Sophomore Portfolio Reflection for English Essay
Throughout the course of the first quarter, I realized that sophomore year is very different from freshman year. There is more time commitment, more effort, and overall more experience in learning new materials. In English during the first quarter I obtained three learning goals through specific activities. The first learning goal that I grew was acquiring and employing new vocabulary to further understandings of core texts.
The activity that helped me grow this learning goal was the literary terms quiz a few weeks ago.Studying for that quiz made me learn poetic devices and literary analysis much easier to comprehend and learn throughout Othello and made reading the AP World History textbook more enjoyable by pointing out literary terms that even show up in boring textbooks. This learning helped me grow a Habit of the Mind which is persisting. This was significant because though Othello may be interesting enough, using these literary analysis terms while reading my AP textbook and even the Chemistry textbook, helped me improve my English skill while learning to persisting in reading the history textbook assignments that are due.The second learning goal that I obtained through English was evaluating bias and determining reliable source work. This in other words if figuring out fact from opinion, and I had trouble distinguishing that from articles and database sources. However, the Nonfiction Notebook long term assigned came into play and after reading through several articles; detecting bias slowly became easier as the days passed. Being able to detect bias was and will be a life long skill that is needed.
No matter what the profession, knowing how to tell the fact from the opinion will be a life long skill.Being able to expose bias will help me make a better judgment or decision based on what I read. Through obtaining this learning goal, a habit of mind that connected to this goal was learning to think flexibility. This is significant to me because instead of just reading and learning what is on a sheet of paper, I learned to question the paper and try to change perspectives on how another reader might feel about an article and such. I learned in essence, to think outside the box and comprehend texts to a more advanced level.The last learning goal that I achieved was using correct grammar, mechanics, spelling and academic language in essays. A good assignment that helped me achieve that was the in class timed essay on the Outliers. This timed environment of an in class essay helped me feel cracked down and read carefully through what I wrote and helped me distinguish mistakes quicker and fix.
Though I am not perfect yet in grammar and mechanics, I made a small step toward the better. A good habit of the mind associating this learning goal was thinking and communicating with clarity and precision.I knew what I was going to write on the paper, and I was able to more carefully write this with precision and accuracy. Having this learning goal is the most significant, because writing papers is a necessity. Writing the paper while conveying your message clearly will help better grasp the readers’ attention, and through this learning goal I was able to stop making distracting errors on my paper. These 3 learning goals in the end will carry throughout my life and will become part of my system.
Using these learning goals helped me obtain a habit of mind sets, and will slowly make me a better person in general.
