Often in literature authors work on trying to create the best character that connects to you which is called a mirror, and characters that are different which is called a window. A book that has a good mix of mostly windows, but some mirrors is Home of The Brave by Kathrine Applegate. Her character Kek does that well. Kek is a kid from Sudan but due to war in his village, he is a refugee seeking safety in America. But he is alone. His mom is missing, and the rest of this family is killed. One window for me is that he has lived in a refugee camp.
Living in a refugee camp is very difficult because of certain struggles. One of the many struggles is not being able to have family to at least somewhat comfort him during those rough, and hectic days. That is a window for me because I have never lived a single day without family, and I have also never even been close to a warzone. Also, that is important because just to get to the refugee camp he had to make a treacherous journey, where they were constantly being chased by soldiers. This must have been really hard for Kek as having no family, in a horrible place, while being chased by soldiers almost all the time is obviously awful.
Learning a new language is hard for people as it is not something they are used to. One thing Kek had to do was learn English with almost no teachers constantly teaching. That is a window because even though English is also my second language, I had teachers and constant help to learn the language, and I was a lot younger (three to four years old). Also, just learning a new language by itself is hard, but not being able to constantly learn is even worse. This must have been super hard for Kek because trying a new language without being able to communicate with anyone except two people is hard, but only having two people who are also not experts on the language, and only being able to talk to them is extra hard.
The most important thing I learned from Kek’s story is that you should never judge a book by their cover. Literally. Just because this book has a little boy in a corner and a cow in the other doesn’t mean it is a bad book. If anything this was one of the best books I have ever read, and one of the best character wise. I also realized just how hard being a refugee, or relocating to a new country is super hard. I just want you to know that if you see a bad book cover, it doesn’t mean it’s a bad book. Take that for books and real life. If you do want to read the book I highly recommend it and I think you will enjoy it!
I liked the state test because it helped me understand the importance for tests as I get older.
For example I liked how they would ask for a “extended response” because it’s like an essay and I know that the SAT is a lot about essays.
Also I liked how it was challenging and how the state test writers always tried to trick you.
I loved the mathematics state test because I’m good at math, and it felt like stuff I already had studied before, also I took the test just if it was a lesson that my teacher was teaching, and that it was an important thing to do.
Overall I think the ELA state test and the mathematics state test were fair and I really liked how they made you show your work. The only thing annoying was that they made you think about the questions way more than a regular test. So 1 question on a regular test might be around two to three minutes. But on the state test it could be five to eight minutes on a single question.
Overall, it was not a hard test. The test was fair and it took me around three hours.
This is a project about Hurricanes. We talk about it in an ignite style, This style is just a way to inform people about something that you know, but the slides automatically switch every fifteen seconds. You have two slides in total so for all it is thirty seconds. How you should share the project is also their saying, “enlighten us, but quick.”
It started when our teacher told us our group. I was chosen to be in the hurricane group. After that we would get together in a group and discuss what subtopic would we teach. The subtopic we could teach where the cause, effects, prevention and safety, how they are measured, and the important events. I chose to do the cause. After we did that, our teacher let us research a bit. We only had around ten minutes to research, but I was able to get a full page. If I’m being honest I would say research was the best for me.
Day two was around the same. The only thing that changed was that we didn’t need to discuss what we where doing as a subtopic. We would have forty minutes to research. I got a page and a half done. I knew from this point on each day would be a page more of research.
Day three all the way to the last day of research all stayed the same I got a page of research in for every day. We would get the twenty five to forty minutes of research in. That would help a lot for the people who were having a hard time researching. It would help them get extra time since it was hard for them to get research in. And for the people like me it helped us get six to eight pages of research.
The next two weeks or so were one of the hardest. We had to take all our research, and put it in a script. This script is where we would put what we would say and what the people watching would see. We started by just putting around ten sentences or around two paragraphs. We would then put the most important parts of the sentences in the script. After that was almost the most important part of the project, it was time to start timing what we would actually say. This part was a huge step in the entire thing because if you could not get a clean timing (around 1 second under or over was fine but it being right on time would be better) You’re whole group what start to have bad times.
After we finished the timing we started to practice the real thing. We would make a google slide show, and add in the photos we wanted on our slides. After that we would go back to the google slide show and add the photos we wanted. We would practice that multiple times. The way we knew we were on time was when we started the practice we would click these three dots that would auto play the slide show each fifteen seconds.
After we practiced the slide show individually we would go back to our group and practice as a group. Our tech teacher helped a lot, he got the entire slide show together from all of our small slide shows. I feel that without him most of this project would have been really hard. him doing that allowed us to actually practice as a group without needing to switch laptops every thirty seconds. After he got the slide show together we never practiced individually anymore. Instead we would always work as a group. I think this was smart because this allowed us to see what was good from other peoples slides and add that to our slides. After around two sessions of practicing in groups we would start to practice with people watching. Those people watching was our teacher and our classmates. This helped us gain a feel for how it was with a real audience.
We did that almost until the real day of the project. A Friday before the real project we went to where we would actually present what we had done for those five weeks or so. It was great to know where we where going, because it gave me an extra feel for how this project would go and the layout for it. This helped a lot because I was able to gain trust that I was going to do well. I always thought I would do well but the fact of just being there helped me gain even more trust.
Now it was time for the real thing. It was the day of the project. The day started almost right after my teacher knew everyone was there. We then proceeded to go where we would share the project. Our tech teacher and regular teacher told us instructions on where to enter leave and a bit more of the layout. After we had a few minutes and we started to present. It started with my teacher and my tech teacher explaining the process. My teacher talked about the unit, and my tech teacher talked about how we made the project. After he would start the slide show and after it turned to the second slide it was my groups turn to show our project. It started by someone in my group explaining what we would talk about and our names. We called that the introduction. I was doing the conclusion. After that I would start speaking. My first slide was a bit over, but when it needed to switch to the next person’s slides it was really good timing. The same time I finished it switched. I feel this made me supper happy because I thought I would not get it spot on. Then the rest of my group spoke. I feel everybody in my group did a great job. Most of ours were greatly timed and the girl who struggled the entire time did it very well. I then did my conclusion. I was a bit under but the girl who went before me was a bit under so I feel that it would cancel out.
Thank you for reading this. If you want to see the final video here it is.
The process of the venn diagram was easy. By the first day of research I had around enough research. And by the second day i had 4 pages of research. By the third day I already started my ruff draft. By the fourth day i had started doing one in Google Drawing. And by the fifth day I had finished. Overall it was a simple process. I feel this was simple because my teacher explained what to do and broke it up to make it a very simple process.
