16 thoughts on “Exam Review and Course Reflection

  1. When reflecting on the things that I accomplished this semester in English and the previous English courses, I have learned new strategies to help learn new things, improved my writing, oral communication, media products, and reading.
    The course has made my writing better because I am always continuing on how I was in the previous years. I have wrote many things such as literary analysis, narrative essay, persuasive essay, and blogs. I consider my strengths to be in writing a literary analysis and blogs. In my literary analysis I need to incorporate the language of a literary analysis, and when writing through a lens to incorporate the language of whatever lens I am looking through. My blogs have also improved because I am able to incorporate the conventions. Looking at my first blog and the best blog I did this semester I can clearly see a difference in them. My next steps in writing are to incorporate the diction and keep using the peer edit sheets and listening to feedback.
    To help continue my learning I can use the six different strategies that I have learned in the beginning of the course. These six strategies are Interleaving, concrete examples, retrieval practice, spaced practice, elaboration, and dual coding. With these strategies I am able to learn in different ways than the “normal”.
    This semester, I feel like I learned the most and will be able to carry on in the next years. I will remember how to write a definition essay, how to view a book or media through the different lenses, and how interleaving is one of the best ways to learn. These will be the memories that I will cherish and continue to learn when I am finished high school.
    I learned about myself that I can get work done within a certain time frame when I am working alone and I need to step up in speaking to a whole class like I am talking to a group of friends while informing them, persuading them or entertaining them.

  2. As the semester comes to a close I could confidently say I achieved a lot. The four strands in the course are Media, Oral communication, Writing, and Reading. Something that was new to me was the amount of reflecting we did in the course. I found that it benefited me a lot. I did an evidence of learning doc and story of my learning for the first time. I found that those pieces helped me monitor and set goals for myself in the course, in other words in kept me on track.

    I met most if not all of the course expectations. This year was a bit different because it was a bigger blended class so I had the opportunity to interact with my peers and participated more in class discussions. I found that it helped me improve my oral communication. Oral communication wasn’t really a goal in the beginning of the semester. I found myself focusing more on reading and writing. As the semester went on I came to the realization that OC is really important and found that it benefited me in many ways. I was also able to use the learning strategies to help me meet course expectations.

    I used the class resources well. I found myself going to google drive to grab handout, outlines, peer edit sheets. I was introduced the the postcolonial lens this semester and the first piece of writing I worked with was my snow white analysis. I struggled a lot at first but found a lot of support in class handouts. I did the same with my other pieces of writing If I had trouble grasping an idea the first place I looked for support was the resources.

    My experiences in this class have also helped me become a better student overall. This class played a huge role in me learning how to be a successful student. I picked up a lot in english that I plan to take with me into post secondary. One piece of advice I would give a friend about how to get the most from this course is to use the resources around you. Over the span of having 4 english classes I picked up tools that I use in and out of class that improve my learning.

  3. This semester went pretty great for me. I’m really proud of the work I’ve completed and I really feel that I’m getting a lot better in my independent work and responsibility compared to the years before. One thing that I learned new, I talked about briefly in my “Better Lens” post. I learned that feminism is found everywhere and it’s kind of inevitable to resist or totally distinguish. At the same time, there is a lot of good people in the world who are going away from it – straying from tradition I guess. I also learned that there’s more to the Archetypal theory than the Hero Journey. And there’s a lot more terms on Quizlet that I don’t know than I thought, so I should look at more. I also think that I improved a lot in writing essays because I find I’m using a thesaurus more often to replace basic words for bigger ones. I think I struggled with making “The Story Of My Learning” documents because I thought they were a waste of time and pointless when I’d have to do it again in the “Evidence of Leaning” document anyways. However, it helped me recognize what I needed to work on and my average level of writing. By taking this course (this semester), I realized that I can do a lot better than what I thought I could do and how important it is to keep a goal in mind. And I learned that making a remix is harder than I thought.

