Spanish + Orchestra
I feel that overall my engagement in this class is good. I tend to participate more when we go over homework or once I get familiar with the new unit and topic we are studying. When we have just learned a new topic I feel like it takes me a while to start participating if we are not going over homework. This is something I definitely want to work on. Also, recently in class, it has become harder to participate because things have gotten way more difficult, so now I want to work on not being afraid to say the completely wrong thing. Other than participation though, I feel like I am very engaged in class. I am always attentive and trying my best to follow along, looking for keywords when Sr. Zarco is talking.
Goals
One of my goals is to participate more in class and to feel more comfortable sharing my ideas. I know this has been a continuous goal of mine, but I feel like it is something I am still working on and can get even better at.
What work are you most proud of in English class this year, thus far? Choose one project that stands out for you.
The work that I am most proud of in English class this year is my Hanif Abdurraqib-inspired essay. I’m most proud of this work because it required me to step out of my comfort zone and write in a genre and style that was different than what I’m used to. I am proud of how I was able to use Hanif Abdurraqib’s pieces as exemplars for my own work, mirroring his style and weaving some of his patterns into my piece. I feel like I was able to do this while still allowing my own voice to come through in this essay.
When are you most engaged in this class? When are you most confident and or comfortable in this class?
I am most engaged, confident, and comfortable in this class once I have gotten a grasp on the material we are learning and feel like I can start relating the material to other topics or can even help explain it to other people in the class.
What are the helpful habits that you apply to this class?
The helpful habits that I apply to this class are doing my best work constantly and not giving up when things get hard.
Spanish areas of improvement
I feel like I have improved a lot in my confidence in this class. At the beginning of the year, I definitely was not as confident as I am now. For example, today when I was going to take the Prueba oral I was definitely still slightly nervous but I felt extremely confident in my preparation and I also felt confident in all the vocabulary from the unit and I knew that I would be able to succeed. Also, I’ve noticed I’ve been a lot more confident in presentations and tests, and quizzes. I walk into the room and I know that I know what I know and I’ve prepared myself the best I can. One thing I want to improve on is my participation. I want to participate more when we learn new information because if I participate more even when I don’t understand what we are talking about, it will help me understand even more.
A good sense of where they are as a learner; taking stock of their strengths and weaknesses and spelling them out. How can we address or improve on that particular skill? How can you leverage your strength to overcome some of the weaknesses?
My strengths are working hard and completing all the assignments on time and to the best of my ability. I take a lot of care in my work and spend a lot of time reading and trying to understand concepts. As mentioned above, my weakness is participating in class discussions. I can improve on speaking in discussions by not being afraid to say things even if they might be wrong. I feel intimidated by other people in this class who seem to know so many details about history and can easily piece everything together. To solve this problem I just need to be more confident and not be afraid to be wrong because I’m here to learn, and if I don’t input my ideas and feel comfortable making mistakes then I won’t get as much out of the class. I can leverage my strength by taking the readings I am doing and using the ideas I learn there to help me feel more confident speaking in class discussions.
How have you changed as an English student this year?
Before this year I was the kind of English student who would rarely speak up in class because I was scared of sounding stupid or making a “wrong” interpretation. Now I’m the kind of English student who although still a little timid in class and with some of the same fears, is a lot less scared than I was last year. I feel like I’ve grown and become a much more confident English student. I’ll prepare before class with ideas of things to say and make sure that I really think about and understand the material so I can talk about it in class. I think one habit of mind I have embraced this year is to “be open to surprise, risk, curiosity, and growth.” I feel like I have started taking more risks not only in class discussions but in my writing as well.
Where have you been most open-minded and willing to try new things? Why?
I think I am constantly open-minded and willing to try new things in this class. At the beginning of the year, I definitely was not, but as the year has progressed and I have gotten more comfortable, I have become more open-minded and willing to try new things. The reason why is because there are a lot of things that I learn or do in this class that I have never really experienced outside of class. For example, at the beginning of the year when we wrote the group paper on adaptation, I had never written a group paper before and I had no idea what to expect and I was nervous and worried. However, it didn’t turn out to be that bad and it has helped me to become a much better collaborator.
What are the bad habits that hinder your performance in the class?
A bad habit I have that could hinder my performance is that when we are reviewing homework, sometimes I’m paying such great attention that I forget to write the correct answer to the problem in my packet, and then when I am studying for a quiz or test, I don’t have the right answer to check my work against.
Comfort Level in Spanish
I usually feel comfortable, but sometimes I can feel overwhelmed when we learn new material and I don’t understand what is being said. I feel most comfortable after a few days in a unit when I have had time to review the vocab and better understand the topic we are learning. I feel most uncomfortable when we are learning new topics because I get extremely overwhelmed since I don’t understand the words that Sr. Zarco is saying since I haven’t studied them yet.
What are the helpful habits that you apply to this class? What are the bad habits that hinder your performance in the class?
One helpful habit that I apply to this class is my work ethic. I do all of the work to the best of my ability no matter how long it takes me to complete. I also try to go above and beyond by completing the extra credit assignments to get even more out of the class and to use them as an opportunity to learn more about the topics we are discussing in class. The bad habit that hinders my performance is my lack of confidence in speaking in class. While this doesn’t necessarily hinder my performance, I think that if I participated it would give me an opportunity to learn even more. Making mistakes is a key part of learning, so I need to stop being afraid of making mistakes and saying the wrong thing.
Choose two or three other skills or habits of mind you want to work on.
