A Letter to Myself

          A time in my past that I regret and wish I could go back and change would be the time that I got a bad grade on my calculus math exam in my junior year of high school. Up until that point I had a 3.8 GPA in the class and after that exam, my GPA fell. In order to prevent this grade on my calculus exam, I would give myself a few tips on how to prevent this.

            In order to keep your GPA up in the math calculus course, you need to follow these simple steps. Make sure that you attend class every day. This is very important to do so that you are there to listen to the lectures. Also, take notes during the lecture. This will help you better understand the material when you write it down and the notes will be available to you when you do your homework and to study for the exams. Attending class and taking notes is the easy part of getting a good GPA. The next step is to do all the homework assigned to you. Spend time on each homework problem to make sure you understand the problem and to get the correct answer. Don’t save your homework for the night before it is due. If you get homework on Monday and it is due Friday, make sure you progressively work through it throughout the week and do not save it until Thursday night. The homework assignments count towards your GPA in the class, so if you do not do the homework, then your GPA will drop just from that. So, make sure you attend class, take notes, and do the homework in a timely fashion for part of your GPA to be good.

            The next important pieces to having a good GPA are the exam grades. These exams are very important because they are more heavily weighted for your GPA and the grades that you receive count for more in the class. These exams cover a certain amount of chapters that have been taught in the class. If you attend all the classes and take notes, then you can use those to study. To study, you should read through your notes that you wrote and make sure you understand everything. Then, you should use the assigned textbook for the course and go through the chapters that are going to be on the test. After reading the chapters again, you should work on review problems at the back of every chapter. Most answers for these are in the back of the book, so if you do not understand something then you can look at the answer and try to figure the problem out from that. After studying your notes, the chapters, and doing reviews if you still have questions you should ask your teacher. Most high school teachers are available before school or after school to help. If you do the review before the day of the test, then you can email your teacher and set up a time to meet with them to ask them questions to help you study. If you have questions from your notes or review problems that would be a good time to ask the teacher.

            After doing all of these steps, it comes time to finally take the exam. The day of the exam, make sure you eat a good healthy breakfast and relax. You should not get nervous for the exam because if you did all of the previous steps to study and do your homework, then you should be prepared for the exam. By attending class, taking notes, doing homework, and studying for the exam this will help you succeed in achieving a good GPA for a calculus course.

          

Advertisement Redesign Reflection

Going into this assignment I thought it would be a lot of fun and incorporate some creativity. I like the fact that we discussed this assignment in class and did a group redesign of an advertisement in class before we had to do this advertisement on our own. From the in class work, I felt prepared to go into this assignment. I chose a Louis Vuitton advertisement for this assignment. I chose this ad because it was in a magazine that I frequently read and I really like Louis Vuitton products. I also chose it because I know that Louis Vuitton sells many products for both men and women and I thought it would be fairly easy to change the advertisement completely.

For the redesign, I came up with the idea to change it in my head.  I did not sketch anything out on paper. I just simply thought of the ways in which I wanted to change it and then designed it to the way I wanted it to look in my head.  As I began the essay for this redesign, I faced the challenge of not knowing how to begin the essay. I'm so used to writing an essay with a clear introduction, body, and conclusion that this essay was hard for me to write. To overcome this challenge of structure, I just listed out all of the main points I needed to make within the essay and started writing as if I was writing to an advertisement agency to change the ad.

The thing I liked most about the redesign assignment was the creativity part. This assignment allowed me to think outside of the box and to recreate an advertisement from scratch. I used the creativity to my advantage by creating a completely different advertisement, while changing the background, the model, and the products that were being advertised. The learning outcomes that I learned the most while writing this essay were the use of ethos, pathos, and logos. Before this assignment, I did not have a clear understanding of the three and how they could be used in everyday things like commercials and advertisements. Now, I know what each one is and I know to look for them in advertisements if I ever have to analyze one. If I were to get a second chance at writing this essay, I would probably pick a different audience. I liked the audience that I picked to change the advertisement to (upper class men), but if I could change it I would want to pick another audience like young teenagers or elderly people. I think it would have been harder to pick one of those audiences rather than upper class men, but it would have been even more different than the current audience of the ad which was upper class women.

Process Memo

The literacy narrative process was a fun and interesting process.  This assignment was actually very fun to do.  I learned a lot about how I became a literate person today and I also got to reflect about all of the work I did to get to be the literate person I am today. Throughout the process, I began by thinking of the timeline of my literacy, then that timeline was put into an essay format to illustrate the most important parts of my literacy.  After that, the final product was an animoto slideshow video that used pictures and text to illustrate the main points throughout my literacy life.