  4. The end of grade 10 for me. The end of all the times I stayed up working.
    The ends of much-unfinished works. This grade 10 English was hard and challenging being in a room with other grades took awhile for me to be comfortable with them. At the end of this, I realized I learned many new strategies, techniques, tools. And I’m glad I suffered through all of it.

    The things I had learned that were new to me was this 7 learning strategies I never learned these in grade 9 learning strategies. To think, I would learn these in English was weird.

    Another Strategie that was new for me was this annotating. I knew what it was but I didn’t know how to use it. Balen to teach me this I was honored.

    I didn’t want anyone else to teach me this because I knew that where I wanted to learn the best English I can be here in Julie Balen class

  5. Throughout the semester, I learned quite a bit of new things. I learned about the language of literary criticism and how to apply it to different stories. It’s interesting how stories can be viewed in different perspectives and that can transform the whole meaning of the text. Another thing that was new to me: the effective learning strategies. I will definitely look back on the six strategies throughout the rest of my education.

    I completed the following goals throughout the course,
    Learning to purposefully listen to gather important ideas to shape thinking – I was able to create effective notes from listening to podcasts and/or videos during class.
    Learning how specific reading strategies support our comprehension of a text – I am able to identify reading strategies in a text and use that knowledge to comprehend/give my own analysis of the piece of writing.
    Learning how media texts are put together – for me, that could mean learning to create stronger, more meaningful blog posts that engage the reader.

    I tried to use course resources as much as I possibly could. For example, I enjoyed using unsplash for free images to go into my blog posts, just to make them more interesting and appealing. I used Quizlet once in a while to practice my definitions, especially as a study tool for unit tests and the final exam.

    My strengths would include following rubrics to improve my work, staying on task and being fully engaged in my assignments, I listen well in class and support my classmates’ opinions and/or decisions. I think some of my weaknesses are being super slow when it comes to completing an assignment. This usually results in me overthinking the task and I just end up restarting or giving up for a little while, then this takes me to missing the deadline. I have a problem with due dates, which also means that I did not think about the learning strategy, spaced practice. Around the beginning of the course, we learned about learning strategies. The learning/study strategy that didn’t work well for me was spaced practice. The problem was that I was never able to space out my work times and I would always leave a majority of work until the very end, this would result in tiredness and stress. I will remember to use spaced practice and the other learning strategies throughout the rest of my education.

    If I were to give advice to a friend about how to get the most from the course, I would tell them to ask for help when they need it. It is important especially if you don’t fully understand the assignment you are given. I would also tell them to keep up to date with their assignments because if you don’t do one assignment, you will have more coming and eventually everything will pile up. So it is important to complete assignments throughout a certain amount of time.

  6. Throughout this semester I learned new things, and I also did some things that I did in the previous years. The new things I learned was how to do a definition essay and how it should be outlined, concept maps, a remix, and I learned more about the two lenses feminism and postcolonial and the languages for literary criticism. I succeeded in completing some of the course goals. I always used the course resources that we available to me when I needed them, and they were really helpful.

    If I think about my strengths and weaknesses, I’d say my weaknesses were posting blogs, commenting on other people’s blogs, identifying rhetorical devices in a text, and oral communication activities. Some of the strengths I had were doing literary essays, some blog posts, concept maps, listening activities, and writing.

    When I go off to University I want to be able to remember how to make strong essays that are really effective and have a good level of vocabulary, and make sure I remember how to do MLA format. I’m gonna want to remember how to identify devices in a text and also use them in my writing to make it stronger. I want to remember how to annotate texts if I need to do it in the future. I also want to remember how to look at texts through different lenses because you can see the text different ways.

    This course helped me a lot with my writing and my advice to anyone would be to do the work, practice and get feedback to help you improve. Also it’s good to learn new things and try new things because it may help you in the future so take risks.

    I learned a few things about myself in this course, and that is that I need feedback from peers and teachers to improve what I am doing, and I only like to read teen books because I can understand them.

