Em's Blog

Ms.Clifford, my lovely English teacher is now making us write a reflection. Let’s see if you can figure out what it’s about.

So the first book that we studied was Two Weeks with the Queen. Two Weeks was an interesting book, and I comprehended a lot from it. One of the things I understood was how people will always exclude if you like your own gender. And also, many people don’t realise this, but if you’re sibling is in trouble, regardless of how small or big the trouble is, we always help them. I figured this out in Two Weeks with the Queen, because Colin did so much to help Luke, who had cancer.  Going onto the more technical writing skills now, Ms.Clifford taught us how to make our essays even better than they were before, thus resulting in better scores than I usually did get.

The second book was Journey to Jo’burg. I able to connect this book with Two Weeks with the Queen, because in Journey to Jo’burg, the 2 older siblings, Naledi and Tiro go on an expedition to Johannesburg, to find their mother. They do this because their little sister is really ill, and there are no doctors in the village. Before I read this book I wasn’t aware that there ‘Apartheid.’ I knew that people have discriminated people of other colours, but I didn’t know that it was this bad. When we had watched The Power of 1, and I will admit-I cried a lot. But I had a reason to. It was because just seeing this kid trying to fit in, and reuniting all colours together, and just his overall journey was really moving, and it encouraged me to keep on trying, and to never give up.

And the third book was The House on Mango Street. The first thing I acquired was what a vignette is. As I read through the book, I thought that a vignette reminded me of a drabble, which is on a website called fanfiction basically a short random part of someone’s life (more like a couple’s life.) Another thing I noticed was how the author added lots and lots of details, and how she conveyed the theme (challenges, growing up, relationships, and culture) throughout the entire book. I was taught how to write a descriptive piece- and I had a lot of fun writing one. (You can see the one I wrote here)

And lastly the 50 word stories. I remember I did this last year, but I didn’t get very far in the competition. But this year, I wrote lots of 50 words stories, and had I hard time choosing one. I finally chose one, and I was really proud of it, even more proud when it got to the top 5 of my class, then the top 9 of the grade. It was really fun and enjoyable, and in the end, I was able to write a really, really short story in just 50 words, and make it kind of good.