In English class, we learnt about Instructional Writing to develop our P.E assignment, which was to explain a strategy for the game Capture the Flag.

Aspects of instructional writing:

1. Steps are introduced by numbers or bullet points.
2. Readers should be referred in the steps using ‘you’ or ‘each player’.
3. Pictures/images included to clarify a text or show the product.
4. Use present tense
5. Includes heading and sub-headings

The completed product of the work showed a big difference from the first work I’ve completed. It was much more clear and easier to understand.

My completed product- https://docs.google.com/a/yis.ac.jp/file/d/0B8c9KTR-kYS0bWE4d1NBWlRoOTA/edit

Our recent unit in English was about the Apartheid and we mainly focused on Soweto uprising. We read the book ‘Journey to Johannesbourg’ and was able to gain a deeper understanding of racism and its effect.

During this unit, we made a Wordle of our values. To represent the biggest values in us, we made the important values bigger than the other words.

In our current, we are reading the book, “The House on Mango Street”. But I’m not very sure about what the unit is going to be about.
In class last week, we made a 2nd Wordle of our Values. (We did not look at the Wordle we made last time)
The aim was to compare the 2 Wordles and see how our values can change quickly.

How are they different?

My first one was mainly focused on myself and to enjoy life. Such as laugh, happy/happiness, smile, fun etc.
My second one is a bit more towards the relationship between me and other people. Such as caring, respect, trust, supportive, communication and tolerance.

Why do our values change? What influences our understanding?

I think my values changed because of the things I learnt through out the year at school. Especially our lesson on apartheid in English class. As we grow older, we learn new things and this is how our values can change slightly or maybe a lot

Freedom, for me is being able to say what I want to, Travel anywhere I want to, eat what I want to and being able to interact with anyone around me. Some people weren’t allowed to talk to or spend time with someone who had different skin colors! I think it’s a stupid idea. Why would people have to separate others from their skin color? I feel lucky to be living here in Japan and at this time. I can talk to anyone around me. I can always keep in touch with someone even in another country. I can even stay close to my family and cuddle whenever I want to.

The country I live in, I think is a very lucky place to be in. No one would ever judge you by your looks. Your friends or classmates might but they never really mean it. 2 opposite gender can do whatever they want to. Even take the same transportation. I can always say what I want to. There are different ways of speaking to others by whether they are older or younger than you but I can always say what I want to without anyone or anything stopping me.

I am very lucky for the school I go to and the way teachers treat us in our school. In old schools, teacher would slap you when you’ve done something that they dislike or others dislike. My teachers would never do this as they know that slapping us would never affect our action. This is something that I take granted for.

Every morning I would think school is a stupid idea, but I know it’s not. They help us for almost anything as in through our education.

But, the most important is your family! They basically do anything for you. Feeds you, purchases things for you with their own money, and work and work and work so that we can go to school and live. They never ignore you either. This is freedom to me.

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/georgikeith/2658949664/  Took from creative commons.

Looking at Maya’s Blog, I realized that we completely wrote different things. This was a surprise because I thought we would have had the same thought about freedom. She wrote a lot about being able to believe in our own beliefs. I agree with everything she had wrote down.

After looking at Elina’s Blog, again, had wrote down a completely different thing to me. She talked about equity and having no restrictions. She also explained that having no restrictions was a part of making your dream come true. I truly agree with that too.

Above all, I’ve learnt that we all have our own thoughts about freedom. Although it was very surprising, it was actually really fun to read other people’s because they didn’t write the same thing as me.

I used to think that we would be treated differently by skin colors at school and I was afraid because I’m not white like others. I used to think that almost everything mattered on skin color, but now I realized and think that everything was wrong. I was really happy with everyone at school because they never said anything about it, although I’ve experienced some teasing a while ago. No one stared at me like I was weird.

