Reading Response 10/1

Well i'd like to start this blog off by giving everyone a friendly reminder that it's officially the fall! It's my favorite season and i'm so excited! Okay, now back on topic. I'm going to be explaining the plot for my summer reading book, Split. It's a pretty simple book. There was only one big main plot.
At the beginning the other describes the scene of a young man, Jace, driving away from home into a new place to find his brother. She describes his beat up car, and his brother's apartment. In the rising action Jace emails his mother in private asking her to come over to escape his abusive father. Jace also gets a job at a book store and meets a girl who could or could not replace his former girlfriend, Lauren. Lauren presses charges against Jace because he hit her. Jace almost gets thrown out of his brother, Christian's, apartment. The climax is the two brothers drive back home to get mother and risking running into their father. The falling action is when their mother refuses to go with them because she wants to stay with her husband (god knows why). The resolution is when they go home disappointed and angry without their mom. Jace is the protagonist and Christian is the antagonist.

I am a writer...

I am a writer who tries her best to put creative words on the page. It may be easy, and it may be difficult. It really depends on the topic and what kind of mood i'm in. Ha, that's my response for almost everything. "What's your favorite candy?"
"It really depends on what kind of mood i'm in."
"Do you like running?"
"It really depends on what kind of mood i'm in"
I don't think that I am a good writer. Sometimes i'll come up with a few good things and i'm proud of myself until we do group revisions. Than i'm like well that wasn't as good as I thought it was. Some people are really good at it and they don't even try. Other people are really good and they don't realize it. Well I used be a writer who absolutely despised it but now i'v grown to just deal with it. I don't really have a choice so why not just accept it.

Free Post

       On Saturday we had our third cross country meet of the season. It was in Robert which is about 45 minutes to an hour away from Baton Rouge. I love this meet because it's different from the usual meets at highland road park. There are more hills, it's in the woods, and it's at the same place we had our sixth grade retreat. There is actually one part of the trail where you're running on top of this hill and on your right there is the lake with the long bridge over it and the house we stayed in. I remember walking across that bridge and staying in that house. It brought back many memories and good times.
        I'm in j.v. and we usually run two miles at the meets. Well this meet was different. About 20 minutes before our race started Taylor told me that we were running three. I wasn't prepared for three miles physically or mentally! I was flipping out and I was really nervous. I usually listen to music really loudly on my headphones to calm myself down, so that's what I did. I plugged them in and blasted Mercy. It didn't really work, but I was a little bit better. Everyone was reassuring me that I was fine and that I could do it. I was still really nervous. Coach Cole said that we could stop at the two mile mark if we wanted to, but I was determined to finish it. And that's what I did. I was so proud of myself when I crossed that finish line. I'm really glad that I didn't quit. "Pain is temporary, but pride is forever."

Literacy Narrative Process

 I'm not going to lie when we first got assigned this assignment I wasn't too pumped. I was like "ugh another essay", I've never been a great writer. I might have had a few good essays here and there, but nothing too extraordinary. That's why I don't usually like writing assignments, but I should get over it because I have a feeling that I’ll be doing a lot of writing this year. Writing comes naturally to some people, word choice, organization, sentence fluency, and ideas seem to just bounce off their fingertips like it's nothing. It's really like a sixth sense to them, but not for me. I could sit there for hours and write nothing compared to what others do. 

 I really liked the writing group, they really helped me edit my paper to be better and focus on my weak elements. I also liked hearing their stories, although it didn't give me much confidence in my own paper. Hearing other scenes gave me ideas on my own. Not exactly copy their words but more like get inspiration. Like from their scenes and word choice, I could hear a very vivid word and maybe think of another word that has the same meaning that I can use in my own paper. Overall I think my narrative is coming along pretty good so far. 

Literacy Narrative:
1 1/2 hours
My fake Boyfriend:
about an hour

Reading Response 9/17

            I finally finished Such a Pretty Girl this week, yeah I know I read slow. I thought the ending was great, it was a happy ending! This is just another example, though it may be fiction, of my theory. My theory is "It will all be ok in the end, if it's not ok it's not the end". One of my friends said that once and it kinda just stayed in my head. Whenever someone comes to me upset and they don't know what to do I just say "It will all be ok in the end, if it's not ok it's not the end". I'm not really good at helping people when they're crying, I just hug them, listen to them babble over their sobs, and try to comprehend.
           I started reading this other book called Stealing Bases. It's a romance about a teenager who wants to play baseball in college and be good and everything. She's also trying to get over her ex who cheated on her while he's trying to win her back. It's hard because she still loves him. I say, once a cheater always a cheater. I'm liking it so far. This book was recommended to me by my friend. She just randomly read it and really liked it so she told me to read it. I'm still reading it, but i'll let you guys know how it ends!
            I also read three narratives from the norton book. I read "Always Living in Spanish" "Proficiency" and "Se Habla Espagnol". To be honest I really didn't want to read them when it was assigned. And I was really surprised when I actually enjoyed them! They were really good! Maybe the term literacy narrative throws it off...

Such a Pretty Girl
152-158 10 min
158-167 10 min
167-212 55 min

Norton
20 min

Stealing Bases
1-42 50 min
42-60 25 min

Literacy Narrative

                For my literacy narrative I am writing about the first full series I ever read, The Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. It took me about two years to read the entire series with other school books interrupting my personal readings. I remember seeing the array of books with the same author listed on the covers in the library but never thought too much about them, but one day I found some of the novels in a different setting. I was at my babysitter’s house when I stumbled upon her book shelf. I asked her about the first three books from the collection, she told me how great they were and told me to read them.