  7. Patrick Beaudry

    J. Balen

    ENG2D

    January 31 2018 Course reflection

    This semester I feel that I have definitely added on a few thing I could use In the future such as being able to write with an expanded vocabulary. I can now write for an expanded amount of time, I can now write essays a lot better than in the past now that I can do definition essays persuasive essays. I have written a what is love essay that I think I did okay on but previously I don’t think I would have been able to write it this way, I have definitely added on to what I already knew.

    I think that I used what I had in effective way I used rubrics I read the outline before writing. A few of the thing that I think worked well were when we listened to a podcast and took key points and talked in group this is something I know I will need when in university or college. I will need this especially when In a lecture hall when the professor doesn’t have time to work with us individually. In 5 year a few thing I think I should keep from this course are how to write effectively, the literary language, also how to write with a different lens. My strengths would be being able to read a text and be able to remember the key points, also I am good with collaborating with others. The thing that didn’t work well were my ability to submit work on time, and I need to become organized with due dates and what I need to get done.

    Patrick

  8. …And that’s a wrap to my ENG3U semester and what a journey it has been!
    As I’ve had that opportunity to watch myself grow as a learner, by reflecting on my own learning via the evidence of learning document, I truly realized some of my biggest weaknesses.
    One of my strengths every year is writing, but this year that seemed to change a little. This year we did a lot of new writing, that is literary analysis writing. Where I seemed to struggle more than I usually do with writing. So I created some goals for myself in my unit 2 story of my learning and I hope that I can watch myself grow as a learning for that too.
    Although I do believe I have succeeded in completing all the goals this semester I will say that there is always a overall weakness to everyone, even if you’re a superhero, so what’s my weakness? Well once again and as it seems to be every year my weaknesses are in reading and letting assignments drag for far too long much like my course summative where I did not read my book till there was 1 week left in the course and didn’t finish the showcase portfolio before the end of the semester. But as a growing learner, in not only school but in life also, I’ve finally realized how important reading and finishing assignments on time is going to be for me in the next 100 years of my life so you can see some big changes coming from me starting today.
    It’s been a great journey in room 121 once again. I’ve seen myself jump some big barriers and I’m proud of that.
    One thing to remember from this course is how important it is to be pushed by someone to keep going. And I thought my teacher did an excellent job pushing us all to move forward.

  9. I feel that I learned a lot about the Hero Journey, more than I did last year. Working with it with the On the rainy River essay really helped me understand it in a whole new context and really examine it. I realized that I, myself need better study strategies in terms of memorizing stuff, which means understanding it and also study-ing more into the definitions.

    In my opinion my greatest strengths were also my weakness’s. At the end of the semester I really pulled through and got my work done – just not on time. But working outside the classroom really helped for me and totally will continue to do so.

    Something that in 5 years that I will take from this course would be the study habits I gained, and also definitions of the narrative elements and vocabulary I studied over and over and somehow got to memorize.

  10. This course, I learned how to reflect and write a story of my learning for each unit. This had helped me remember what I’ve learned and what I need to improve on. A learning strategy that I’ve learned that is most effective is Retrieval Practice. It’s almost the same as a story of my learning but I’m not looking back in my work to find the evidence. Retrieval practice has helped me prepare and study for multiple tests, helps me know where I’m at with my learning, and what I need to study in order for me to understand a concept.

    Throughout this course I’ve learned many different ways to write a blog post, essay, and media texts. It was very challenging and that taught me to not give up considering if I do, I will drown in my schoolwork. Another thing I learned about myself from my teacher and other’s is that I organize my thinking very well and have stamina when it comes to long working periods.

    This course is where I struggled and learned the most. I’ve learned how to strengthen my work, voice and listening. I’ve learned how to annotate and that has helped me in so many ways. I’ve learned about archetypes and how they’re used to assist the reader’s understanding of the text. I’ve learned how to credit someone’s work, no paraphrasing. I feel like I’ve learned everything but I know that there is so much more.

