Xavia’s English Blog

 Today, we learned about the poem called, “I’m Nobody! Who Are You?” by Emily Dickinson. The theme behind the poem is to be yourself and it’s okay to be different. In the poem, the word “nobody” is describing someone who is not normal/different. So, that means that people who are “somebody” are normal people.

 The probability of life outside of earth is a good 55% probability. The reason behind it is that we’ve already have some theories of other beings living somewhere in the universe. Also, we have already seen some proof of their existence on video. My reaction to seeing the image of earth from mars is shocking but not as shocking. The reason why is that I know that from our perspective the other planets look like stars.

 Today, we read poem called “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brook. We analyzed the poem by breaking it down so we can get a good understanding of what it’s about. For example, on stanza 2, it states, “We real cool. We left school.” Those two sentences gives us the idea that the the boys in the poem are students at a school.

 Writing a original story can be fun but also challenging. First, you need to figure out the settings, the characters, theme, and what your story is going to be about. Next, you need to think of the rising action of the story, what’s going to happen before the climax. For the climax, you have to put the main problem. Falling action is resolving the problem. The ending is when the story ends.

 My origin myth is about the creation of the earth. It consists of the creator, four elemental gods, and spirits.the creator of the universe and the earth told the four elemental gods to shape the earth into what want to look like. The theme of this myth would be forgiveness.

     For the bell ringer, we watched a short film called, “Recoiled”. The message behind the film is to love yourself, you can’t change who you are for anyone, and love the parts of yourself that other think are flaws. At first she didn’t like her hair and how it is. She wants to do other styles, however, her hair was not allowing that. Then, when she had her hair straighten, she liked and then she didn’t like it.

 For the bell ringer, we watched a short film called, “Identity”. In the film, everyone in the school is wearing a full face mask all in four different color: blue, green, yellow, and red. Each of the different color masks represents the certain standards or what group you are in. For example, the yellow mask is the representation of beauty. The main character, however, had a different mask. A white mask with colorful designs on it. At the end of the film, she takes of the mask and dropped it on the floor as she walk out the restroom. She was fine with her not having the mask on. The message of the film is to be true to yourself. For the rest of class, we talked about the Native American Literature and read, “Navajo Creation”, a Native American myth. We learned between the differences between faith and belief. Faith is that you just know and belief is something that needs to be proven.

 I was absent for today.

 For the bell ringer at the beginning of class, we watched a short film called “The Elevator” and it’s about a guy who was judging the people who were in the elevator with him and when he got out of the first elevator to get on the other elevator, he got himself into an even worse situation. The message of the of the film is to stop judging people from what they look like. For the rest of class time, we did a review of figurative language. We learned about idioms, metaphors, similes, alliteration, onomatopoeia, personification, hyperboles, and imagery.

 For the bell ringer, we watched a short film called, “Two Plus Two Equals Five”. It was a film about a teacher teaching the class that 2 + 2 = 5. However, he didn’t teach them how 2 + 2 = 5, instead, he tells them to repeat after him that 2+2=5. Now, three students were against his claim. However, one of the three students that were against the teacher's answer died at the end. The other two students sat there in silence. For rest of class time, I learned about reading with purpose because there would be so many purposes that we have for reading a story.

 What I have learned in American Lit is formal and informal language. For formal language, it must be used for research papers, essays, school assignments, business letters, applications, and any situation where you have to be serious. While for informal language, it would be used for communication with friends, humorous essays, dialogue, and any situation where you can be casual. Also, I’ve learned how to see the difference between formality and informality in sentences.

 Hello! My name is Xavia Ochoa. I go to Cedar Grove High School. I’m 16 years old. I’m from Decatur, Georgia. I like to watch anime, draw, and read webcomics. My three goals for my academic year is to get good grade, get all my work on time, and excel at at school.