The second thing is, I used to think I had a really boring and saddest life in the whole world because I couldn’t get what I want and I couldn’t go where I wanted to go until my mom told me something about it. She said ” You’re lucky to be in Japan, you have food, you have clothes, you have friends and you get good education.
There is more people in the world that don’t have any of these”.
And so now I know that I’m really lucky.  This one little sentence just made me think about it the whole day.
And then I asked my dad if hell is real. And he said ” Of course there is, how can’t poor countries like Sudan and Ethiopia be hell? They have no food, they can’t go to school. That is already hell.”

On Thursday August 30th 2012, We had an author coming to our school from the states called Holly Thompson. She loves Japan and used to work in a Mikan farm (Orange farm). She speaks Japanese fluently.
Most of her Books include a bicultural character. This is because she has 2 cultures that she is living in and her kids go to a Japanese school.
I think she wanted to make her book unique because not much books include bicultural kids. She also writes these stories as verses like a poem to make it more easier for people to read. And she sometimes only writes one sentence on one page so that the reader actually gets enough time to think about it.
In the morning, all the grade 7′s gathered around in the loft and Mrs. Thompson told us about verses and how they can be really useful.
After this we asked some questions to Mrs. Thompson.

In period 4, My class went to the loft and Mrs. Thompson showed us her poems. And after about 20 minutes we started writing our own poems.We first started by brainstorming which verbs we should use and jotted down some ideas for our poems.
We got a few minutes to share our ideas with the person next to you.

  You can’t really see it but we’ve used the whole side to brainstorm.

While spending our time with Mrs. Thompson, I heard a lot about how it is to be an author.
One thing that I was amazed by was that the Front cover and the blurbs weren’t what authors do. It was what the editors do.
So sometimes the editor would write in a complete different blurb on the back.
I’ve also discovered how it’s like to be an author. I found it really hard for me to write one poem but Mrs. Thompson seemed to enjoy
it very much

It was really fun!!!!

If you want to learn more about Holly Thompson, Please visit http://www.hatbooks.com/

This is a voice thread reflection for a presentation we did in English class. I did it with Rhiannu, Peter and Francisco.
The presentation was about the different shot’s and angles, Lighting and Special Effects, Symbolism, and Sound affects we saw from the Movie, Indiana Jones and the raiders of the lost ark.
We were divided into groups for each different theme and we were the Shot’s and Angles group.
When we were done, we chose to do a voice thread reflection because we always do a typing reflection which isn’t always fun.
I hope you like it

Currently in english class, We are learning about the different angles and shots used for filming movies.
Today, we all went to the roof to experience the different ways of filming an angle. I did this with Alina and Tomoka. The purpose of this was so that we can get an little idea of how to film different angles.

At first, we didn’t know what to do so we chose to do something very random. We started with a High angle shot which you film or take a picture looking down at the person from the top. We did this by me standing on the top of the stairs and Alina standing on the bottom of the stair.

Then we did a close up shot of Alina’s Eyes by zooming in with the camera.

From this lesson, I learnt the different angles people use, to make an movie. I’ve also learnt that filming is fun
I think almost everything worked right instead of when Alina’s knees were shown while filming Tomoka. It was really hard to do a low angle because you had to lie down on the ground which is dirty..

Before the spring break, in English class, We all read one of the mystery/detective from the library. I read the book called the wicked will by Bailey Macdonald Then we made a podcast on garageband. We used quotations from the book to support our podcasts.

This time, I got a really good grade comparing to my  last podcast. The comments from Ms. Cox on the last podcast helped me record this time’s podcast. She said to use the thesaurus to develop my vocabulary. I was able to use strong vocabularies and explain the book in detail.

How will working with others help my learning for my next podcast?

If we work together in a group, friends can give you advice or can tell you what you can improve on. They can also tell you how you did well because then you can do that in the next podcast.

How could I improve my next podcast?

I want to give more quotations from the book and explain why I chose that quotation. I will do that by carefully looking through the book.