This week, in English language arts class, we took more time to look into some words and some verbs. While doing this, we took some notes about "blah" words. "Blah" words are basically words that are very boring to use, and they have like no meaning to it. It is a very common word to use, and those "blah" words have even more descriptive words to replace it. There are "blah" verbs, and regular "blah" words. Everyone usually use the old, boring words instead of using exciting words. For example, instead of hit, we could use slam, or pound! When we use more descriptive and unique verbs it makes our writing much more unique and interesting. Mrs. Todesco told us that when we write these words, we will adapt to it more and we will be able to use them in our writing more. We took notes for it and also looked at one of our writings and replaced some of the old, and boring ones with the new and improved words! The notes we took consisted of the words Get, do, make, have, need, take, show, want, bad, good, very, always, a lot, and etc. Some of the words that replaced get are obtain, attain, receive, possess, achieve, and accomplish. Do you see? These words are much better than just get. There are more words than we know than can be used for other words as well! Because of these words, we can actually expand our vocabulary, instead of having the same vocabulary as always. Writing essays, narratives, and other stories will be much easier with a variety of words to use. It is better than just sticking to what we know. When we learn more, we improve more!
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A current event that is happening right now are the announcements of world tours! These series of events make me really happy and excited, and I think it's just about the best thing in the whole wide world! The thing is, it is also kind of a bad thing because all these tours are getting announced at the same time, and I don't think I have enough money for it. Another thing is that I don't know if I'm guaranteed a ticket, and that scares me so much! My favorite artists are the ones recently announcing world tours, and that makes it even better! Sabrina, Harry, and Shawn are all having concerts and I really hope to go to all of them. They are all my favorites, and going to one of their concerts would be an absolute dream! Especially, since this is the first time Harry would be performing solo at a concert without the rest of One Direction :( Anyway, Harry Styles is having a new tour and he is coming to Los Angeles! I really, really want to go to this concert, it's the one thing I'll ever ask for. I want to go to the concert with Pauline and my sister, because they are my concert buddies and are the best people to be around. I'm so nervous when the tickets come out and I hope to go to this concert soon. Recently, Sabrina announced a new summer tour with Alex Aiono and I was so happy when she announced it! Thankfully I was able to get tickets and I am now waiting to go to the concert with Clarissa! The last tour that has been announced is Shawn Mendes, and he is also coming to LA! i got tickets to that show as well and I will be going with my sister! Kaylie, and Mia will also be attending the same concert, and it will be so fun! With all these tours coming up, I can't contain my excitement! This week, in English Language Arts class with Mrs. Todesco, we learned about simple, progressive, and perfect tenses. We have gone over these recently before, but this time, we're going into more depth and detail of what it is. Because of this I understand this concept more. Anyway, in this lesson, we took some notes about what we were learning. Verb forms indicate tense or the time of action. Simple tenses are present, past, and future tense. This was pretty easy to understand, since we use verbs in our everyday dialogue. Present tenses include: play, type, swim, drink, eat, kick, hit, and many more! Progressive tenses are made of the auxiliary verb, and the present participle of the main verb.. The present participle of the verb is basically the -ing ending. This was also pretty simple to understand since we were going over verbs and we had to add the different -ing ending to it, We learned the specific progressive tenses and wrote some examples. For instance, our whole class wrote "Adam is playing soccer" for the present progressive. For past progressive, we wrote, "Adam was playing soccer." Lastly, we wrote down in our notebooks "Adam will be playing soccer," for future progressive. I really understood this and thought that this was very simple. For the perfect tenses, it consists of the auxiliary verb have, and the past participle of the verb. Mrs. Todesco told us many examples and we wrote them in our notebooks as well. We wrote many examples so we can fully understand our lesson, and I'm really thankful for that. For the examples, we wrote "Mateo has eaten a cupcake," for the present perfect tense. We did other examples but changed the tense, and that's it! It was very simple, and it was very, very fun to learn!
This week in English language arts class, we went over commonly confused words on Noredink. For the past month or so, or maybe the past two or three weeks, we have been going over commonly confused words. According to several grammar websites, "They either look alike, sound alike or, worst of all, look and sound alike but have completely different meanings." Words like this include prejudice, or prejudiced, who or whom, bias or biased, let or leave, rise or raise, and many other words. Many people get confused with these words because they look the same and most people interpret the wrong meaning. Even I sometimes get these words confused! Anyway, for at least a month now, Mrs. Todesco has been giving us quizzes on these words so we can identify them and tell the difference between each word. Fortunately, I've been doing well in the quizzes and I am able to tell the difference between these words that usually cause confusion in some people. As I said before, words that commonly get confused are rise and raise. For example, we can use these words in various sentences. But, the thing is that rise is used in the form of increasing, and raise is used in the sense of being lifted, or lifting. This is what we have to remember. Rise is intransitive, which means there is no receiver to the action. But, raise is transitive and has a receiver to the action of something being raised. It is important that we remember these things so we are not confused anymore. If you think about it, these words aren't as confusing as it seems. It is just that the words look exactly alike, but they are not the same at all. We should just try our best at identifying them and remembering the definitions.
