Formal Review of English 100

My reading and writing practices were not changed alot during English 100. When I would write papers before this class I usually made an outline, then my rough draft, then I would write my final draft. Which is the same process I used in this class. I think I have become a better writer because my papers are alot better structured now that I got help making an outline of where everything should go in my paper, even though there isnt just one correct way to do it, this helped me alot. The blog has made me try to write more thoroughly because when we write on here we have to look back and correct our mistakes becuase it doesn't correct them for us, and also we had to write 250 words every time so that made me think of more things I could write about or make something that I did write about more detailed. I liked having the blog in this reading and writing course because doing our homework on this is alot easier than having to print something off every time we have class, and it wasn't due until midnight of that day, so if we forgot to do something we could still get it done that day after class. The blog is similar to a journal because you can write anything you want, and feelings you have and then your teacher will respond to it. Which would be the same if we were to write a journal and then turn it in to our teacher.

Self Evaluation Task Three

My task three paper was about how I disagreed with Leon Botstein about how he thinks kids should graduate at age 16 and I think kids should not graduate at that age. The thesis of my paper was to show why kids should not graduate at age 16, that they need those two more years to fully get everything they needed to out of their high school career and make them prepared to start life as an adult. The main points I made in my paper were, kids might be starting puberty at younger ages but that does not mean they are maturing faster mentally. Kids are not ready to graduate at age 16. They will miss out on alot of things that the last two years of high school are needed for, and some things that are just enjoyable that I think every kid should get to experiance. The most helpful advice I recieved when we did peer evaluations would be that I need to start providing more detail in my writing and make there be a picture in the person reading my writings head. I wrote two drafts of this paper. I wrote my rough draft and then my final draft. I also made an outline before i started to write my rough draft. I think making an outline for this paper really helped me with the structure of my paper. I think I would of included more details and more factual evidence if I was to re-write this paper. I am most pleased with the argument I provide for this paper, I think i had alot of good reasons why kids shouldn't graduate at age 16.

(PAper start)

Savanna McClain

Ms. Chastain

English 100

12/6/10

Education and Learning

            When I was a kid, learning how to read and write was no big deal to me. I thought it was actually fun to be able to write down words that had meanings, and put words together to make sentences and stories. Every chance I got I would be writing in my diary or reading an interesting book. I wrote in my diary quite often. Although my handwriting wasn’t so great at that age, I still loved to write. When I was in second grade I started reading chapter books. My favorite author was Judy Blume. I liked her books because they were interesting to me as a kid, with a lot of detail and pictures. When I was in elementary school I loved to get homework. I liked the way it made me feel like an older kid who gets homework all the time. I started getting older and going to middle school. The older I got, the less and less I enjoyed reading and writing. In sixth grade I started this program at my new school called, reading counts. This program is on the computer and it is a test you have to take that is ten questions long, over the book you signed up with your English teacher. All the students would take a lexile level test before the year started to determine how many points the books we had to read would be. Each book in the library had a number in the inside top left corner that said how many points the books were worth. To pass your reading counts test you would have to get a seven out of ten or better.

            In the story, “The Lonely, Good Company of Books”, written by Richard Rodriguez, he tells us about how his parents only read when they had to. “For both my parents, however, reading was something done out of necessity and as quickly as possible” (232). His parents could both speak English and Spanish. They just didn’t see why people would spend so much time on reading books when they could be getting work done. He tells us that every chance he got he would try to read. He had private classes with the nun every day after school for almost six months to practice reading. He loved to read and he began to get better and better. His mother didn’t understand why he liked to read so much. “…Was so much reading even healthy for a boy?” (234). His mother didn’t think it was necessary for him to be reading books all the time when he could be helping her with chores around the house instead.