She let me borrow the three that she owned and I began reading. To be honest I still have the books, and I “borrowed” them years and years ago. Whoops! But I kept reading the rest of the series which consists of 13 books which I have noticed get gradually larger and larger as you go. The series is about these three orphans who get sent off to Count Olaf, their parents’ friend whom they have never heard of, they soon realize that Olaf is just trying to kill them so that he can get there fortune. They escape and go to different homes but Olaf follows them around in disguises. Olaf kills off most of their new foster parents, including Uncle Monty who they grew to love. Along the way the three siblings find out more and more about their parent’s secret life. This pretty much goes on for about thirteen books. I really enjoyed these books, and the movie. I would definitely recommend the series to my younger readers out there.

Comment

In one of my first posts I didn't write very much and we are suppose to write at least two paragraphs. I've been trying to make my blogs longer by adding more detail and ideas. I've also found that sometimes you can twist your wording around and it'll make your sentence longer thus adding more to your paragraph. So I will be revising one of them in this blog.
Hi, I'm Sarah! I'm 14 years old my birthday is November the 14th. I like to have fun, if i work all the time and don't take a break i'd probably go insane. No scratch that, I would definitely go insane. Throughout the week i'm pretty busy especially now during cross country, but on the weekends is when I try to fit in my social life.I'm probably only going to use this blog for english. Blogs are like an online diary right? That's what I think it is, but diaries are supposed to be kept private. I guess it more of a journal? I don't know, but i'm excited to find out all about blogs throughout the year

 I also like to take pictures, I really got into photography on Coach Dupe night at the football game. I'm in year book so I had to take pictures. It was really fun! All the different angles, shots, and colors fascinate me. Something as simple as photograph can turn into something beautiful. You just have to know when and where to take the picture. I'm still learning how to take good pictures, I want to get a professional camera one day so I can expand my horizons. It is definitely on my Christmas list.

Reading Response 9/10

         I did something I don't usually do this week, I read two books at once. I usually only like to read one book at a time because I get kind of confused but it wasn't too bad. I read Such a Pretty Girl at school and the rest of Pretty Little Liars at home. I finished Pretty Little Liars but i'm still working on Such a Pretty Girl. I'm almost done with it so i'll need to start looking for a new book.

 

          I guess i'll compare these books...so both of these books are full of suspense, and contain strong female leads. It's just in Pretty Little Liars there are four different perspectives and in Such a Pretty Girl there is only one. The characters all have problems, except in Such a Pretty Girl Meredith knows what and where her problem is coming from. In Pretty Little Liars the girls are being terrorized by an unknown person...or group... I as a reader don't know yet. Both of the books show lives of regular teenage girls who face problems, their problems however may be a bit more extreme.

PLL

pg 153- 217 66 minutes

pg 217-244  25 minutes

pg 244-269 27 minutes

pg 269-286 23 minutes

Such a Pretty Girl

pg 133-151 10 minutes

Reading Response 9/4

 WARNING: if you're reading the Pretty Little Liars books don't read this
       I kind of took a break from my other book so that I could read Pretty Little Liars because I heard that the books were even better than the TV show. Since I've already seen the show I get the gist of the story and what happens, but in the books there are different details and events. I kind of get confused when I watch the series and read the books at the same time, it also gets repetitive because some of the important events do happen in the series so i'm just like yeah I know what happens. Since i'm reading the first book everything that's happening was from the first season so it was like refreshing what has happened.
        I really like these books so far, they're really suspenseful so I don't want to put it down! The authors word just pulled me in, I really enjoyed it! I love how the author uses writes in different perspectives, it's like multiple stories in one book! The plot was really thrilling and had lots of twists and turns which is what drew me into the book to begin with! I would definitely recommend this series to my friends and anyone who hasn't read it, or if you don't like reading you should definitely watch the show. Sara Shepard, the author, also has another series called The Lying Game. It is also a television show. 


pg 1-97 102 minutes
pg 97-153 60 minutes
total: 153 pages and 162 minutes

Hurricane Isaac

          The day before Isaac struck we were driving around town preparing for the worst. Buying water, food, and other supplies. Everyone was getting ready for the upcoming hurricane, the shelves were empty! People were like squirrels stalking up for the winter. Hurricanes are nothing new to the old residents of Louisiana so we were well equipped with generators, and emergency kits. We know how to survive a hurricane.
          On Tuesday morning I woke up and checked my phone, everything seemed fine it was just a little windy outside. I didn't realize the power was out until my mom came in and told me. It was a good thing I charged my phone over night. It was only about 9 o'clock so the hurricane hasn't stuck us yet. I looked outside and I knew the weather wasn't the same. Leaves were flying, there were no birds in sight, and the sun wasn't shining like usual. As the day progressed the wind seemed to get stronger and stronger as more leaves were falling off the trees leaving them bare. Trashcans were knocked over and so were trampolines. All of my surroundings were normal to me, just another hurricane. It wouldn't have been too normal for someone from California though because they rarely ever get hurricanes, just like we rarely ever get earth quakes.
             The hurricane didn't do much damage to our house, just had to do some raking is all. Our neighbor wasn't so lucky though, one of there trees fell over, and someones trampoline was in the street! Overall Hurricane Isaac had nothing on us compared to Katrina. God bless everyone who was affected or has died because of Katrina in 2005.