but also the whole focusing more on some people rather than focus on the whole class as a whole would have been better. No it is not favoritism, more so the way the discussion and how the class room's  mood would shift when one person would just start going off because of how they feel. But I feel like if we could have had a better one on one conversation and rather than have a conversation only about an assignment and discuss how the periods going to go I would have liked that better. But overall I wouldn't have changed our English class at all because I have to say this English class has been the most fun class I could have and especially based on writing and literature. No other teacher has made me want to read and write and think outside the box. So, thank you for allowing me to find out I liked writing some things and for allowing me to grow and explore to find the skills I didn't know I had until this year.

Final English Reflection

  Isaiah Quinones
  5/11/17

1:  Having the freedom of choice when it comes to doing various projects in the class gave a great positive impact on my work. The freedom of choice made me more accountable for the quality of my work as it was my executive decision alone on what i was to be doing my project on and not an every day assignment that was forced upon me. I loved the push for giving us many options for our projects as i felt more of a drive to complete them with my best  effort as it was something i became much more passionate about. I felt more creative as well when doing a project that i was able to choose the topic on or the actual project its self when in comparison to the generic projects that were given in the past such as freshmen year.

2: I was surprised at the ability for me to genuinely enjoy reading this year. Through both the books we read in class and our Friday personal reading books, i found great pleasure in reading books this year. The most time i found to enjoy reading came with our personal reading book for Fridays as the work that went along with it was not very taxing and actually helped me to comprehend the book as i was forced to comprehend my reading furthering my understanding of the novels in which i read. I did not however enjoy the blog posts as they did feel slightly repetitive when i did not finish my book and ended up with two blog posts for one book.

3: I have read more this year then any time in years past. From the Friday reading books to the multitude of books we had read in class and even at some points simultaneously, I was able to find a lot of time to get to read this year. This year gave me a new found love to literature even going as far as my self reading at home on my own.

4:  I felt that my writing experiences this year were very authentic as i wrote to prompts that i have never really experienced in the past. The creative writing piece where i continued the story for Laughter in the Dark which was very adventurous and tested my writing skills. I felt that every writing piece this year challenged my skill to write in a different way which kept it fresh. The re visionary period also gave me sufficient time to understand where i could improve and reflect. The feedback was also very detailed allowing me to truly improve my work from one essay to the next.

5:  I felt very in control of my learning experience this year by really getting out what i put in this year. The projects that gave great variation along with many options to choose from gave each student in the class the ability to choose how they would experience senior English. Examples of this would include this project right now, the poetry projects, the final Laughter in the Dark projects, and the final Oedipus and Antigone projects we had. If i had to choose one class project i felt went very well i would have to go with the final Laughter in the Dark assessment. I have never experienced this form of creative writing before in my life and you had encouraged my to try new things and test it out which resulted in what i felt was a very well crafted piece of work derived from trying new things. I never would have choose this own my own given the 5 other options, but this resulted in further developing my artistic creative writing ability which i was very happy with.

6: Most of the negative experiences this year came from most of the curriculum that you are forced to teach with some of the books being very slow and hard to get into like Hamlet. One major thing i would work to change is focusing on one thing at a time as reading multiple books at once and doing simultaneous projects senior year can become very overwhelming especially during the start of the year when we had scholarship essays to write and college applications and such. Overall i had a great experience this year and I loved having you as a teacher this year! keep being awesome.

  Love,

Isaiah Quinones

2016 English Reflection

Joey Dalicandro
Mrs.Black/ English
A-block



                 My senior English experience has been one of mixed emotion and feelings to say the least. Well for starters, this class was the first honors class I have taken in all my four years here. So simply put I was nervous. I was intimidated from the start of the very first class. I didn't know what to think or what to expect. All I knew was it would be different from what I was used to, and I was right.

