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There was only one mock exam that was directly related to the subjects with my goals set. That subject was Spanish. Just a recap from before; my goal for Spanish was to become more fluent in Spanish so that I would be able to talk to native speakers without much hesitation. An excellent opportunity was given to me in the mock exams to test where I am at in terms of this goal. That was, to have a 15 minutes oral that contained 2 real life-based dialogues, a 2 and a half minute oral followed by questions relating to it, and 5 minutes of general questions about my life.

To start off with, I believe I did relatively well, due to the confidence I had throughout the exam till the end, and due to Mrs.Gadsby’s positive comments after my entire exam. Despite some hesitation during the oral exam, Mrs.Gadsby insisted, after the exam, that I got mostly all of my ideas conveyed to her, both fluent and coherent, and that my accent was very decent. In terms of speaking, I believe that I showed superior progress of my goal, mentioning that I would like to become more fluent in Spanish.

Moreover, there were 3 more exams for Spanish during the mock week. They were exams to test other Spanish related skills, such as reading, listening, and writing. I believe these exams were crucial to develop my skills needed to achieve my goal, and as a whole, they helped me accumulate confidence to achieve my goal. My overall grade for the Spanish mock exams was A, in which I missed an A* merely by a few points. Mrs.Gadsby mentioned that my writing exam was the best in the class, however, that I had weaknesses in my reading. Other than that, my listening comprehension was satisfactory. Hence, I believe I have to improve reading Spanish contexts and understand the content in limited time, because I had trouble with finishing the exam on time, and I can improve my reading in Spanish by practicing more  texts, until I feel sanguine about my reading exams.

Therefore, I was able to see where I am at in terms of my goal, and additionally, I was able to spot weaknesses that hinder achieving it. My goal may not be so distant.

My overall reports for semester one were satisfactory. In terms of reaching and achieving my semester one goals, I must say that I have made significant progress.

One of my goals for semester one was to talk without much hesitation with native speakers. This goal is more difficult than the other goals, because Spanish is my third language. However, I believe this goal has been successful. In my Igcse preparation exam, where we have two conversation topic followed by questions for a chosen presentation topic, I got an A, to which I think is very good. In my other exams, such as writing, I also did a superior demonstration, but for my reading comprehension exams, I didn’t do so well. In conclusion, I could say that I am doing an extraordinary job in terms of speaking and writing, but I have some places to improve such as reading.

My second goal for semester one was to be more familiar with business vocabulary. Now reflecting, I have started extremely well. Mr. Macdonalds’ practical projects/assessments have helped me a lot to utilise not just business vocabulary, but also business strategies such as advertisements. My overall level of achievement for business was 7, signifying that my understanding, reasoning, communication and application in terms of business is outstanding. Hence my first goal, mentioning that I want to be more familiar with business vocabulary, is progressing remarkably well.

My final goal for semester one was to tackle complex problems for math, such as IB level maths. I can say with no doubt that this goal is progressing well too. My level of achievement for mathematics was 7, implying that I am capable with intricate math problems, and that I am ready to take IB higher level maths. I personally have no difficulties in math class, starting IB leveled topics such as conic sections or further trigonometry, making me feel more confident in my problem solving skills. Therefore I can finish off by saying that my goal to tackle more complex mathematical problems is going considerably well.

Conclusively, my goals for semester one is progressing very well.

As long as I know, my family members were all born in Japan, in one of the most biggest cities called Tokyo. Except me. I was born in hong-kong, in 1996, June. Moving to Hong-Kong must have been one of the big “moving over” step that my family took. I came back with my family in the year 2000, and I’m still here and trying to stay here for my future.

So this post will roughly tell my family history to the people who are desperate toknow about it, although I don’t know exactly what happened to my past family members.

Like I said, my mother, father, brother, 2 grandmas, and 2 grandpas were all born in Tokyo so I really have nothing much to say.

So what I did was to ask my parents why they were so successful for choosing and remaining in the major city for the past several years. My mom answered that question and said that it was because of her great – grand father, and great – grand mother. My great – great – grand father and its family came to Tokyo in the 1900′s to get a new job and to work, all the way from Kaga, which is now called the Ishikawa prefecture. Unfortunately my grandmother on my mothers side is ill, so I couldn’t really ask.

On my Dad’s side, my dad said that it was his great – grand father, again, but this time in the 1890′s. My great – great – grand father on my dad’s side came from this place called Hida, which is now known as the Gifu prefecture and my dad said that they moved for academic purpose.

Here comes the sad news. My 2 grand – fathers passed away when I was 1 or 2, so both of my grand – mothers are living alone. Still, my grand – mother on my Moms side is becoming well with great recovery, and my other grand – mother is very healthy.

My Dad and my Mom met in Tokyo since they both lived there, I don’t know how but they married in 1989. My brother was born in 1993, and I was born about 14 years ago. But why did we come to Yokohama? The answer to that question was nice and simple; Because our school is here. Since my Mom and Dad say that YIS has this IB thing you can get in high school, and that are limited places that have them, they chose to come here. Kanagawa prefecture is also one of the major cities, and is known for one of the three major prefectures other than Tokyo, and Osaka. I came to Japan in the year 2000 and entered this school in the year 2000. My Dad is in high position at his working place, and he works at this place called Panac. Due to the facts I have, this company produces many types of films.

I’m sure this wasn’t enough to say it was my family history, and I didn’t have enough information, but I’m probably going to make this history worse by staying here.

http://blogs.yis.ac.jp/14watanabek/family-history-pics/

J4.Dcmnt

   Have you ever got in trouble because you snapped a rubber band to a music teacher? I hope not. Then have you ever read a book like so? I have. This explanation suits to the story of this book, “The Last Holiday Concert.” This book is by an author named Andrew Clements, and in the past I have read his series of novels. 

