Work Hard and Persevere-
It is a difficult challenge to work hard and persevere but in the end it pays off greatly and is the best work ethic that I know of other than work smart not fast. To be able to work hard you must start with a good attitude in mind and the ability to manage your stress and to push it away to get work done efficiently. But, without persevering it would be impossible to work hard and have a good sustained effort. Earlier this School year my class was writing an essay for a book we had recently read and I was doing horribly. By the end my paper was four days overdue and it was about half written with no revision, it had gotten to the point where my teacher called my parents and from that point on I have risen out of that and worked harder ever since. It showed me that I was working poorly and I had a horrible attitude when I attempted work but now I realize the problem and I am working on it to perfect my effort and I have persevered through my own hard time. But a moment of success was in the rocket project and I had no partner but in the end I got the second best time in my class all by myself with 11.29 seconds and a clean egg.
Communicate-I have improved on a lot this year including public speaking and getting my ideas out to my class and others also through the power of movie making. At the beginning of the year I would have been huddled in a corner trying to look away from everything if I was in a movie but now I am fine with whatever happens because I need to do it and I should be proud of my work. Also my public speaking was really bad too because I would fall over my words messing things up and forgetting lines because of butterflies in my stomach. Now I can push away all my thoughts and get up and give a decent presentation of what I want to get out in a clear voice and feeling comfortable.With all these wonderful improvements in this year there are still some things I need t work on. Like I said, I can give a decent presentation but not a great one. This is because I forget my lines and end up staring at the screen or paper to remember what I need to say, so just need to start remembering to practice in front of a mirror to remember my lines. Also, I need to control myself on group projects. Sometimes I take over and do it all myself or I just distract the group slowing down our productivity. What I want to learn to do is how to recognize when I am doing one or the other so I can help others learn to and not mess them up too. I think I need to just not get so tense and serious on group projects so I have energy for the many to come.In the future communication will be vital to my life, it will help me get into college and into job. I will need to communicate for college so I can let the people there know who I am and why they should want me there. It will also be important for me to get a job because in this economy I will need to do a lot of talking to get a good job that I want. It is also a good skill for my social life because without communication my life wouldn't be very fun and that is something that I just couldn't live with.Learn-
In this school teachers try to make the students communicate a lot to build up skills for the future by making us do partner or group projects. Throughout my 8th grade experience I have shown communication in many aspects, I have learned to talk to my teachers when I am falling behind, I can communicate in spanish, and in group projects. These all aren't necessarily perfect but they have been important this year for my learning and success. Ever since I started talking to Ms. Pyeatt about trouble with my essays they have gone from about a B/A- average to an average of all A's. In the egg drop project I had to communicate and collaborate ideas with my group partners to come up with the best egg catcher possible resulting in us having the second most successful catcher in my class. Communicating and collaborating have been two very important skills this year to help me improve.
Throughout the year I have been learning lots of new material in all of my classes. In Ms. Pyeatt's class I have learned most history material from her giving lectures or taking notes from a textbook occasionally. I also learned a lot in composing presentations because I had to take note then too. It was not only my presentation that helped it was also hearing what others had searched and all helped me succeed in class. In math class I learned a lot in preparation for tests and I also learned form my mistakes so later I could fix them on other work. In science I learned a lot before and after mainly but also during projects. Mr. Lammers would help us learn material from all our resources and pooling them together to generally make one large document to use for tests or projects. In spanish class my main source of learning was conversation in spanish throughout the class period and I have greatly improved on that. Over the year I have learned a lot and in many different ways but all tying together as one.
I have also have improved on many learning skills this year making it easier for my learning experience to come. A big skill I have improved on this year is self assessment and writing reflections has helped me get into a good habit of that. I used to never check any work but mow I review everything to get the best score possible while boosting my effort grade. Another problem I have is seeking help when I am having problems and nothing would get done but now I have started to talk to people like Ms. Pyeatt to get help on my writing. I also ask lots of questions so I am less likely to actually have a problem and it has helped a lot.
I want to work on my study and practice ethics so I can do better on big things, so all I need to do is just find a few minutes to look over my work. Although I can self assess better I need too review my writing and edit it thoroughly. I would also like to interact in class other than spanish so the teacher will notice my learning and I can have a better effort grade.
I see this skill affecting my future later in school and to help me know what I need to do in a job. Really the rest of my school career will be learning but I need to perfect this skill so I can get good grades and succeed. It will also be important in jobs so if there is something I must know I will learn it very quickly and it will help me through the rest of my life.