So on Tuesday, March 28, the whole entire middle school of St. John Eudes had an event. This event was called: Changemaker Day. It was a chace where we could learn more about ourselves, learn more about our peers and friends, make new friends, change our perspectives on things, how we can show empathy, and most importantly, how we can be a changemaker. The week before, students were nominated by some of the teachers of the junior high to be leaders for this event. I am very fortunate and grateful to be nominated because I experienced how to be empathetic, and learned more about people I've never talked to before. It was amazing. Anyway, as I was saying, I was nominated to be a leader. On Monday, before the actual changemaker day, the leaders went through training for the upcoming day. We did many activities where we talked about ourselves, and I am very glad to say that I felt very comfortable and that I now know more people in the eighth grade. I actually really enjoyed my time there, and I had tons of fun. During the training, we did story times and exercises as well. There was this one exercise where we had to "gaze" into another person's eyes for a minute straight. All of us were doing this and we couldn't contain our laughter. All of us burst into laughter and kept laughing. But, we ended up doing it anyway. My partner was Olivia, and there were other people paired up. Afterward, we were supposed to share how we felt, And then, one of the leaders, who I am not going to mention for privacy reasons, silently sobbed and cried to himself. We all asked why he was crying, and he said he was going to miss his partner, who was his classmate. He said he is going to miss class when he graduates, and that he's been with his class for so long. When the seventh and eighth grade girls heard that, we too, cried. Then, we switched partners. Again, we shared our feelings. My friend, shared how she felt and the memories she remembered and again, almost everyone cried. There was no dry eye. We kept sharing our feelings, and I felt like an emotional wreck. The training was something I would never forget, and I am extremely happy to have been nominated, very happy,
During ELA this week, we focused on grammar, projects, and upcoming due dates for our book report. In our notebooks, we usually write notes for our Voyages workbook. Anyway, this week we started to learn about verbs. We also learned about irregular verbs. The lesson we took interest to this week is the principal parts of verbs. Verbs show action or state of being. Usually, verbs show action. There are to be verbs and action verbs. To a verb, there are three separate principal parts. There is the base of the word, the past, the past participle, and the present participle. The base of the word is just the word in general. The past is the past tense of the ver. For the past participle, you usually add have or had before it, and sometimes it is like the past tense of the word. Present participle is the present tense such as playing. You add -ing to the base. During this lesson, we practiced the principal parts of verbs and irregular verbs. Sometimes this lesson is easy, but sometimes it is very challenging. It can get confusing if you don’t pay a lot of attention. Anyway, we also learned about a verb phrase. A verb phrase is two or more verbs that work together as a unit. So for example, Had eaten. Verb phrases often have one or more auxiliary verbs and a main verb. Auxiliary verbs are: do, did, can, may, might, should, could, and will. This lesson might have been one of my favorites because I think it is easy. But, I have to be prepared because it can get more challenging!
Something recent that has been happening over the past few months that is a current event is the cancellation of shows on Disney Channel. It has been going on for about two months, and I can tell you that I am not happy about it whatsoever. In fact, I am very distraught, disappointed, and miserable. This may have not happened this month, but it has occurred in the previous month, and I am still not over it. So maybe around the beginning of February, Disney decided to cancel my favorite show of all time, Girl Meets World. And let me tell you something: I love Girl Meets World. It is absolutely my life. I love it so much, it is the best show ever. I am absolutely obsessed with it, and the show makes me very emotional, and I can relate to it on a spiritual level. When I got the tweet that the show was ending, I cried. I cried, I sobbed, and I couldn’t breathe. You may think I am over exaggerating, but I’m telling you I’m not. In fact, I’m crying writing this right now. I can’t think about this topic without crying. I was so shocked by the sudden news, I couldn’t even take it. After that announcement there were about five episodes left. I was absolutely devastated, you have no idea. I had to make the best of the situation and was just happy that there were still some episodes. Anyway, I was very happy until the last few episodes aired. They were so amazing, touching, and emotional, I was never dry eyed afterward. I cried so much, and many of my family members made fun of me for it. I sobbed for several days, and cried my heart out. Even now, I’m still heartbroken. I am honestly so angry at Disney Channel because they are keeping shows that aren’t even good. They are also canceling Liv & Maddie which is the next good show! I know that Disney Channel will slowly become worse and worse. It makes me so upset that they cancelled Girl Meets World at season three when they could've had way more. I’m really emotional towards the situation, and I just can’t believe that it’s done. I’ve been through a wonderful journey and I will never