5A-James-Q4+Goals

=**James's 4th Quarter Goals**= __Goal 1__: I should try to do my best in making writing more descriptive.

How? I think my writing is fairly dull, therefore, I should learn more fancy, descriptive words to make my writing interesting. Then I can obtain skills for good writing.

__Goal 2__: I should analyze cause and effect when reading books.

How? When reading a series of books, which are linked to the same story, I should think of why this character did this action that supports the story. If I am more aware of the theme and character traits, then it would be a lot easier to have the idea of why the person did this specific act.

__Goal 3__: I should focus on the topic when writing essays or paragraphs.

How? Without thinking or knowing the topic, the writing basic format will be all ruined. If I were to concentrate on the thesis statement and the main ideas, the story is more fluent and it is much easier for others to read.

Date: 4/14/08

1. I think I am constantly using metaphors and similes with a plethora of adjectives to seem as if my writing is realistic. I mainly made my twisted fairy tale in a good essay inclusing a bounty of fantastic phrases to make my writings impressive. I can see that the descriptions of characters or objects are more specifically-detailed. For example, to describe the bulldozer, I said it was a yellow, jaunty vehicle with a humungous trunk sticking out of the sun-roof. Before, I would have wrote, a transportation with a hanging thing. The way I express the object is much more clearer than the past. Therefore, I think I've done a good job on this goal.

2. As I read the Sammy Keyes series, I reminded my self about the reason why the characters thought like this. Also I finshed several other books and I always think carefully how or why the person do this? When I read __Ender's Game__ by Orson Scott Card, it was really high leveled, therefore, at first, I didn't understand what it meant. As I read through, I get what all the past chapters meant. The novel was written in a complex way for fist readers. I was puzzled for the first two hours, then I was suddenly relaxed to the actions of the characters.

3. When I wrote my first draft of my Black Lagoon, my writing was kind of off topic when I started to wander off the main idea. The main thesis staement should have been that Hubie must have been really scared;however, I went into too much details about the teacher that it, at first, seemd as if the main character was the teacher. Although I roamed a lot on my first draft, for my second draft, I tried my best to edit redundant phrases so that there is an equal balance between the character. In conclusion, I think I did a moderate job on putting my mind in the story topic.

Date: 4/25/08

1. I'm putting a lot of effort to create and include good, fancy vocabulary words to improve my writing in the reading workshop journal and my writer's workshop. I sometimes use the words on our class ceiling because they are kind of common and very useful words. I have my own new vocabulary workshop where I write down words I should know and phrases that are used frequently. Some words are like ambidextrous, surreptituous, formidable, etc. If I keep track on with these words I believe that I will constantly improve my writings in a gradually elevating graph.

2. I've been reading the King Arthur series from the MS/HS library. I think I am doing an outstanding job at reminding myself, why the character spoke this or acted like this. At first, I didn't get the novel even 10%, but as I read through until the middle I got to understand the earlier plots. I think reminding myself of the goal is giving me the support to understand the books.

3. I practice writing sentences fluently by checking up words that are suitable for expressing my feelings. I change and peer edit my sentences a lot until I think I can change nothing more. Therefore, my sentence structure fluency is getting better because I alter them 3 times each to make the best sentences I can make.

Date: 5/16/08

1. For our poetry I think I used a lot of gochujang words for my limericks and alliteration. I had to use very complicated words in order to fit my rhymes and beats. The poems allowed me to think of a variety words, which helped me a lot. It gave me more strength in vocabulary that can be useful for my writing when making it descriptive.

2. I read the book __Where the Red Fern Grows__ recently and I constantly thought of the reason why the cause is this event and the effect becomes this event and so on. As I remind myself, it helps me find out important events from the whole novel because I need to be cautious of neighboring events. The alertness is helping me catch all small, specific events from the story.

3. I don't really know because we didn't really focus on writing, so I didn't have a real chance to right an essay. But in other ways, it might be kind of similar to poems, which is a type of writing. I keep the topic the same and talk about it for the rest of the stanza. If I talk about a soccer player I stay and remain in the topic of soccer and specifically about the person.

Date: 5/30/08

1. I constantly put in persuasive and appealing words in our advertisement in the writing category. We had to put descriptive words, persuasive phrases, and sense of urgency, which allowed me to write with amazing words. Advertisements need words to attract the purchasers. I squished lots of adjectives to take away the minds of the buyers.

2. We are doing a Language Art Circle on the __Westing Game__. In order to fill in our jobs and duties such as illustrator, word wizard, connector, discussion director, and summarizer, you need to know every single action in the book. That action might influence the main character effectively,and may be the main point of the novel. Therefore, we have to know the whereabouts of the story.

3. I really had and did focus on the topic because for our recent advertisement, we had to include the object's name 3~5 times in the introduction, body, and even in the conclusion. I concentrated on the main topic for the reason that there was a repetition in saying the object's name. I didn't get confused in this section of focusing on the topic when writin an essay.