Language arts- Colby O'Neal

Nota:

• I enjoyed this semester.  We did everything from writing research papers to making elevators out of cardboard.  I enjoyed GT language arts.

1. Poetry
   1. Found poem

      Nota:

      • We made a collage, that was actually a poem!  It was fun, and I learned a lot about poetry.
      1. Figurative language

         Nota:

         • We factored in figurative language, like similes and metaphors, into our found poem.
   2. Blackout Poem

      Nota:

      • We also made a blackout poem: we read and annotated a story, then we blacked out the words we didn't want, making a poem.
   3. Poetry Annotations

      Nota:

      • While we were doing poetry, we annotated lots of stories. It helped me understand poetry better.
   4. Metaphoranges

      Nota:

      • We ate oranges and learned about metaphors.
   5. Where I'm From Poem
2. Expository
   1. Research paper

      Nota:

      • Over the course of a few weeks, we researched a decade and wrote an enticing paper on it.
   2. Persuasive
      1. School reform project

         Nota:

         • We all created a project on how we would like our school to be reformed, and they were all very good ideas.
      2. Persuasive essay

         Nota:

         • In our persuasive essay, we persuaded an audience to do or think about something.  It could be whatever we wanted to write about, as long as it was from out memoir.
   3. DIDLS

      Nota:

      • DIDLS was a way of annotating expository stories.  it ended up giving me a lot of grief, but it is a good way to annotate.
   4. Ratiocination

      Nota:

      • We edited all of our stories with ratiocination.  It included making sentences more proportional, and editing adjectives.
3. Fiction

   Nota:

   • We read and annotated a few fiction stories over the semester, and we wrote a couple as well.
   1. The Elevator
      1. The elevator project

         Nota:

         • After we read 'The Elevator,' we did a project, and made our own elevator, including characters and settings from the book.
         1. The fat lady

            Nota:

            • She still scares me.
         2. Plot structure

            Nota:

            • We wrote down a plot structure for 'The Elevator'.  It was a little weird, as the story had nothing after the climax.
   2. A Tell Tale Heart

      Nota:

      • This was an odd story.  It was the story of a confession of a murder.  
      1. Mock court

         Nota:

         • After reading 'A Tell Tale Heart', we did mock court, to find out if Edgar Allen Poe was guilty of murder.
   3. Martian Chronicles Story
      1. Sci-Fi Story

         Nota:

         • We wrote a sci-fi story that reflected the Martian Chronicles story.  
4. Outside Reading
   1. Annotations

      Nota:

      • We have annotated tons of different things, from poetry to books.
   2. Memoir
      1. Jim Elliot

         Nota:

         • For my memoir, I read a book about Jim Elliot, an American missionary.  He died in Ecuador at the end of the book.
   3. Science Fiction
      1. Martian Chronicles

         Nota:

         • In the 2nd six weeks we read The Martian Chronicles, which was a book with different tales documenting how we colonized Mars, and eventually ruined it.
   4. Mystery
      1. Hound of the Baskervilles

         Nota:

         • For a mystery book, I read The Hound of the Baskervilles.  It was a very interesting and mysterious book, telling how Mr. Stapleton was caught with the hound, and died later.
      2. Hound of the Baskervilles game

         Nota:

         • After we read Hound of the Baskervilles, I made a game, and it reflected The Hound of the Baskervilles very well.
5. A mind map story
6. Created by Colby