Celebrate good times COMON!
I HATE winter, like really HATE. I hate the cold, all the clothing we have to wear to stay warm, and how the schools are FREEZiNG. So when spring comes I am beyond happy.
First I go to old navy and buy a TON of their flip flops. I love them. Then I make my mom take me shopping to get a ton of new bright clothes that are spring appropriate. I guess I don’t really do anything different that any other teenage girl does.
The one way that I can really tell spring has got here is when I am not to cold to walk home with a group of friends. Last year I walked home almost everyday with these boys. They would always yell at me because I was too cold to walk, but then when spring came, I would finally be ready to walk. It was fun because we always would joke around and goof off.
On the first day of spring I like to go to the park with a lot of people and just fool around on the swings and slides. Spring is by far my favorite season. Now I’m going to go walk to that same park I just talked about, and fool around with friends.
Earthquakes don’t kill people; buildings do
Earthquakes are a serious problem and the only way we can help prevent deaths is if we use our tax money on schools fire departments and especially hospitals. If we use the tax money then we will be able to keep people safer. The only problem is, where will we find the extra money for this. We are already in an economic crises right now.
I know that out west around the California area, there are always earthquakes and the people living there are prepared for a disaster. Not always, but a lot of the time. My dad was in California a longtime ago, and he woke up to the loud, rattling shaking that was going on. Luckily he was safe. This wasn’t a big earthquake. I think the magnitude was only 4 or 5. But still California was prepared for something like this. But what about in Boston. Are we prepared?
I really don’t think we are and I think it would be great if some not all but some of our tax money went to the government and state officials so we could help build stronger buildings. I believe newly built houses, hospitals or any other building should be built with earthquake resistance materials so that we don’t have to go back and fix so much buildings if a earthquake does come. I don’t think that we should go back and help make the already standing buildings earthquake resistance because that money could just go towards new buildings. Think about it, would you rather have old house/ buildings that maybe aren’t as nice, getting earthquake prevents treatment, or would you just rather new buildings getting it. It’s not the earthquake that kills people, its the buildings.
Earthquakes are a scary thing and very hard to predict when they will strike, so why not start preparing now? You never know when your house could be knocked down from a earthquake.
William
Writing a story is possibly the hardest thing I have ever done for a homework/school assignment. There are so many little things that need to be involved that you just don’t think about. You need to set a mood, be VERY descriptive and make it interesting. One other thing you need to do is make sure you have a main character that really stands out from everyone else. In my story, Thats William.
One of Williams very distinctive character traits is the fact that he black. Sense my story takes place during the time of slavery he is a slave. Being a slave means that he isn’t treated well. His clothes are torn, hands are warn. He has cuts and bruises all up and down his legs from working in the fields. His clothes smell with sweat. But don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t hold William back. He may not be treated nicely, but he never is mean to rude to his master.
William has always obeyed the rules. He’s never back talked to Master and Martha. He has never denied a request to do something. Out in the fields he is nothing but nice to everyone. He make’s sure he does his job right and on time. Please and thank you’s are always said, along with “yes sir” or “yes ma’am.” Out of all the other plantation workers, William is one of the favorites. He just doesn’t know it.
It’s weird to think that at some time in the future, I would have lived in a historical time
This is going to start sounding like a summary of my class today, but today in class we all got computers and were told to write about the qualities that authors agree should be in a historical fiction story. In my mind a historoical fiction story doesn’t sound any more important or factual then writing a fairy tale because techinicly you need information no matter what your writing about. If your writing a biography about someone, you need information about them, and if you’re writing a fairytale, you need information on what people believe dragons and fairys are like. So if you’re writing a historical fiction book, I would think that you need something about old fashioned names, a place, and “old slang talk”.
Elizabeth Crook has seven rules to writing historical fiction. Her rules are:
1. Sweet and small stuff
2. Dump the ballast
3. Keep your conscience clean
4. Resist judging your characters
5. Watch our for first person
6. Don’t get bogged down by back-history
7. Anticipate a long process
In rule number one, Elizabeth bassicily is trying to say to take a simple sentence like; “He’s walking down the streets” and change it to something more intense. More visual, more discriptive. “As Tom walks down the street he can smell the strong burning fuel aroma that the factory on Dodge Street gives off.” Something like this makes it more interesteing to sit down and read. Rule number two: You need to know the time period you’re working with. If you’re going to be writing about slavery, and you say that your story is taking place in the yaer 2010, you’re story is most likley not going to make sense because there is very little slavery still going on. Rule number three is acually in my eyes; simple. Elizabeth is saying with this rule. Your character is just like any other person, except they aren’t alive, you have to get the character right. This includes names, clothing everything in their nature. You really should try to avoid judging your character. Thats rule four. Rule five is not to use too much first person if your writing in the characters own eyes. People don’t like self centered people. Rule six is bassicly just telling you don’t load your writing with so much facts, that it eventually becomes boring. No one will want to read your story if it is boring. And last but not least, her last rule, be prepared to do a LOT of research, so don’t be surprised when you have to keep going back to your computer and finding information.
