Language+Arts

**5th Grade Wrap-Up**
I think I have improved a lot in Language Arts this year. I started to read and understand/remember it. I also started to see different kinds of writing. My favorite book this year were Maniac Magee and The Adventures of Ulysses. These two books were very different but I liked them anyway. Maniac Magee was written with the idea of being different and how people react to having people different then them. i really liked reading Maniac Magee for that reason and more. I liked the Adventures of Ulysses because it was interesting and, as it says in the title, adventures! I also liked it because in this book Ulysses had to make important choices that involved survival for not only him but his crew. It was a very good book that I liked. The book that I didn't like as much this year was My Side of the Mountain. I didn't like it because there was not enough action for me. I also didn't like it because it didn't always make sense to me even when I reread it. I improved a lot in LA this year especially in reading comprehension. I got better at remembering more details about what I was reading and putting little clues together. I learned how to make inferences. I put more work into my blog posts and I wrote better essays. I got a lot more creative. At the beginning of the year I didn't have as much to say in class about what we were reading. Now (at the end of the year) I think I have gotten a lot better at that skill.

Rainbow People and In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson
I think over all I did very well while we were reading Rainbow People and In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson. I think I worked well in the groups when we were reading In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson. I could have added more on the blog and I could have been more detailed. I think that my essay is my best work. I did well on most of my in class quizzes. For Rainbow people I I think I could have done more back and forth on the blog. I also think I could have had more to say in class when we were talking as a class before we wrote the introductions. I think that in the beginning I had trouble writing the introductions but by the end I had gotten much better at it and felt more comfortable doing them. I liked writing the new intros.

This is my Shirley identity essay:

This I Believe
I really enjoyed sharing my beliefs through writing and podcasts. I listened to almost all of the podcasts and songs on thisibelieve.org. I participated in the class discussions most of the time. I was sick the day that we had to work on Dr. King's speech but I listened to it the day after and tried hard to understand it. I understand the different things that writers do to make a point. Both of the people that I peer reviewed told me that it was helpful. I think my best work was shown when I wrote my essays. My glogs also represent my best work. I think that my final work really shows what I believe and why. I see the most improvement after the peer reviews. I think my best work was my personal essay. I could have added more detail. My first glog was the the worst and I could have made it more interesting. I really liked this unit!
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Maniac Magee
Maniac Magee is a great book that has many examples of figurative languages. Jerry Spinelli wrote this book so that you always want to find out what happens next. My best piece of work was my web. I worked really hard on it and made my point clear. If I had it more organized it would have been better. My least successful thing for this book was my blog post #4 It had a lot of random detail. I could have made it more related to the book. To improve during Bud not Buddy I am going to try to focus more on what we should be writing on the blog. Not random detail. I am going to try to give more related detail on the blog during Bud not Buddy. I do see some progress on my blog though. I think I did very well during this book.

My Side of the Mountain
My Side of the Mountain was a good book that we got to compare to Island of the Blue Dolphins. I think I did pretty well. I think my best work showed in my essay comparing My Side of the Mountain and Island of the Blue Dolphins. I showed what I really thought. I could have added some more examples from the book. I don't think I really took my time on the quiz. I could have done better on that. I did very well when we met as a group. I helped out as a leader and shared my ideas. I could have let some people share there ideas instead of going first every time and that stuff. Over all I think I did very well.

Island of the Blue Dolphins

This was our first book that we read for school. I did my best work on my essay. I showed some of my best work. I also did pretty well on my webs. They said a lot about what I thought. I am going to need to work on my blog posts. I need to work on those because I didn't always read the direction carefully enough to know what I was suppose to be doing. I have made progress on my blogging though. My new plan is to read directions before turning work in and write so my writing flows together more. All together I think I was a four out of five.