In a lot of books you have a connection with a certain character. This is called a mirror. If you do not have a connection, it is called a window. I do not have any mirrors with Kek. There are so many things that Kek has experienced but I haven’t. Have you ever been a refugee? Kek is a refugee from Sudan and had to flee his village because of a war. His immediate family is gone. His mom is missing and his dad and brother were killed. There is an incredible amount of windows between us but in all, two feel the most important.
Kek and I are extremely different in many ways. But one of the windows we have is that I have never been to a refugee camp. I learned that the education in the camp is poor. That seems really awful. I learned that living in a refugee camp is very difficult. One example is considering the fact that he had no family members with him. This would make him feel really lonely and he wouldn’t be able to feel as safe as he would with his parents or brother. In addition, he had to learn English in the camps and it was very hard for him. I never felt what it is like to have to start from scratch with a new language. Furthermore, the education in the camps was terrible so Kek was so new to all the things in America. Lastly, Kek had to wait in a line for the entire day just to get a tiny portion of food rations. I can’t imagine waiting for an entire day and ending up with such a small amount of food. I eat three giant meals a day so comparing that with eating food rations seems insane. This is how I learned how very difficult a refugee camp can be
This window is incredibly awful so I have no idea how Kek went through this because I know I couldn’t. The window is that Kek was extremely lonely. I have never gone through this. I have always felt that I have an awesome family and awesome friends. One of Kek’s losses was his brother. He loved his brother even though he got scolded by his brother sometimes. Katherine Applegate says that Kek would do anything just to hear the scolding of Lual once again. He also misses his father and mother. Katherine Applegate also explains that Kek misses his old home. He said that he didn’t need a thermostat, he used his family’s laughter as warmth. He’s really upset about not having his immediate family with him. At first he was truly trying to sound certain that his mother was alive; though Ganwar is trying to push Kek into reality by telling him that he has to face the truth sometimes. This must have been really hard for Kek and I cannot imagine how he must feel.
In conclusion Kek has faced so many things that I have never experienced. It would be so hard for me to have to know that my parents aren’t with me. I would want to try and be like Kek and just think hopeful. Most of Kek’s life is a window for me but I think it’s pretty cool to read about his life.
The day I was getting my weather group, I was super excited. I had Jason, Jenna, and Willow in my group. The first thing we did was figure out our subtopics. I chose effects, Jenna chose causes, Jason chose how they are measured and Willow chose prevention and safety.
We started researching our topics for 20 minutes after we figured out our subtopics. I was not doing very well. I didn’t have that much research. It was stressful for me but I realized that it was only the first day that we were researching. The second day was better. I got 2 full pages of research. I felt great. I was doing a pretty good job in terms of what I had. It was also good for my script because I had a bunch of sentences that I knew I was probably going to use. By the third day of research I was using epic for info and I didn’t get as much as I expected. Then, I tried Kiddle and got a ton of stuff. It was like gold. It was really cool to learn all of this information that I didn’t know. I had learned about how roads could lift all the way to cities collapsing. By the fourth I had tons of research and was still building up. I had 5 pages and there were so many websites still to be looked at. By the fifth day I had 7 pages and still going. I used Pebble go Next and got 2 full pages of research. I realized that 9 pages was more than enough so for the entire second, (and last) week of researching, I helped other people in my group.
After research, we worked on our narrative with Mr. Casal. My narrative started out very short. I only had 3 sentences. But I built up. I used tons of research and put it into my narrative. I had a ton of research and I realized that I would have to cut a ton of that out of my script. I had to cut out a lot of important stuff but I still put the most important stuff in. There was a lot of waiting and thinking involved in the process and I thought I was running out of time. I realized I wasn’t when I finished my narrative and asked if there was enough time, Mrs. Rickard told me I had more than enough time to finish my script. I had thought that my narrative was perfect but it turned out that there was still a ton of punctuation and technological stuff that needed to be finished. I still had plenty of time for my script even after all of the extra stuff was done.
When I started my script I wasn’t nervous because I had already gone through the process of doing it before with my Wevideo. It was a little different this time because I only had 2 slides. Each of my slides was 15 seconds so I had to cut out a lot of words from my narrative to make a reasonable amount of time for me to say my words. My script work was harder than I expected because I only had 2 slides to fit my most important sentences. I had to cut out so much stuff so I was really mad. I still pushed through and figured out the best way to make my words make sense. Once my script was done I had to start figuring out the timing part.