  11. This semester i didn’t do much learning, it’s my fault, i choose to not do work when i supposed to, I had so much free time to do work, all semester, and i just made the wrong decision again and again and again. I was thinking in my big head, all play I don’t have to worry about this, and boy was I wrong, so very, very wrong.

    Next year when I rightfully retake 2D because i’m open to more options if i continue the academic rout. next year i will take this all the more seriously. getting things done on time, doing the homework and creating a stronger work ethic for myself.

    Nothing you do should just be “your best” it should be the greatest peace of work you have ever done i your life, every single time, not limiting yourself. everyone in the world thinks differently you just have to choose what you think is good for everyone. You, classmates, parents, guardians and teachers. you’re a role-model to someone. I just have to do better.

  12. Over the course of this semester, I believe I have grown quite a lot. I know a lot more now, then I did at the beginning. My writing is clearer, my thoughts are more organized and I have been making decisions that work best for me and my learning. Off the top of my head, I know I can use the study/learning strategy of spaced practice well in my home and school life. And I’m doing my best to try and prioritize correctly and effectively.

    In my writing, I never could truly express my thoughts as clearly as I would have liked to. I learned (on my own) how to properly use a thesaurus and word definitions to express my thoughts clearer, share my ideas better. I’m also glad I was able to learn about syntax, tone, and diction. I’ve always wanted to know how to use sentence structures and word choice to the largest extent I could to get the most impact out of my writing. I think I did understand (and show that I understand) what syntax is in my responses to the Respect essay. And, although I haven’t exactly implemented these tools into my writing I definitely plan to when journaling and in the next essays I might write in other courses.

    Before this semester I didn’t know how to annotate or properly annotate in a way that worked for me. So when we did our learning with the literary lens’ and did understanding and comprehension of a text, and did annotations a million and a half times, that really got the task to become a habit. I’ve found my understanding of a text to be clearer now. An example of this, I purchased a thrift The Hobbit book, and without really knowing that it wasn’t needed or mandatory, I had already annotated 3 pages. I hope I keep this skill with me forever, I think it’s really useful for organizing my thoughts and keeping my understanding of the text relevant. And again, I’ve been able to understand more texts because of their syntax, tone, and diction.

    The course blog has been really helpful to me, I think I’ve made good use of my resources this year. I have also made the decision to use Google instead of Office, since this way I can keep my resources with me, even after high school. I’ve learned that I can be really effective in the way I use media to help me study. I’ve decided I’m going to use quizlet for other subjects in the future, Hypothes.is helps me when I’m reading PDF’s etc. One thing I didn’t expect to learn more about was with media tools. I thought I knew it all, that it was usually digital and you could hyperlink to your blog and hooray! That was all. I don’t know why I didn’t understand you could absolutely take media tools to the full extent with images, gifs, videos, music, art and what have you. That you could put your personality into something and have it considered proper media text. So, that was something I didn’t expect to learn.

    Overall this was a really good learning course for me. I liked having the older students to reference my level of work to, I liked the bigger class size since it’s not something we get often at WHS. And I enjoyed all the different people I worked with all year. Next year, I hope to find ways to create better titles for my work, and to incorporate syntax into my writing.

  13. During this course, we worked on writing a literary analysis, remixes, concepts maps, and reflected on our work. In this course, everything that I learned was new because I never really had anyone to push me in English-which was one of my worst subjects about a year ago. But this year, I believe I succeeded in having in reshaping my thinking, organization, completing work on time, speaking more, and getting out of my comfort box. To achieve my success I believe I have used my resources very well. It was very helpful using the filing cabinet and the tracker to see what work I have completed. Personally, I think my teacher would say my strengths are completing work on time, planning for the future, and catching up on work.

    I do not think any learning or study strategies were not important because anything learned can be used to help you succeed in future courses or events. Also, in 5 years I hope to use and recognize the art of writing good essays because without this class I would be struggling in University with knowing how to write an essay.

    The advice I would give to a friend if they were doing this course would be “If you are going to do anything, do your work on time because everything plays off of each other.” If I taught this course I would give my students more time to complete major assignments, and cut down on work given.