Collaborate-
One of Carolina Day's main goals is to increase interaction skills between students through daily work and projects on class. The most collaborative times I have experienced are during group projects were everyone has to figure out what they will do and when it is needed so that everyone can work together to make the best outcome possible. It is harder I think to work in larger groups because sometimes it can get confusing paired projects are a lot easier to me. One of my best paired projects was the artifact project where we were given an artifact and we had to make a presentation on it and through hard individual work my partner and I were able to make a good project. My least successful project was the imaginary land where there were about four of us and everyone was confused and not a lot of work was getting done and it was very hard to work through because no one understood a plan because there was no collaboration just a struggle for one leader to dictate the group but no one wold let that happen. What I think was the hardest group project in the year was the Hiroshima debate. It was especially hard for my group because we had a harder side to make the audience believe and we did not work together well and did not do as well as we had hoped. Throughout the year I have had success and difficulties but I have persevered to end up with a good grade.
After my difficulties I have looked at what had gone wrong and I have figured out how to fix most of them by enhancing what I needed to work on on my next project and that method has worked out very well. I have improved on my skill of helping as much as I can while spreading the work evenly so my whole group can feel like they learned something and not just one person having done everything and all others learned nothing. To improve that I have offered more ideas into our project trying t improve them. I also try to listen to what others have to say so they have their opinion put in too. To let them have their ideas offer I also have to understand where they are coming from and I have to accept their ideas instead of rejecting them. I sometimes compromise with them so the outcome with have different ways of speaking and will sound more intelligent. To be able to understand I need to improve my trust in others or else I will be too cautious and the project will only work for me and no one else. I have always had cooperation problems because I am hard headed and I like my ways better than others but thankfully I have been able to improve my acceptance and I like other people ideas its just that I don't always trust the ideas because I might think they are out of order when they are perfect I just can't see it. My overall cooperation and communication just need to be balanced out so I can become a beneficial group worker to help myself and my peers.
Collaboration is an important skill for my future so I can work with others to compromise for long term situations or learn how to make quick and vital group decisions. Planning ahead will also be important so I can learn to work well with others and in the end make good decisions together.
Solve Problems-
Throughout my 8th grade year I have faced many challenges given to me by my teachers some bigger and some smaller but all requiring the skill that I can solve the problems. My largest and most recent problem I had to solve was the research paper I was assigned by Ms. Pyeatt and it took me a long time to figure it out but trough hard thinking and identifying what I needed to do it was simpler and faster because I thought about what I was doing and found the best and simplest way to finish it. I think creatively a lot in art class because most of the time I am coming up with what I want to create but it is hard for me because I am not very good at coming up with creative and cool artwork. I am a lot better at that kind of thinking though in Science class because it is a lot easier to build science experiment designs to me than building a pot or making a painting.
This year I have improved on identifying problems which has been very helpful but sometimes it is a lot harder to fix the problem but at least I know where the problem is instead of being oblivious. I realized at the beginning of this year that I was missing a lot of work but I did nothing about it figuring it would slide by but it caught up with me and I had known about it the whole time but I did not fix it and I was ruined for that trimester. But as the year progressed I was able to find the problems and get help to fix them or fix them myself so it would not mess me up. I have also improved on my planning ahead and thinking hard to make an almost perfect work schedule but with a few occasional slip ups. I have also been very strict with myself so I will identify what I did wrong earlier so the next time I do a similar task I will not make the same mistake again.
I feel though I have not always been a very creative thinker and it is hard for me to sometimes solve an easy task but I will not understand it. It is especially hard for me to get it at this school because the teachers strive for out of the box thinking which has made me struggle and learn and I am getting a little better at it but not great. I could also so I am not a very good critical thinker because when it is time for me to focus I cannot but when it is not needed I can think about one problem and solve it very quickly. I just need to start thinking independently instead of compiling information from people next to me to scoot along instead of asking a teacher to come help me so I can learn what we are working on permanently.
In my future I see this skill in every day life especially for the rest of my school and working career. In my working career I will need to think all the time and it will be necessary to think critically if something is broken and it needs to be fixed very quickly or in school editing a paper to its very best. Solving problems will also be important in social life because if there is a dispute of fight I could hopefully intervene and stop or if I am the angry one I can identify what is wrong and work with the other(s) to compromise to make everyone happy. So where ever it is I will always be to solve problems and size or length as long as I fix and master these skills.
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