Objective: Creative Writing
“Thunderstorms”
Shows Improvement

Explanation:
I am a pretty basic creative writer, nothing too exciting happens when I write- however I do still put some good ideas on the page. I struggle finding word choice to make my pieces reach their full potential in creativity and that is something that I would really like to focus on in the future. I think I excel at organizing my writing, it is usually pretty easy to get a good idea of the story line. I did a good job of organizing my thoughts in the piece, it took several drafts but in the end I was happy with the final product. I had good development throughout the piece, leading up to the climax of the lighting and bringing out its whole tone. The reason I chose the rank “shows improvement” is because I felt like there could have been a lot stronger word choice involved to make the piece feel more dramatic but I did add some. It was also kind of missing a little bit of a fiery spark to leave a lasting memory in the reader’s mind.

Objective: Academic Writing
“Until Divorce Do Us Part”
Meets Objective

Explanation:
It took a lot of research to get to a good place in my academic writing but I can now see how far I’ve come. I would consider myself a pretty good academic writer, partially because it’s easier for me to have something to base my writing off of than it is for me to just come up with my own stories. I struggle at times to make both the facts and my points flow together smoothly, so that is something that I am continuing to work on. I did a good job of picking different aspects of divorce that were important enough to talk about in this paper. I continuously brought up new ideas, making sure that some of them even connected so that the piece would come together better. I chose to rank this piece “meets objective” because I felt like it was a good, understandable research paper with plenty of facts to back up what I had to say. However, it wasn’t the most amazing research paper ever written either.

Objective: Big vs. Small Revisions
“French Class”
Meets Objective

Explanation:
I generally don’t tend to make a lot of big revisions, I usually just focus on the little things that need changing in a certain piece. There are times that both do happen, but in the future I would like to make it more of a requirement for myself to make sure I have several drafts consisting of big and small revisions. I had to kind of mix up the plot line from my very first draft to the final. Several drafts in I focused more on detailed things such as dialogue and making sure everything was correct with that. I also had to make some word choice edits to make the piece have an element of creepiness. I chose to rank this piece “meets objective” because I made some good revisions with multiple drafts and it turned out to be a good piece of writing.

Objective: Grammar/Conventions
“Playing to Prove them Wrong”
Meets Objective

Explanation:
I usually have pretty good grammar and conventions throughout my pieces. At the beginning of the year I struggled with changing tenses throughout the story but as the year has gone on I’ve done a lot better. Sometimes my sentence structure and comma placings can be a bit questionable as well, so that is a work in progress. Here, I wrote a simple story about my adversity that used good grammar. I especially made sure that my sentences all flowed together to make sense. The organization that this piece held was also respectable, I made sure that I shared my story first then moved into how I overcame my adversity and what I learned from it. In this paper I had some of the least amount of comma errors yet this year. I ranked this piece “meets objective” because grammatically and even content wise it I think it was a well written piece.

Objective: Close Reading and Analysis
“Case Files” (Wargrave, Blore)
Meets Objective

Explanation:
This particular objective takes a lot more critical thinking because it requires looking deeper than the most obvious meaning of what the text is saying. I think that I did a good job of this even at the beginning of the year. I like drawing conclusions from only partial bits of information and that is kind of what this is. Even though this is a piece from earlier in the year I think that it shows this objective really well because we were analyzing the characters, not just quotes from the book. We had to try to figure out who was the murderer and that made me personally look a little harder at the people’s behavior. I ranked this piece “meets objective” because I was able to make some pretty solid conclusions about the characters from what I got from the book.

Objective: Holistic Reading and Application
“Mark Antony for Rome”
Shows Improvement

Explanation:
This particular objective focuses a lot more on the big picture and what is the text saying and even what it means for life today. This isn’t as deep of thinking as analyzing everything but it takes a lot of thinking because you have to see how it can relate to the world today. I did pretty good at this, in the Julius Caesar we looked a lot at leadership and I was able to easily relate that topic to today’s world. I did a good job of finding quotes about leadership that could relate to the world today even though we didn’t necessarily have to mention that part in this particular assignment. I chose the rank “shows improvement” because I made a lot of good points concerning the big picture, however there were times where I made some leaps with my own ideas.

Objective: Author’s Craft/Style
“Adversity Novel Presentation”
Shows Improvement

Explanation:
The focus of this objective is to see how I personally responded to the particular text, even the mood or tone. I did a good job of this, it’s really just a personal thing. You can’t really go right or wrong with what you have to say about someones writing, however as the year has gone on I’ve started to look for deeper meanings, analyzing more closely because that’s what we’ve been learning how to do. I have done a lot of following patterns especially with “Touch the Top of the World.” I always had decent reactions to the quotes that I picked out, but sometimes there were references that I think I could have expanded a little bit more on. I ranked this piece “shows improvement” for that reason, I just gave forth my initial thoughts not digging too deep.

Objective: Speaking/Presenting
“Informative Speech”
Meets Objective

Explanation:
I think have grown tremendously as a speaker/presenter through this school year. Not only because we’ve had countless opportunities to present speeches but also because of my writing process. I learned to make several drafts of my speeches before landing on a final one. I have also become much more comfortable with speaking in front of the class when it comes to presenting. My informative speech shows the growth I’ve gone through this year because it really just demonstrates my best written outline and that led to the best speech, in my opinion, that I personally have presented this year. I had a good amount of bullet-pointed words so I wasn’t just reading off the paper, but I also had plenty of information so that I didn’t get lost during my speech. The reason I chose to rank it “meets objective” is because it does meet the objective, it was a well written, organized and presented speech.