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. 

What were the main ideas we learned this past week?

One of the main ideas that I learned this week is just keep going, even when some thing seems hard or doesn't interest you. We all know that when we get to a task that seems hard and takes too much time we just begin to procrastinate and put off doing it. But if you just tough it out and do what you are supposed to do, it will make it that much easier on you. 

To make myself focus on something I like to just put my music in and just forget about my surroundings, it helps my keep my mind on the task that I need to get done. Focusing on things that you don't understand is hard, because it doesn't hold your interest. So you just have to find your zone and really concentrate on it. 

I think that this was important to learn because it helped my get my 'This I Believe' paper done 2 days before most people had theirs done. At first I didn't like that whole point of the assignment and I didn't like the fact that we had to record ourselves and try to work this video website, which I did not understand at first. But I just focused because I knew i had to do it anyway, so I started to mess with it a little bit and began to understand how the website worked, and that made me like the assignment twenty times more than I did before. 
 
You just have to have some drive in you and you have to want to get your work done, and if you just spending a little time allowing yourself to understanf

The main idea that we learned this week in class was to put emotion into our writing, to have some passion when we tell our story. Not only does it help you become a better writer, but it also intrigues the reader a lot more. When people can feel what you feel through words, I would consider it a powerful story, because that is not an easy thing to do. 

Learning that this week took time, it took me a while to really figure out the right words to use, I didn't want anything too simple but I didn't want anything to big that would not sound like me. 

We wrote a paper this week titled 'This I Believe' and it was about a belief that we had and with it we had to write something personal on why we believed that. it took me 3 days to figure out what I wanted to say, my belief kept changing. None of the things that I came up with sounded right to me. But I finally figured out that I need to just stick to it and write and put my emotions into it, it would come together. And it did, my story turned out well in my opinion. 

One other thing we learned this week was that stories are powerful, we learned that people tend to remember and listen better when they are told things through story, rather than being listed off. And I truly believe that, because stories catch our imagination, we get to picture things the way we want. I think that any story with the right wording and the right emotion put into can be powerful and make people listen. 

I really like what we are doing in class this week because it is helping me to write more than just words, it is helping me to put emotion into my writing and allowing my story to become personal. It can be hard, I'll admit. At first I was not a big fan of what we were doing, but now I like it and I'm really starting to get into a lot more.