               Choice. That was the major theme of this year. This is an idea that's new to me, and one that I had trouble adjusting to at first. Being a student that's been going through the Waltham Public school system for my whole life,  and I can honestly say I've never had this much freedom to make my own choices. Be that as it may I found myself struggling with this. I was so use to be being told what to write and how to write that It took awhile to break me out of this so called "spell" that I was in. We were taught ever since a young age to write in a particular formulaic way , this is what made it hard for me to write  once choice was presented to us. After a few months of class I still found myself still having issues with this, but by the time the year began to end ( like the past month or two ) I found myself getting more and more used to it. Though choice projects were getting to me, I found myself liking the whole idea of us choosing our own reading books. This I think, was a good way to get us more engaged in reading. Personally I am not much of a reader I must admit, but simply having a choice on what book to read actually made reading a much better experience for me. And believe it or not I actually found myself reading at home, which if you knew me , is pretty hard to believe. It's not like I hate reading or anything it's just I hate reading what teachers tell me to read. I enjoy biographies, I'm not one for sci-fi or fantasy. This why reading became more enjoyable, cause we got to read books that actually interest us. This is a pivotal reason for why I found myself reading more than the years in the past. Though not much, I did indeed read outside of school. Mostly when a blog was due but that's beside the point. Oh and speaking of reading, I actually liked reading every Friday. It was a nice and relaxing way to begin our Fridays, I used it as my time to unwind. I believe it would be a great thing to do next year with the class of '18. It is in my personal opinion that all Friday classes should begin with something like this.

           When it comes to writing, I think that everything went well this year. Most of our essays were a choice that we ourselves had to make, an aspect of this year I liked.  I believe writing is more authentic when we get to chose the topic. As students we tend to not follow directions well so us having a choice of either writing an essay or doing a creative work of our own. I also think that our advising experience was as close to authentic as possible. Be that as it may there were more than a few times we peer edited that didn't end up working in my favor. But the experience, though not entirely helpful, did feel very close to authentic. Why? Because we had close to all the control over our own writing and projects. And it doesn't get more real and authentic than that!!
        Though we did have control over what we learned in class, I don't believe I had a favorite project or topic. On contrary to that I didn't really have a favorite book either. In matter of fact, and to answer this honestly , I didn't really like any of the books at all. For starters I highly dislike Shakespeare. And I wasn't necessarily a fan of Laughter in the Dark either. Oh and I forget the first Story we read but I didn't really enjoy that either. Also I wasn't necessarily into my reading group book either. I picked it only cause It seemed less worse than the other options. In my opinion, for next year, you should let students bring in their own book. Like our independent reading! Oh and while I'm on the topic of suggestions I may have a few. Well to start I think you should cut back on the public speaking aspect of your lesson plan. I'm not alone when I say I hate presenting infront of the class. And I think its only fear that those few students out there like me should be aloud to opt out of that. Throughout the year I got many points taken away from me  simply cause I didn't present in front of my fellow peers. I don't believe that is fair at all. Also another suggestion I'll make for next year is that we shouldn't read as many books at once, like we did this year. I found myself overwhelmed at many points this year. Too much confusion stems from that. Well at least for me.
 



   

Final Reflection

Lindsey Johnson   

Final Post

Looking back at this years I would say I gained a positive experience from having a variety of choices within the classroom structure.  Having an option when it came to picking what book we wanted to read for book club or how we wanted to present a our literature whether it was in an essay or a project there was a lot of flexibility and it made it a little easier to have a role of control over what we were doing,  I do feel that with having choices it left room for a lot of interpretation, and at first it was difficult but I took a lot away from it and learned to work in a more advanced way.  

    Overall my favorite book this year was Laughter in the Dark, which we read in class.  I found that this was the most enjoyable book I read which took me a little bit by surprise because I feel that I never get excited over books chosen in school. (No offense!).  With independent reading at home I expected to enjoy it the most because that came with full freedom in choosing a book and when/how much I was reading at a time.  However, I learned that I work better with having an expected structure and I ended up not “ independent” reading as much as I hoped to because I didn’t make the time for it.  Also, as much as I find it difficult to get into a book that is chosen by a teacher, it is also very hard for me to find a book that I want to read by choice and follow-through with it.  But I hope to figure out what genre interests me most and expand my reading, that has become a real goal of mine.

    With that being said about independent reading combined with books assigned through school I can definitely say that I read more this year than any other year all together and my reading at home increased.  I specifically told myself that I really wanted to complete one book this year, no skipping chapters or skimming and I successfully did that with Laughter in the Dark, majority of this was done at home I believe.  I would say that aiming for this goal did for sure increase my reading at home and pushed me to do so.  