As I started my literacy timeline, the most logical place for me to start was before I started preschool.  I knew that when I was young, my parents would always read to me and encourage me to learn new words and letters every day.  This was the most logical place for me to start because I was very young and from there, I was going to go through all of my years in school as to how I became literate.  It wasn’t hard for me to remember how I began to read and how my parents had helped me learn to read.  On my timeline, I added a lot of details because I did remember a lot about learning to read.  Something interesting that I realized after working on my timeline is how much my parents helped me learn to read.  They would read to me every night before bed and then make fun games out of reading and making words.  I never realized how much this actually helped my reading skills, but now looking at the whole process, I realize it was very important for my parents to teach me how to read and to encourage me to become a literate person. The main theme throughout my literacy timeline was my ability to read and to recognize words.  Most of this dealt with books that were read to me or that I read as I got older.  For my literacy narrative, it was very difficult to pick one specific event.  There were so many important events that happened in my life that allowed me to become literate. I couldn’t pick just one event throughout my life, so I decided to go with a theme for my literacy narrative.  The theme that I chose to go with is how I learned to read and I chose to explain that process of learning how to read throughout stages in my life.  Going with this theme was an easy decision since I could include more than one event throughout my life and it could really show the process of me learning how to read.  The experience of creating a timeline really helped me realize how much the people around me impacted my ability to become literate.  It allowed me to see that my parents were the first ones to teach me how to read and because of them, I am a literate person. 

 Before writing the literacy narrative, I had to narrow my timeline to a few events that showed my theme of learning how to read.  I picked four of the most important events from my timeline that I feel showed the most about me learning how to read.  From narrowing my events from my timeline, I knew that I was going to write my story in sequential order to show a progression of me learning how to read.  My narrative read in chronological order from the time I was young until last year in my senior year of high school. I used an outline before I actually began writing my narrative to make sure that I was going to include enough detail in my paper.  I chose an event from before I was in preschool, from second grade, ninth grade, and then my senior year of high school. After choosing these events, it was not hard to start writing my paper. I started writing exactly what I remembered from a young age until just a year ago.  When I made the final edit for my paper, I was thinking about the important facts that I wanted to include in my slideshow video.  I knew that there were key facts that I wanted to add to my video, so I had to make sure to add those to my paper also.  Knowing that I was going to make a video slideshow, I made sure to add key phrases and sentences that would stick out and that could stand alone in my video to describe my process of learning to read.  This only altered the way I would normally write a paper because I had to be aware of sentences that I was using and I had to add phrases that I wanted to use in my slide show video.

For my slideshow, my peer review partner chose a lot of sentences in my paper that were very important to put in my slideshow.  Out of all fifteen sentences my partner chose, I used about nine of them.  My partner chose very good sentences to use, but nine of them really stood out as must use sentences. For some of the slides, I did have a hard time explaining the event in less than fifty-two characters.  I think that was the hardest part of making the slideshow.  I wanted to use complete sentences form my narrative, but unfortunately I could not.  It was hard to say what I wanted to say in very minimal words.  My strategy was to formulate a sentence in my head that I wanted to use and then find adjectives and other words that I could use that were fewer letters and create a sentence out of those words. The images that I used in my video were used as a complimentary tool to my text.  Most of the pictures that I chose went after the text slide to further show an example from the text slide and to further elaborate on the text slide.  Even though my pictures were used as complimentary pictures to the text, they were also a way for me to provide more information from the text slide.  Since each text slide was only fifty-two characters, it was important for me to use pictures that further described and illustrated what I had said in the text slide before it. The images that I chose were a mix of personal images and images from the web. I only used images from the web when I could not find the perfect personal picture that would help enhance the text slide. The personal photos that I chose helped tell the story of my progression of reading.  The first picture I used was when I was a toddler and the last personal picture I used was a picture of me reading to first grade students from when I volunteered in a first grade classroom during my junior year of high school. The internet pictures that I used helped to further tell the story and to give more detail after my text slides. The song I chose was an instrumental version of the song Concrete Angel by Martina McBride.   I like this song because it has a good tone and is very subtle.  I wanted a song that didn’t have lyrics because I wanted the text in my slideshow to represent the lyrics of the song. Martina McBride usually sings about songs of growing up and I thought it would be perfect to use one of her songs to show the progression of how I learned how to read. This song helps communicate my literacy because it is a slow paced song that is soft and helps the viewer read my text slides in my video along with the music playing in the background. After watching my video again, the only thing that I would change if I went back and could change it would be to add more personal pictures of me growing up.  I had personal pictures of me at a young age, but after second grade I didn’t include very many other personal pictures.  It was hard for me to look for these personal pictures, so if I would have spent more time looking for pictures, I could have possibly used a couple more pictures of me reading as I got older.

Nissan Leaf commercial

Nissan leaf commercial- Blog Post

The beliefs that are communicated in this commercial is that global warming is melting glaciers and ruining habitats for animals such as polar bears. It also suggests that people who don't do anything "green" are to blame for the way the environment is changing.  This commercial shows that by going green and getting an electric car, the animals that are affected by the poor environment will thank you. This is shown at the end when the polar bear finds the guy who is going to drive the Nissan leaf, an electric car, to work and the polar bear gives him a hug for his efforts in going green.