   The main character is Hart Evans which takes the middle school chorus. He had many rubber bands in his pocket, bag, and even in his locker. So what he did one day was to shoot a few for fun. Of course he wasn’t trying to hit the teacher but the fact was that he did. In 2 seconds he got sent to the MS (Middle school) principal, and got a present called detention. On the other hand the teacher who got shot (Mr. Meinert) got mad, and decided to make Hart the chorus director and gave him the responsibility of directing 30 minutes of the holiday concert. Hart didn’t have the power to control over 60 students, and caused some problems. Will the concert go well? What will happen to Mr. Meinert and hart?

   This book I read didn’t take me so long until the goal. In different words I finished it farely at average speed. Maybe it was interesting. Or even the type of book I was waiting for. The books I have read in the past might have been arid. If I was to say this in a different way, it was interesting. I declar this book can be accepted from other point of views.

   The genre of this book is equilly adventure, and fantacy. It has a propper story line, and the sentances were intelligible. It has an interesing plot which wasn’t so huge, and a conclusion to tie the novel up. The style and language of this author (Andrew Clements)  becomes a habit to think about why it’s good. Now I feel like improving my style and language by the help of not just this book, but the other series of Andrew Clements’ books.

   The main characters in this book are Mark Chlemsley, and Mr. Maxwell, the science teacher. There are characters that are not so important, but there are atleast some relations with the main characters. For example, characters such as Leon, and Anya were close to the main character. Leon and Anya are Uncles and Aunts of Mark. There are other characters that are less important such as Robert Chlemsley, and Eloise Chlemsley. These people are less important because they don’t come up so often in the story. They are related to Mark as a human being of his parents.

   The problem all starts when Mark moves over to the section of the 5ths at Hardy elementary school. The science work was easy to him so he ignored the lessons for science. Those days have repeated like a clock, and Mr. Maxwell started to think Mark was one rich slacker. But Mark realized that there would be a week which they will spent out in full nature, in the woods. He thinks it might be a chance to prove that he is not one of those rich slackers. But on the first day of the week the reltion between Mark and Mr. Maxwell explodes, to a unexpectable direction. Mark runs away into the mauntains by himself. Mr. Maxwell was very calm and estimated how things would go for a 5th grader, and looks for Mark in the dark. Can those two come safely back? What will happen to their relation? The continuation will be on the book.

What do you think about using a blog/ website for learning at school?

-I think it’s a good idea, but maybe it’ll be better to use it for other subjects, so we can keep on writing our opinions.

What are the best/worst things about using blogs?

-The good part of Edublog is that we can be global within our school campus, and check other peoples thoughts, but on the other side, the bad part of Edublog is that new people to Edublog can’t post things smoothly. 

Do you think it is important to learn how to use things like blogs? Why? Why not?

-I think it is very important because the destiny without me using Edublog might have ended without writing down my thoughts.

Title: Maseru 

Character: Delhi, Mom, and Dad

Beginning:-Intro of Delhi and his Monster collection

                 -Mom throws away the Monsters

Middle:     – Mom & Dad gets kidnaped

                 -Ask policeman for help 

                 -Letter from someone

                 -Describe the Ghost tower

                 -Journey to Maseru

Plot: Delhi was living happily with his Mom and Dad, but was abscessed with monsters and the Mom thought of trashing them. But one day his Mom and Dad disappears. At first he enjoyed living alone, but finally got bored. Then he noticed that there was a letter in his post. It said, “If you want your parents back come to where I tell you.” Delhi asked the policeman for help, but they didn’t trust him. So finally Delhi went to the place the person told which was a door in the Ghost tower.

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Gil’s furniture bought and sold VIDEO

     It was a little encounter I had during the break. During the 3 weeks of winter break, I found a dramatized novel in my house cupboard. My dad must have bought it while he was at Korea, since it was in the new section of DVDs. It said ‘Galileo’. I decided to watch this drama because Galileo sounded like a smart person. This is because Galileo Galilei was a physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and a philosopher. The person on the front cover also looked smart so it looked interesting, so I decided to watch this.

     This DVD has 10 stories in all, and each story ended in 1 hour. The book was written by “Tohno Keigo,” and this person is famous in writing mystery books. Tohno Keigo wrote books such as “Bonds of the shooting stars” and “Bloody monday.” I knew this person well, so that is also why I chose this film to watch. 

     The main routine of this drama is that something mysterious happens, and the smart person (Galileo) solves it. It is interesting how he solves the mystery and what he does to solve the mysteries. The main characters that come in the stories are “Yukawa Manabu,” the smart person and “Utsumi Kaoru,” a policeman.  

     The smart person is not called Galileo for fun, he is called Galileo for a reason. The reason why the smart person (Galileo) is called Galileo is because he uses many techniques to represent Galileo Galilei’s characteristics. Galileo Galilei was called “The father of science” and so was Galileo (person on the drama). These common features is the reason why Galileo (person in the drama) is called Galileo (Scientists).  

     While seeing this drama, various things which can be enjoyed occurred. What I enjoyed about this drama was that some bits were funny. For an example, I thought that the polices were a little bit irresponsible. When an incident occurs most of the police give up too soon. Also without Galileo, all the mysteries would have not been solved. These examples I found funny.  

     Although this drama was not just enjoyable. I thought this drama had some bits that were hard to understand. One example is that the math that comes out is high level. Some symbols I didn’t even understand. Only 10% of the whole equation I understand. Other than the maths, there were other un-understandable things, such as the language Galileo speaks. He had lots of theories to say everytime someone says something. There were many vocabularies that were new, so the language was hard. Other-ways this drama can cause interest somewhere in your body, that refers a conclusion in the story. I really enjoyed this drama.