    Throughout the many pieces of writing that we were given I do feel that the reflection of my writing has improved from last year.  I noticed that my writing took a more personal perspective and it wasn’t so formal and structured.  I was able to share my opinion and explain my thoughts thoroughly so a lot of my writing felt more like my words rather than being given a prompt and only being able to answer the question based with evidence.  

    With being able to revise our writing, have independent reading, and choose what type of projects we wanted to present I definitely felt that I had a lot of control over my learning this year and perspective on English.  I will admit that I took advantage of such flexibility in the schedule sometimes and thought that I had time to spread out my work or not “ stay on top of it” and that poorly affected my grade.  So with being given such control I learned that I need to manage my time better and also with such independency I felt expected to work harder.  I think this was the perfect time to have this amount of control in learning because it taught me that not everything is always detailed and written out and that my individual responsibility has now increased as if I want to have a successful education.  

    The book club projects was a very independent and student based presentations, we chose our book, came up with what we wanted to present to our class and how we wanted to present it.   I learned a lot in working with other people on a project that didn’t quite have specific expectations or criteria to follow.  It identified who clearly did the work that was expected from the beginning and leadership while it also highlighted different ideas for what was important to share and present.  We all have different learning methods and how we interpret readings and often when we read in class we have discussions so we sometimes all tend to eventually view the same perspective even if at first we don't. With the small reading clubs it was easier to share all our opinions and learn from others or I feel gave us the confidence to explain how we interpreted something and then share that with our group, almost trying to prove a point with evidence.   

    Looking back at how you chose to structure or curriculum with what you already had to follow according to guidelines, I truly don’t know what more you could have changed.  If you choose to continue the book club and the individual projects whether it be throughout the year or just at the end, I think a syllabus at the beginning of the “unit” or term would be helpful because it adds more structure and that way you have a hard copy of all the dates in advance and it would allow students who need to plan and manage their time better and insight of what the should expect.  I would 100% say that I took a lot from English class this year and it has by far been my favorite year. This subject has always been tough for me and that led me to feeling it was my least favorite but after this year I can say that my writing and reading has most certainly improved.  My analysis and use of evidence has strengthened as well.  Focusing on utilizing independency in this subject is a very useful way of learning and I would continue to use this structure and method of learning.  

English class Reflection

Cameron Egan

5/8/2017

1. For almost any significant project or other style assignment, our class had multiple options of how to take on the task. These options provided a very positive experience for myself and other classmates because we were able to do assignments on a more personalized basis. It felt that we had a little more control over what we had to do in the classroom in terms of work because if a student really liked writing essays for projects, then they could write their essay, but if a student preferred to make a Prezi, slide show, or poster about a topic, then that was okay as well. These options let to a lot more potential creativity and less “cookie cutter” style projects where everyone’s product was exactly the same.

2.  I was able to enjoy reading throughout the year because I had chosen books to read independently and with my book group that sincerely interested me. Those books consisted of the topics of modern war, World War II, and the holocaust. I love learning about war and history and these books fit me perfectly. I was also able to draw a lot of similarities between two different books that i read about the holocaust because the books followed such similar guidelines of how their stories played out.

3. I felt that I read a lot more this year than past years because we were constantly reading  books either in or out of school. At times we were reading 1-3 books all in one day as a class, in our groups, and personally. It was a little crazy reading all the books at once because I was reading stories with so many similarities between them.

4. I do feel that my writing experiences were authentic because I noticed I personally tried to make my work better when it was going to be put on a public forum. By only passing work into my teacher in the past, I would sometimes put less work into proof-reading into essays and blog posts, but because they were going to be made available to everyone on the internet I made sure to take an extra bit of time to make my work better.

5. I felt that my fellow students and I had some control in learning in English class this year. Most of that control that we had was in the assignments we were given based on the books we were reading. A good experience I had was when we had book groups that met on a bi-weekly basis. At the end of our books were were given several choices for a project, including creating our own style of a project to make and present in class. My fellow classmate Shervin and I elected to create a rap song about the story we had read in our groups. Not only was this a good way for us to make a deeper look into the novel’s story, but it was also a very fun way to gain a better overall understand of the story as well.

6. At some points i found it almost a bit stressful to be reading three books all at the same time for one class. Although it was very doable, I just found it confusing at times, but that may have been because that two out of the three books that I had been reading at the time were both about the Holocaust.