The intended audience for this commercial is the general public, but more specifically people who care about our environment. The rhetoric that is being used to appeal to this audience is the polar bear and the fact that he is losing his habitat. This is used to evoke emotion from the viewers to feel sorry for the polar bear and realize that they need to go green and one way is to get an electric car such as the Nissan leaf.

My response to this commercial is dominant-hegemonic. I agree that with the way the world is today that things such as global warming will only get worse and ultimately affect poor animals like the polar bears.  I thought it was a very cute commercial and had a lot of meaning behind it that could show the general public what is happening to our world.

Dustin Anderson Reading

2. "After studying the matter, Ms. Davidson concluded, 'Online blogs directed at peers exhibit fewer typographical and factual errors, less plagiarism, and generally better, more elegant and persuasive prose than classroom assignments by the same writers.'"

        Ms. Davidson came up with a pretty eye opening conclusion. She concluded that when one types for a blog that is for peers, one has less writing errors and no plagiarism.  This is saying that when students write for a blog they feel less obligated to say the right thing and are less pressured to write correctly. This leads to fewer errors in a paper and no plagiarism.  She also states that blog posts for peers are generally more elegant than a classroom paper.  She concludes that blogs allow students to generally be better writers than a classroom assignment or paper does. 

        I think that her findings are very interesting. I think it is true to say that when you are posting to your blog you are less likely to plagiarism because usually blogs are in your own words and are your own opinions. I also think that writing a blog creates fewer errors because it is a more laid back setting.  It is not as formal as an essay for writing class.  This allows students to come up with imaginative ideas and allows them to focus more on the ideas within the writing itself rather than the structure of the writing.   Ms. Davidson also stated the blogs are more elegant, this could be because they have a stylistic touch to them, such as, voice from the writer.  Using blogs that are shown to peers seems to have a positive impact on a student’s writing in the classroom and outside the classroom.  I think that blog writing is helpful to develop one's own thoughts and eventually help with writing essays for a class.

Literacy Timeline

Before preschool: I had a bookcase in my room, filled with books, and before bed, my mom would always read me a book. I used to always pick my two favorite books from the shelf.  From picking those two books, I started to recognize small words and letters from the books.

Preschool: I remember playing puppets with my friends and creating scenes and stories with each puppet we used at school just like a book would have a scene and story.

Kindergarten: even though we couldn't read that well, my teacher let each student bring in a book each week and "read" it to the class. Even though we couldn't read the words, it allowed my imagination to speak through the pictures and images in the book.

Second grade: once I could read, I remember on road trips that we would take my family would play a game with license plates.  We would look at the license plates of the cars in front of us and try to make words out of the letters at we saw on the license plates.  We would also play the alphabet game where we had to find a sign with a word for each letter of the alphabet we were on.

Third grade: I began to learn cursive and had to re-identify letters based on the cursive that was on the board and the cursive I was learning.

Sixth grade: once a week, I took a children's book to school and read it to a first grade class. As I was reading the book, I would point at the words to show them what I was reading.  

Eighth grade: I was placed in an accelerated English class because of my grades and my previous MEAP scores. We had to read more novels and write more papers.

Ninth grade: the teacher I had my freshman year is the teacher that taught me all about novels and literary devices.  He taught me grammar and how to write a good essay too, but most importantly taught me how to read and analyze what I was reading and how to take important words out of a piece of literary work.

Twelfth grade: during the IB tests, we had to read and analyze texts and then write essays about the texts we had to read.  This made me a critical reader and made me recognize key words within the passage that could be used as literary devices to analyze the piece.

Lynda Barry Article

Summary:

Her piece was all about the questions that students grow to ask about their essays.  Her writing showed that every kid when learning to write and express them self use their creativity and draw most of the time.  The main idea in her piece is that as kids grow up they are told not to be creative and not to draw on their works.  This leads students to only write an essay that asks two questions: Is this stupid? And Does this suck?  Throughout the process of learning to write creativity helped shape our minds into becoming good writers. Now, when we get into the university level, that creativeness is slowly fading away because we don't draw pictures anymore and we don't think outside of the box very often.  Lynda Barry's point is that no matter how old we are, we still need to be creative in writing and we need to stop asking the same two questions about our writing pieces.

Response:

I have to agree with this piece by Lynda Barry because I too have started asking those two dreaded questions.  First of all, this piece brought me in due to the pictures that were drawn around the words. It looked very cool and I thought it might be fun to read it. So after I read it, I realized that I need to look at my writing more frequently. It opened my eyes to what has happened within my writing experience from an early age to now.  I do realize that I used to be creative with my writing and that I used to draw to illustrate what I wanted to say.  Now I don't draw at all and I feel was though I write just because I have to. She brought up a very good point that creativity doesn't need to die once we get older within our writing, she says that it can still live on as long as you allow it and as long as you allow creativity within your pieces.  She also states the most important part to allowing creativity to flourish in your work is to not think about the two questions that relate to structure and content of an essay.