The second piece I am most proud of is the creativity project. I felt that the game we made for this project was very interesting and the concept we went with paired well with the book. The main thing that could have been improved though was the overall analysis of the book and the lack of complexity. One of the main things that this project has helped me to learn is to always look for and identify the complexity in a work. We were to on the surface with our analysis and should have gone deeper. Looking back at it now I can see the complexity lies more in the fact that in order for Pi to finish this journey that will confirm his believes, he sometimes has to abandon those beliefs to survive. I believe our surface analysis was still correct, our thesis strong, and our overall project very well done, but this deeper level of understanding would have brought the whole project up. I am now much more aware to always look for complexity in a piece and feel very comfortable identifying and elaborating on that complexity.
In terms of my own participation in this class I feel I have participated a fair amount. I have answered some questions in class, and participated some to discussion, but definitely could have done more. I am the type of person who prefers to sit back and listen to conversations and take time in forming my own opinions but needed to speak up more and share my initial thoughts in class more. On individual papers I aimed to write them to the best of my ability and to a very high level of writing. On the compare and contrast essay specifically I drafted it several times, got your opinion on the thesis and overall paper, and created a finalized essay that I felt I had worked very hard on and was proud of. The outcome wasn't exactly what I wanted, but the part of the paper I felt was the best was very strong and I know now how to further improve my analysis and writing in the future.
With collaborative group projects I felt I had a lot to contribute. In the earliest presentations the way we had split up the work had everyone focusing on different aspects of the presentations and bringing it back together and relating everything. I often times worked on relating the background of the author, the terminology, and the Foster chapters, back to the original piece and thesis we were creating for that. In the creative project I did a lot of work on the thesis, cards for our game, and the overall explanation of the project. Once again the work was split up between everyone and I felt I was the one who wrote the explanation and helped to tie the whole project together. For the American drama assignment I did a lot of work on drafting and finalizing the thesis, as well as editing the video and putting it all together, contributing to the summary sheet, and typing up all of the scenes we were reenacting. I believe that I take on a lot of responsibility and group projects and that I can always be relied on to come through with what I said I was going to do, and that my part will be done in a way that enhances the entire project.
The goals I set back at the beginning of the trimester have been met and have help to make me more successful now that the trimester is over. While unfortunately, not all goals were met exactly on time, they were all met, and I believe they have a had a hand in some of my recent success in the class, specifically including the final AP multiple choice test we just took. One of my goals had been to read and analyze poems from the 5 steps to a 5 book in order to improve my quick analysis of poetry on tests. I hadn't initially felt comfortable with this, but on the latest test I felt the most comfortable I ever have when it came to the pieces of poetry. I felt like I could actually grasp the total concept of the poems, and could do so in a timely fashion. When we took the first practice AP test for a grade I had only practiced about half of the poems that I had wanted to and although I felt more comfortable with the poetry than I had initially, I still knew I needed a lot of work with it. This final test I felt most comfortable on after having practiced as much as I had wanted to, and it paid off, my grade on this last test was over ten percent higher than my last one.
Another goal that I wanted to focus on strongly was learning new vocabulary, and being better able to identify symbols in writing faster. Identifying the symbols came along with the poetry, and I timed myself with some other pieces as well. Now as I read a passage initially, I'm already looking for, and usually able to identify, the key symbols of a piece. My overall understanding of the piece gets better, and I am much more prepared to address the questions about it immediately. My goal regarding vocabulary had been to learn 20 new vocab words, and I have done that, as well as picked up some extras along the way. I have learned several new vocabulary words in relation to poetry and new literary devices such as, allegory, impressionism, and epigram. I was able to recognize more words on this last test we took, and feel much more prepared going into a test knowing that I'm less likely to not be able to answer a question because I don't understand all the answer choices.
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