Two other habits of mind I want to work on are “make compelling and logical interpretive arguments that are responsive to the details and texture of texts” and “become attuned to the questions the text is asking.” My plan for making compelling and logical interpretive arguments is similar to what I said above about improving my analytical skills. If I improve my analytical reading skills by pulling the key ideas out of the readings and trying to go beyond surface-level meanings, I believe that this will allow me to make more compelling and logical arguments that are responsive to the details and texture of texts. I also think this will also help me to improve on the other habit of mind I wanted to focus on, which was to become attuned to the questions the text is asking. One way I could do this is to jot down notes while I’m reading, or directly after I finish reading, about my impressions regarding the questions the text is asking.
How patient are you with yourself in this class?
I feel like at the beginning of the year, I was not as patient with myself as I am now. I was always annoyed with myself that I couldn’t understand the concepts faster. I didn’t understand why I found these topics so difficult. However, now, I know that the material we are learning in this class is challenging and it does take a while to learn and fully understand. I’ve learned that as long as I am patient with myself, I will eventually understand it.
What habits of mind or competencies are you developing in this class? On a scale of 1-5, how are you as a collaborator, a communicator, being patient as a problem solver?
The habit of mind that I am developing in this class is persistence. At the beginning of the year, I felt like things kind of just came naturally to me. I understood the topics really well and just continued to practice them to make sure they stuck in my head. However, as we started going into the trig unit, things started to not come as naturally to me so I had to spend some more time working hard so I could continue to succeed. I rank myself a 4 as a collaborator. I rank myself 5 as a communicator. I rank myself 5 as being patient and a problem solver.
What have you learned in this class that you can apply to the rest of your life? - Orchestra
Something that I have learned in this class that I can apply to the rest of my life is how to be a leader. I also have learned how to count in 7/8 which is something I did not know how to do. It taught me that I can do hard things that I didn't think I could do. I also learned how to work as a team and how important it is to listen to the other parts or else it won't fit together.
Where and when have you displayed perseverance? Why? Where and when have you struggled to display perseverance? Why?
I display perseverance constantly in this class. When ideas or topics are challenging, I persevere and do everything in my power to help me understand and get the information. I spend a lot of time doing my best and trying to get a mastery of the material we are learning.
I don’t think I have struggled to display perseverance in this class. As I said above, I persevere all the time. History doesn’t come naturally to me. It is not one of my easy classes. It’s hard for me to capture all of the information and be able to make connections in what we discuss, but I constantly persevere and because of that perseverance, I am able to succeed in this class.
Now, think about your end-of-first-semester reflection. What did you say you wanted to work on. How is that going? What does that work look like? If it doesn't look like very much, what can you do to recommit to that goal? Imagine how working on that goal might feel, and describe how you will imagine feeling when you start working on that specific goal.
In my end-of-semester reflection, my first goal was that I wanted to work on feeling more confident in contributing to class discussions. As I mentioned above, I feel like this is going pretty well. I’ve tried to speak more and more in class discussions and one way I have been able to do this is by sometimes doing readings ahead of class if they are posted, and preparing things in advance to say. It can be challenging for me to come up with discussion points quickly, so it’s really useful for me to prepare ideas ahead of time so that I don’t have to worry about coming up with ideas on the spot. Even though this adds a little more work for me to do at home, it is worth it to me. My other goal was to improve my analytical thinking skills, and I feel like this is a goal I can still improve on. I think that focusing on annotating well as I am reading, especially with the shorter readings we have been doing lately, will help me focus on my goal of improving my analytical skills. I imagine that this will help me feel like I understand the material better, and will probably have the added bonus of helping me with my goal to be more involved in discussions as well. If I have better annotations and have tried to think more analytically about the readings we are doing, I will probably have even more to contribute in class.
What are the helpful habits that you apply to this class?
The helpful habits that I apply to this class are persistence. The concepts that we learn in this class can be really challenging and take a bit of time to learn but even though the topic is hard and it could be really easy to give up, I persist and work as hard as I can in order to make sure I understand the concept. I also have really good self-advocacy skills and will always seek out help from Dr. Mead if I don’t understand a question or want to make sure I am on the right track, and I feel that this helps my success in the class.
List 3 strengths in this class.
Three strengths I have in this class are being attentive, doing all my work to the best of my ability, and not getting distracted.
What would you like to improve on as the year progresses? - Orchestra
I would like to improve on counting and trying harder to play sections that look terrifying.
Where and when have you displayed self-regulation and delayed gratification, or successfully managed your feelings and actions? Why?
I have successfully managed my feelings and actions in this class by not getting discouraged about the tests. I tend to get really overwhelmed for tests, but as the year has gone on I’ve tried to let that go as much as possible and focus more on what I can control, which is trying as hard as I can. I spend a significant amount of time studying for each test, and I don’t just save it for the night before. After every single test, I feel worried because I found it difficult or felt like every other question posed a challenge, and it can be discouraging after spending so much time studying, but instead of getting angry and mad that I didn’t study that one little detail I control my feelings and tell myself that I prepared for that test to the best of my ability.
Particpation
As in almost all of my class, English is one of the main ones I want to work in. There haven't been a lot of opportuntities to particpate recently because of our current unit but it's definitely something I stil want to imporve on.
What are the bad habits that hinder your performance in the class?
The bad habit that hinders my performance in this class is sometimes during group work, we can get off-topic and start talking about other things related to school or sometimes completely random things. When this happens, it can be really hard to get my group back on track and it’ll be hard to not participate in the discussion sometimes. Honestly, though, it really depends on who is in my group. In the group I am currently in right now, I can’t really see us ever getting off-topic or discussing other things other than science, but in the group I was in before, I feel like that happened quite a bit.
List 3 areas where you would like to improve.
Three areas where I would like to improve are my collaboration skills, challenging myself more, and not making stupid mistakes on quizzes.