    During this course, I learned how to write essays properly and that I am the master of completing homework in a short amount of time.

    -Aaryn

  14. While being a part of the ENG2D course, I would say that although it seems that I’ve taken more misses than hits, I have improved my learning from the previous year. A lot of the learning I did was taught from the year before but this year it’s stuck more. Lessons such as theme, conventions of an essay, etc. are all examples of what were familiar from the year previous. A part from the similarities, I wouldn’t have changed the way the course was done because overall it seemed well done, I would just choose to reach out for help so that I’m able to fix my understandings and be able to expand in my learning.

    Along the ways in the reading study, where there should’ve been learning, there wasn’t much of it. I’ve realized that I should’ve been learning subjects regarding paying attention to to experiences revealed within the text, understanding the differences between ideas and how they are crafted. Reading between the lines has been a bit of a struggle for me so it would appear hard to understand a big aspect of a story within a small detail.

    This semester I have expanded my learning within areas such as media where I have learned to pull apart conventions, techniques, etc. of an essay. Going off of almost the same topic, I felt the same was as to learning how media is put together, learning how to build an essay was very familiar as to what I’ve been learning over the years and although it seemed familiar, I was taught a new outlook on how to create which made it overall an easier process. I haven’t done a lot regarding creating media pieces but an example of such would be the concept map. That piece has introduced me to an easier way of sorting my thinking and understanding how pieces connect together.

    I have learned quite a bit in the beginning of the semester as regards to the process of learning. The Six Strategies of learning is what comes to mind and it was a fun area to learn about, and really expanded my learning on ways that I can improve myself within my learning.

  15. How may I have changed this course? To be honest, I have changed, I have changed a lot academically. Though, maybe not for the better. Maybe, I am just unable to motivate myself. I have once heard “those who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocracy no matter how amazing their other talents” I believe this to be true. This year I was much more content with mediocracy than I was last year. I let myself fall. Like a gravel filled hill, one wrong step, fall and it’s a slippery slope. This year, I had let myself fall down into that slippery slope. Last year, I had merely tripped and fought to climb back up again. It wasn’t easy last year, but I had done it and succeeded. However, this year not so much. I was happy enough doing okay, not happy enough to motivate myself to do great.

    I have learned a lot from that change. It may not be a great change, but mistakes are only mistakes if you don’t learn from them. Failing to do great this year gave me a new perspective. I now realize you cannot just keep floating along, content with the littlest things. You need to try your best if you want the best out of a course. Next year, I will strive to do my best. Be content with good, and happy with amazing. I would advise other students to do the same. To get the best out of a course, put in your best. Now I have learned that I need to do more.

  16. from Charisma’s blog…….

    Compared to last year, this was defiantly my weakest year in English. I wouldn’t skip school for no reason, but it would be on the worst time to do so, as there was important assignments and rules that have to be taught. For example, I missed the day we would be given the story “On the Rainy River”, making me miss the deadline. I would always miss the deadline for everything, giving me an N in responsibility and organization on the Mid-Term Report Card. In fact, there are some assignments I still haven’t finished. Next time, I have to try to go to school all the time and always focus on the assignment that needed to be done before the deadline.

    Despite this, not everything was bad. I’m better at taking criticism than ever before. I learned how taking people’s opinions, both positive and negative, is important on getting better. I can tell this to my friends in case they want to make a story. I’ve also learned all kinds of better ways to study, such as using Concrete Examples as study sheets. Finally, when my work was done, it was really good, showing I am improving compared to the last year two years.

    All in all, my teacher would probably tell me that my work overall was good, it was my learning skills that stopped me from getting a good mark. I wouldn’t get my work done in time and/or I wouldn’t finish it at all. If I don’t hand it in, it gives me an instant zero. If it was two years ago, I would feel depressed. But now I know that mistakes and failure are just another way to reach success.

    I promise, I will improve for the best in Grade 12, my last year in High School!

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