Blog for week 11-11-15 Auggie & Me

      I have currently finished reading Auggie & Me by R.J. Palacio. This book is about three kids who cross their paths with Auggie Pullman. Auggie’s appearance is not like everyone else’s and because of that, people decide to disclose themselves from being his friend. Charlotte, Julian, and Chris have all taken part in Auggie’s life, whether they are close friends of him or just there to cause him trouble. 

      The theme that is best showed throughout Auggie & Me is courage and I think that the character’s actions show it. The character’s actions are all standing up to someone. For example, Julian stand up for himself to his mom when he thought something wasn’t right. 

      Another example of bravery is towards the middle of the book. Chris has been Auggie’s life long friend. As years pass, they lose contact and Chris makes new friends. One day Chris and Auggie FaceChatted and his friends thought Auggie was some kind of monster. This is when  Chris realizes that he has to stand up for his friend because treating someone that way isn't right. Chris showed courage by taking a chance to continue to be Auggie’s friend even if it meant losing some people on the way. 

Commented on: Jude's Blog, Amelia's Blog, Hazelle's Blog.

1st Quarter Reflections

      I can't believe that we have reached the end of the 1st quarter already! A lot of strategies have helped me to get through the quarter, like writing down my assignments, staying on task, and keeping up with the work. I've learned so much during the past quarter all thanks to those strategies, I also learned new words each week. Every week we get vocabulary words and we have to copy them down into our notebooks, so we can study for our test on Friday. Writing down the vocabulary words into my notebook helps me memorize them since it's easy to study really quick before a class.

      My 40 Book Challenge has not improved so far. I think this happened because I am trying to do so many things at one time. I set up a time for myself to work on one thing then move onto the next. This has helped me because I finished a few books each week. One thing I forget to do is updating my "goodreads" account with the books I'm currently reading or just finished.

      Annotating AoW's has become second nature to me. This is because the last quarter taught me how to annotate an article correctly with all the lessons we did. I feel like I didn't add as much thought as I should have in my annotations but for second quarter I'll do better since I didn't fully understand how to do it.

A Corner of the Universe 10-27-15

Prompt: How the conflict drives character development (causes the character to change)

A Corner of the Universe

By Ann M. Martin

Read up to: 1-189 (finished)

      In A Corner of the Universe, Hattie Owen's uncle comes in the summer to stay with her. During the summer, Hattie discovers that people don't give Adam a chance before they judge him. Adam has admired one of Hattie's "friends", Angel, and makes it his duty to make her happy. One day, Hattie and Adam go to the upstairs of the boarding house and see something that they weren't supposed to see. Adam was heartbroken because he thought Angel was better than what she was doing, so he stormed out and was missing for a few hours. He was found dead when the police found him.

      The conflict in this story is obviously Adam's death. His death drives Hattie to be sort of rebellious and stand up to her grandmother. By standing up I mean she tells her grandmother that how she has been excluding Adam from the outside is not ok and that she needs to think about how her decision has affected him.