My timing was super off at first, it was 38 seconds in total. When I tried to do just one slide, it was 26 seconds alone. I was super angry but I realized it was part of the process. I took a lot more out after that and I was very surprised that it still made sense. I was happy too so I tried to time myself again and it was 14.95 seconds for one slide and 15.06 for the other slide. I was so relieved because I could finally make my personal slideshow. Once I made my personal slideshow, I had to start practicing using auto-play for 15 seconds on my personal slideshow. It was pretty decent on that but I had only memorized a couple of sentences. The next day I memorized an entire slide but I was still stumbling on my words so the timing was very off because of my stumbling. By the time I stopped stumbling on my words, I was mumbling. No one could understand what I was saying. Once I fixed that problem I realized that I still had a whole other slide to do. I finished a couple of slides and I was doing great. I was super happy because by the time I finished memorizing my entire script, I still had a week and a half to help other people in my group.
Now I was in the timing process with my personal slideshow. Since I had memorized everything I was going to say, I got to practice without having a second tab on my screen that had my script on it. I was doing well but I still had to help people when I was finished timing myself on my personal slideshow. I was finished with timing myself on my slideshow so I took the time I had, which was a week and a half to help the other people in my group.
We went back to the computer lab and Mr. Casal had to make a slideshow for my entire group to combine all of our stuff. Before we did that, we put pictures in our personal slideshow. They had to be Put in our slideshow in a specific way, luckily it was easy enough. We started practicing as a group once we had our group slideshow and we put our pictures in. We did that for a couple of days and it started out very rough. We weren’t doing that well, but luckily we progressed after a few days. After about 3 days, Mrs. Rickard said that individual groups should start practicing with the group slideshows on the smart-board. We weren’t great but we all made an improvement since we started practicing on my chrome-book. The days passed and we were getting better and better. After about 3 and a half weeks since the project started we went to the computer lab for the 4th time. We practiced in front of Mr. Casal with a tripod and he said that we were amazing. We went back to the classroom and practiced again. This time, Mrs. Rickard said we were awesome and that we just had a couple more things we had to perfect. The week went by and then another. By the day of the real Ignite I was super excited and very confident. All of the group slideshows had been turned into a slideshow with everyone’s stuff combined. We walked to the new multi-purpose room and the parents walked in a couple of minutes after we did. We started the presentation a couple minutes later. Everything went perfect. Every group was awesome. It was really cool. The best part about it was that I did not feel any pressure and I loved it. It was easy all the way. I thought the overall project was very fun. I would not change anything in the process.
The State Test for ELA or reading and writing starts on March 29th and ends on the 30th. It is two days long. The math part of the state test starts on the 26th of April and ends on the 27th. Both parts of the test are two days long. For ELA the first day questions are multiple choice this means that there is A B C or D and you have to pick the right answer, you have to think which one is the best answer. You’re going to have two sheets, one is the real packet and one is the bubble sheet. the bubble sheet is what the scorers scan through the machine to see what you got right and what you got wrong. The packet is supposed to help you if you have one answer in the packet and a different one on the bubble sheet.
For the second day of the state test, there are short responses where you have answer a question and then you have to use details from the text or paraphrase words from the test to prove your answer. There is also an extended response where you have to make an introduction with the title and the author’s name and you have to answer the bullets. The bullets are questions you answer and then give text evidence or paraphrase the text, the bullets are kind of like two short responses. At the end of your extended response, you have to make a conclusion where you answer the bullets in different words than your introduction, at the end of your conclusion you have to write the lesson learned once yo have done all of this, you are officially done with the state test for reading and writing.
This paragraph will talk about the State test for math.
The math State test starts on April, 26 and ends on the 27th. The first day is 25 multiple choice questions. Multiple choice questions are we have to choose A B C or D, we were persuaded to pick what felt best to us Some of them are questions that we haven’t studied in 3rd grade yet but we could figure them out because we learned a little bit of whatever the concept was, in the grades before. Personally, I thought that the first day was simple and there were no tricky questions. I had no difficulty on the first day. The words were not poorly chosen and I could understand every part of what they were saying.
For the second day of the state test for math, we had to do 6 short responses where you write the answer on three lines, we had to explain our thinking. there were also six multiple choice questions and you already know what they are. There is also a long response which is normally a two step math problem. I thought that the second day was harder than the first day because there was harder questions and more poorly worded ones. The questions were harder to understand and they were longer which made met tired. I had no trouble with the second day even after everything I just wrote. I will admit that the Math state test was easier than ELA State test. But I really liked both just the same.
It was very fun learning about a new weather event. I learned about the effects of Tsunamis. I used the info I already had on Earthquakes and used it to help me with the venn diagram. I only chose the most important info on both topics like I did with the narrative for Earthquakes. I did that with Tsunamis too. It was strange to research Tsunamis for only 2 days but I managed to get enough information. After this and the Ignite, I’m hoping that the next project will be a blast.
