This week was interesting, we had a project to do in which we had to sort of read between the lines, not just take in what the text said but to actually break it down and understand what it is that we are reading.

When doing this project, my first attempt wasn't very good. But at the same time I wasn't really understanding what it was that I had to do. I went back and tried again for the second time, and this time I thought about what I was doing more and put some more effort into it and it got easier and I did the project a lot better.

Then came time to write in our Shared Leadership Blog, and with that I wanted to get it done right the first time I did it so I sat down, away from every one, and put my thoughts down on the blog. I think that by doing this project this week it improved my writing skills and also my reading skills because it helped me dig deeper into what I was doing instead of just covering the basics and leaving it at that.

I like the way to project was set up this week, though the subject of it didn't interest me, I like  the fact that I learned so much from doing and that it made me feel much more confident in my work.

The main idea this week was to really concentrate on our big question and how that and our book relate to each other. We get into our groups each day and work on our presentation which is a gathering of pictures and notes on the book and how it relates to our big question.
Our big question is 'How can we focus on life without a dream?' and lucky for us, our book is all about the dream of a young boy. I think that by focusing on the big question while reading helps us focus on the smaller details of the book rather than just reading it and being done. This project makes us think about things and break down the things that we read and find the meaning to. 

What were the main ideas we learned this past week?


This week in class I learned that when you have a book to read in class, that you don't have to answer a million questions about it to make sure that you are learning and understanding it. I learned that with just one question, you can learn just as much and focus on the details of the book as much as having a lot of questions to answer. 

In class we each picked a question that we liked and that interested us and then we got into groups with people who chose the same question. After that we chose a book to read, my group chose The Alchemist. The question I chose is 'How can we focus on life with out a dream?' and through out reading this book that is the only question I have to focus on and really pay attention to things that relate to it.

I like how we are doing this because it is different than how we have normally read books in past English classes. It doesn't scatter your thoughts, they stay focused on one thing the whole time. It can make for a much better and solid answer when having only one question to worry about.