Refugee Short Response

While reading the book Refugee by Alan Gratz, my class and I came up with some amazing questions. Today I will be responding to some of the questions asked.

The first question I would like to respond to is. “Why don’t those dictators realize what they are doing? Why can’t they resolve this with some talking and compromising?” I think there are a few answers to this question but the main answer is that these evil dictators want more power and they will do anything to get it. I know this from real life right now. Currently the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin is invading Ukraine solely for power. This is not anything new, for thousands of years leaders have been going out of their way for more power. This is shown in Refugee when (in Mahmoud’s story) it is explained that the Syrian president is dropping bombs on his own towns and cities to prevent rebels from taking power from him.

The second question I would like to answer is, “I wonder how all of these kids get the confidence to do things, and how they get so brave?” I think the answer is that they find perseverance in hope and staying with their family. In all 3 kids’ stories, they are traveling with their families and they are persevering to keep their families together and to get a better life for all of them. This is proven in Isabel’s story when she persuades Leto to leave because she really wants her family to stay together. This is proven in Josef’s story when Josef slaps his father to keep his family together. This is proven in Mahmoud’s story in how Mahmoud is bearing terrible conditions and walking long miles to stay with his family.

Overall, throughout the story Refugee, there are many great questions to be asked.

Feature Article Reflection

I recently finished writing my feature article. My article was about the cold war. This was a very fun and interesting topic to research. I got to research things like the arms race, KGB spies, important astronauts, and much more. Even before I started researching the Cold War for my feature article, I was already very interested in the topic. That was part of the reason because I chose the Cold War for my topic for my feature article. The other part of why I chose the Cold War is because I wanted a detailed, long article and the Cold War is a topic with many other topics to be researched inside of it.

For me, writing this article had its challenges but it also had its fun moments. The most fun part of writing this article was the research. I thought it was really enjoyable to hop from website to website just learning about all the different topics. The hardest thing for me to do was to find the images because the cold war began about 70 years ago so all the images are either in black and white, low quality or not able to be downloaded.

In this piece of writing, I think the most effective technique of writing I used is elaboration and detail. I think I did this very well because my article ended up taking up lots of pages because of all the writing I did on each subcategory. I also think this because I took lots of time going through articles and reading books making sure that I included almost every part of every subcategory. I did this very well in the paragraph Arms Race because I elaborated on all sorts of things like infantry weapons to missile weapons.

Writing this feature article compared to writing my personal narrative a lot because writing the feature article was harder than writing the personal narrative. I think it was harder because I had to do research and the feature article now has a lot more text to it than the personal narrative would have ever had.

In conclusion, writing the feature article was super fun, yet really challenging project and I think it helped me learn so much more about researching and the Cold War.

We The People Bill Of Rights by Adam Lambert

Today in class we watched a video on the Bill Of Rights and we had to answer some questions about it. These are the answers to the questions.

In a free country, to me, the most important right for a citizen to have is the right to have a voice and the right to speak freely. I think this because when you have a voice you can influence the government and try to make the country a better place using your voice. Nobody should be able to silence your voice or take your right to speech away. I think that the most important right for a student to have is the right to know as much knowledge as any one of a different religion, country, culture. This is very important because then all the students have the same amount of potential for their future and they face no discrimination based on those things. In general, nobody should face any discrimination especially if it affects how much knowledge they have.

I strongly think that all citizens should have the same rights because having different rights for different people is what started the Revolutionary War at first. King George was not taxing the people of Britain while he was taxing the American Citizens very much. Throughout history, this continued but it also continued to be fixed. For example in 1920 when women FINALLY got the right to vote. Before that, women did not have the right to vote due to old fashioned beliefs.  Legally, today all citizens have the same rights and the only way for them not to is due to age, crime, etc.

Sometimes our rights can be limited and these rights can be limited for better or worse. For example, the right that says that only people over 18 can vote. This is a good reason for the law to be limited because (most) people under 18 are not mature enough to comprehend the complicated politics of voting. (I still wish I could vote)

I think there are a lot of laws that people believe that there should be. I also think that the USA has a government that could easily adapt to new laws and has been for almost two centuries. One law repeal debate that has been going on for a while is the debate to repeal the second amendment about the right to bear arms.

We The People Stronger- Janelle Monáe

To me, this song means that every time the people get knocked down, they come back stronger and more unified. They get stronger together and they get stronger in times of darkness. This song really relates to our study of government because it’s talking about liberty, flaws in the government, and the people being united

In conclusion, this song makes me feel inspired to help the community and it makes me realize how just one voice can have so much power and make so much good change. The artist might be saying that community helps each other so much that when they get knocked down with challenges they come back up, together, and stronger. This song leaves me with questions about the housing movements in the video and if they are happening in real life.

Personal Narrative and Reflection

I think that some writing techniques I used in well this narrative were dialogue and expanding on detail. I added a lot of conversational dialogue like when my aunt and the instructor were discussing whether we were going or not. I used a lot of internal dialogue when I counted down for my death at the end.

In this story, I really expanded on details, especially when I described the day and where we were at the beginning of the story. I also really expanded on detail when I explained my body language when my uncle was talking.

Some areas in my writing I think I want to improve more is describing people. In this story, I noticed that I barely provided a description for people like my cousins, my uncle, my aunt, and the instructor. Looking forward to the next story I’m writing I will keep in mind to take some time describing the characters.

Something that I am really proud of that I did in this writing piece is use new writing elements that I’ve learned such as sensory language and matching action with dialogue. In Sky High when I was on the zipline I used lots of sensory language as shown in this line when I wrote: “I could hear the choppy wind echoing within my ears”. One example of when I made my actions match my word is when I wrote “Open the door already”, I whined impatiently while tugging on the door handle.”

In conclusion, I am very proud of what I wrote and happy that I am learning from my mistakes and have room to improve.

Resistance by Jenifer A. Neilson- Character Ideas

In the book Resistance by Jenifer A. Neilson, I think that there is a lot of information to be known about the main character Chaya. Chaya is a Polish-Jewish girl living during the Nazi occupation in Poland. She refused to accept to live in one of the ghettos and eventually be brought to an extermination camp so before she was about to leave her family to go to a ghetto,  so she escaped. She joined a resistance group and stayed in it for years. This situation made Chaya a very tough person and she expects things highly from others. This is important because throughout the story these are the main traits she applies to her partner, somebody who isn’t tough and makes lots of mistakes.

I think this could be applied as a theme in many books when the book’s main characters are friends or partners who are different. Some things that are different are worse than others. This leads me to think that from beginning to end the characters even each other out and learn the good things from each other. This brings them closer together. This is shown from beginning to end when Chaya and Lesther; two complete