forget the show. To Disney Channel, I hope they are happy with the feelings they caused me to have. I am very disappointed. This week in English Language Arts Class with Mrs. Todesco, we had a warm up about who was a better driver: a ninety year old or ten year old. For me, I wrote about how a ninety year old was a better driver because they have more experience and can learn how to be more careful. And also, I don't trust a ten year old to drive me around somewhere. It has to be a specific ten year old I know, and a ten year old who I can trust. It’s better being safe than sorry, am I right? Anyway, after writing in our notebooks by ourselves, we shared with a partner, I think. I am pretty sure we shared with our clock partners or buddies, or however you called it. After we shared Mrs. Tedesco said we have a little debate on this topic. I then got really excited because other people say I am good at arguing, and I think that I could use this “skill” in debate. Most people in my class were on the side of the 90 year olds, while maybe ten percent was on the side of the ten year olds. My side of the classroom thought of some pretty good arguments about who was a better driver and I had a lot of fun. What I learned was how to use some sentence frames in my arguments. If you agreed with something, you could say something along the lines of, “I agree with this because…” or “I agree with this statement because of these reasons:…” I also learned how to use sentence frames when you disagree with something. You could say “Although I agree with this statement, I have to disagree on…” or “This statement could be true, but I argue that…” There are many other ways to say a sentence when you agree or disagree with something in an argument or debate. I had a lot of fun during this exercise, and I hope we can do it again sometime!
This week in English Language Arts, we learned about Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. There are powers of persuasion, and we use them every single day, even when we don’t know what we’re doing. Ethos, Pathos, and Logos are rhetorical strategies. Commercials and ads usually use these rhetorical strategies to try to make us by their product, or whatever they are selling. Ethos, Pathos, and Logos began in Greece, and so did the rhetoric concepts. In ELA, we also learned that Aristotle was a “Greek philosopher who studied the art of persuasion.” Ethos means Ethical or Moral. The speaker can be really persuasive if they are credible, believable, and likable. For example, Selena Gomez, who does the Pantene shampoo commercials, she is credible, because she is famous and beautiful. She is likable because she is THE Selena Gomez and everyone likes her. Then finally, she is believable because she has beautiful, luscious, and long hair. The english words in ethos are ethical, and ethics. The word pathos, is basically about feeling. Pathos is the way you feel about the speaker or persuasion, and it normally has something to do with your emotions. Some persuasive stories are designed to make an emotional response. “When you are persuaded by pathos, you accept a claim based on how it makes you feel, without fully analyzing how valid the claim is.” Our emotions that are usually used in the persuasion of pathos are sadness, anger, love, happiness, and maybe even fear. The use of pathos can also be manipulative. Finally, Logos means logic or reason. It uses the left side of our brain. It also uses some patterns, and methods of reasoning to be convincing. “Numbers, polls, facts and statistics are also examples of a persuasive use of logic.” Ethos, Pathos, and Logos is usually referred to as a triangle. In conclusion, this is what I learned in ELA!
On February 5, 2017, the Super Bowl finally arrived. It was a long wait, but the year quickly came around and it was time. Time to figure out who the next Super Bowl champions would be. The Super Bowl is “the annual championship game of the National Football League, which is the NFL. Before the super bowl, there are many pre-championship games. I am not reallyy that into football, so my knowledge of football is very very weak. (oops) Anyway, as I was saying, there are games that lead up to the Super Bowl. The last two teams that win the two games before the date of the Super Bowl end of being the two opposing teams. This year, the two teams playing for the special game were the New England Patriots and the Atlanta Falcons. There are some people that I know rooting for the Patriots, but almost everyone I knew were rooting for the Falcons. My dad was rooting for the Falcons because apparently, they are the “underdogs” and usually don't win on their games. Before the game started, I could already sense the tension through my TV. I don't usually watch the Super Bowl, but sometimes I watch bits and pieces of it. When its time for the Super Bowl, I usually get excited for the Pepsi Halftime Show. It is always so exciting and fun to watch. I really enjoy watching it because, I love so many artists and many types of music. This year, Lady Gaga performed and I was really impressed. Her singing was phenomenal and she was amazing. After that the game started getting really intense. For the first half, the Falcons were winning by maybe 27 or 28. Then, in the second half the Patriots were able to catch up and score many touchdowns and field goals. In the end, the Patriots won 34-28. I’m pretty sure Tom Brady made the last touchdown. It was so intense, and he nearly didn't make the touchdown. In all, the game was tied for a long time so they had to go into over time! The game was really interesting, and I can’t wait for next year! |
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