I’m going to admit that I haven’t read another article yet, but I am going to predict what it is going to say…
“When writing a historical fiction story you must remember that research is going to be everywhere. You are going to have to keep looking up more and more things on the web. You also have to remember to incorporate language that they used back then because if you make it modern, it won’t be “historical sounding.”
When I was looking at ” Help I need a publisher!” I learned that you can change history a little bit while writing a historical fiction story. The only way you can do this is to be sneaky and make the readers be able to believe you. So you can make up a person and pretend like he or she actually lived as long as it sounds reasonable. If it sounds strange and just not right, then the readers won’t believe it, and that could lead to problems. But the one thing you can’t make readers believe is if something happened. You can’t refer to something that didn’t happen. Another thing you need to do in writing historical stories is make sure your language fits the time period, and where you are. If your in the south, your people can’t use Boston slang like “wicked”. The writer of this page says there is three ways to write with language, 1. do it authentically, 2. do it accurate, 3.ignore it.
While reading these I realized that I need to change the way my people talk in the few lines they have. I also learned that it would be a good idea to get a lot more information on Roswell GA, where my story takes place. This will effect the way my story comes out because if I hadn’t read these helpful tips, my story may seem like a bad historical fiction, and I don’t want that. 
Thumbs up ? Or thumbs down ?
I never really have been interested in science, and i deffonitly never have been interested in stars and all the outer space stuff. So I thought that I wouldn’t really like science class this year. I thought that the class would drag on and on and that sometimes is the case. I think that some things we do are extremly boring, but that is alright because other things we do are fun. I really liked the Funky Tube Experiment becuase we got to work with groups. I also really liked the experiment that we had groups in. I forget what it was though. It was the one with the thermometers. Oh it was the one “What heats faster, land or water?” I really liked this experiment because our groups got the decide how to run the experiment and we wern’t being told what to do by you. So what do I think of you Mr.Musselman?
Mr.Musselman, I think overall you are a good teacher. Sometimes when I don’t complete all of my homework assignment but do most, you will give me full credit which I like. I also like how we break up and get into groups almost everyday. The moon balls I absolutly hate though. It just makes the hole learning concept of like revolution and rotations ten times more confusing. Like that time you asked me if Melissa was the moon, Earth, or Sun, and I had no idea because everything was different. Using the light stand as a sun, a ball for the moon, and a person as Earth just gets confusing. You should have a big red thing instead of the light to represent the sun, and then have a moon AND Earth ball for each person to have. I think that would make it easier to comprehend. I’m not trying to tell you how to teach, but comming out of that class, I really think my suggestion would make it a little easier to understand the over all meaning.
Something that I find boring is the videos. I would rather sit there and take notes rather then watch a video because the videos make me want to fall asleep and they sometimes give me a headache. But overall this year the one thing that I learned was that working in teams is so so so much easier then working by yourself. I really like the partner/group work that we do in your class.
So we got into these groups and my group had 3 of my really good friends in it: Jessica, Olivia, and Kate. This I think personally was a good thing. I really like getting to pick our groups cause its always easier to work with people you know real well, then it is to work with people you arn’t so close with. But anyways the assignment was to bring in “junk” that you had around the house, and make a galaxy and then record it. My group I must say did pretty good. Heres our video.
Gymnastics IS a sport & so IS cheerleading
“You guys that’s not how you play!” Next thing I know I have a fall flying at my face being told because I told someone that they had bad sportsmanship just because they got mad at loosing. “You better not do that again, it’s just a game!” Sometimes just having someone annoying on the opposite team makes a game not fun. I mean seriously everyone is in the game for fun, not just to win. Winning is just a plus, it’s the game that matters. Like my mother always said to me, “the winner is who ever had the most fun.”
So is there such thing as a bad sport or a good sport? Personally I don’t there is. Every sport was mad for enjoyment, but you may just not like it. You may not like it for the coaches, the team mates, the rules or just the idea in general.
If someone has a really bad attitude during a game, is that going to give you a negative thought towards the sport? I would hope that it didn’t but I myself must admit that it would give myself a not so good thought about it.
Once when I was on a gymnastics team, my coach was awful. If anyone on the team messed up, we would have to run laps and laps, do chin up on the bars, hold our body up on the beam for long periods of times, or do push ups while standing on our hands. This doesn’t mean gymnastics is a bad sport though. Just because my coach wasn’t so nice, I still enjoyed gymnastics a lot. So what made gymnastics a good sport? The freedom you get while running on the floor just flinging your body through the air just letting out all your emotions that have built up from possibly those snobby girls who think they are better then you. Or those tough days you’ve had in the gym just working out trying to get your routine perfect. All of those emotions are set loose and nothing can hold you back.
