End of the Year Reflection

I have had a very successful RLA year. I have learned a lot of valuable skills in reading and writing. One of the valuable skills that I have learned this year is how to analyze characters thoughts, actions, and dialogue in a bigger way. For an example, "She blinked her eyes rapidly and against the rhythm until the redness before them cleared and she could see.” (A Wrinkle in Time, Page 227). From this sentence I can analyze, also from past events in the book, that as Meg was blinking against the rhythm it was almost like she was blinking the parts of herself that she didn't like. Also for reading this year I was very proud of my literary essay. I thought that it was very focused and had very strong ideas. It was very fun to write and I think it was a great piece to end the year with. I think that my next step as a reader next year should be to explore more genres like non fiction and historical fiction. I typically enjoy reading realistic and dystopian or utopian books. I really enjoyed reading The Giver and trilogies, The Hunger Games, and Mockingbird from those genres. I haven't had much of a chance to read much of non fiction and historical fiction but hopefully I will like those as well.

This year I have also really enjoyed writing. One of the big skills that have takeaway was "word smithing" or taking a few words and turning them into one more powerful word. For an example, "The house was really really scary" to "The house was haunting". This skill has helped me a lot with my writing this year and helped keep my writing exciting. This year I was especially proud of my realistic fiction piece. I wrote about this girl, Kate, who has a younger sister, Beth, who is autistic. In my piece Beth has to write a story for homework which Kate knows will be a disaster, while all of that is happening Kate struggles with problems with her absent parents. I am really proud of this piece because it is very personal to me. I have two autistic cousins and I think that there isn't enough stories out about being around autistic people. I am also very proud of this piece because it was very challenging. It is much harder to write about autistic 9 year old then writing about a average 8 year old. Every little movement that a autistic person does is crucial to the story to it was a fun challenge trying to capture every one of those moments. I think a good goal for writing next year should be to make sure that I have a good balance between inner thoughts, dialogue, and description. I always tend to focus on dialogue and description, and forget about inner thoughts. I have really enjoyed all of the RLA projects this year and I can't wait to see what projects we get next year!