And what’s even more amazing, is when you beet the girl who has been stuck up all along, making practices a drag, while she’s showing off. She is the person that makes gymnastics a bad sport. It’s not the sport. But is there a person who makes the sport AMAZING. How about your family. The ones that are there for you, standing behind you, driving far for your competitions, encouraging you saying “You’re the best!” “I know you’ll do good!” “Break a leg!” Your supporters are truly the ones that make a sport good. Forget the haters, and love the supports.
Wegener .. That’s the new me
Well a quick rewind back to Wegener, because I’m guessing that most of you have NO idea who he is. He was a meteorologist. Well have you ever thought about all the worlds land being combined together, and then having it break apart? No one knows for sure if this is the case, but Wegener thinks all land on Earth was attached to each other millions of years ago. But this makes sense because Africa and South America look like they fit almost perfectly. Don’t they?
You may not have got that quick piece of information I threw at your right in be beginning. But I said that he was a meteorologist which means he studied weather and such things. So why was he the one to think that land was all combined and not a geologist. Well geologists are always trying to focus just on rocks and stuff, they were all to busy to notice this (that all land looked like it fit together).
Has this ever happened to me? Yeah it happens a lot actually. I’m too busy trying to do something, when someone else tells me a easier way to do it. This happened today in math class when we were going over the homework. My friend Jen saw my homework and asked why I used so much paper, and I simply said because you have to graph all these to find the answers. Well apparently this wasn’t the case. That was just how we had to do the problems in school. She said all we had to do was plug in the coordinate pairs into the equation, and then we would get our answer. This isn’t quiet the same and Wegeners case, but if you ask me, it is quiet similar.
Sometimes when you’re to busy trying to do something, you don’t notice the obvious things happening around you.
Over two hundred pages of words put into 50
The Midnight Twins by Jacquelyn Mitchard was a pretty good book I suppose. It was kind of confusing because they kept talking about new people, without really introducing them. I would recommend this book though to someone who’s trying to find a good book to read. It was interesting. – Sara H
After reading Twlight by Stephenie Meyer, I think it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read. I never wanted to stop reading. There’s so much detail and it painted a picture in my mind. It was well-written and I could tell that the author spent a lot of time writing this book. – Tristan A
The book Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher is not what I expected it to be. The beginning and middle parts were a bit boring, but it ended more riveting than I expected. It was a bit confusing at some parts. Towards the end it changes a lot, and you can’t put it down. – Jackie M
Toby Wheeler Eighth Grade Benchwarmer by Thatcher Heldring is an underdog story with a message to never give up. Toby starts out as a bad, unskillful, “gym rat” and by the championship he becomes a starter. I liked this book because he proves everyone wrong even himself. I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars. – Chris P
Have I made progress?
Moving from 5th grade to 6th grade is easy. Moving from 6th grade to 7th grade is easy. Moving from 7th to 8th grade is easy. Why does it always seem so easy to get from one grade to another? You always hear these stories about how the next grade is so much harder. But is it really harder, or are you just making progress?
This year I have made a lot of progress in all my classes. Exspecially in english. Last year I never really was good with english, and writing a lot was a struggle for me. I don’t know what happened but all of a sudden I can write a paper easy and quickly. This time last year I was struggiling to get to 100 words. Just in these two short paragraphs I already have 135 words, 137 words. This just comes so easily. Its just like tieing your shoes. At first its a struggle, but then it just comes naturally.
Over the cource of a few months I really think that I have made so much progress with my amount of writing. Last year I would do anything to get out of writing, and now I don’t even mind it. Hopefully I will be even better at writing by the time highschool comes. And trust me, it’s right around the corner. Cross your fingers for more improvent.
coments? why them ?
Today in english, we went through our class mates blog posts, and commented on them. We were told to commeant at least five of them. This was somewhat a challenge because I didn’t always know what to say. Yeah I had my thoughts about the pieces, but sometimes its just really hard to put those thoughts into words. This also was a challenging assignmeant because I have to admit that I was a little nervous about commenting someones piece that I wasn’t too close with.
I started off commenting my friends work, but then I decided to risk the chance of humiliation, and just go and hit that square button that says “comment”. So there I go commenting peoples work that I’m not really friends with. Once I commeant people stuff, I go back to my homepage, and notice that I have comments from people that I’m not really friends with either. I was actually somewhat surprised.
I think recieving comments from both my close friends, and people that I wasn’t exspecting it from was great. It was good because I got to notice that other people care about my work just as well as my friends do. In total I got about 6 comments which was great. I was happy.
One comment I got from one of my best friends said that I could do better, but I didn’t know if she meant to say that as a insult and to just try to make me mad, or if she was legit. Sometimes reading things from your friends is harder then reading things from others.
