How did the writing process (brainstorming, drafting, revising, proofreading, and finalizing) shape the strength of the final essay, and what was learned about your personal strengths and areas for growth as a writer?

 Prompt Response: Its difficult for me to get started but if uninterrupted I can really focus and get into a flow of writing. Getting into that state is quite difficult in a classroom environment full of people and sounds of coughing, typing, feet bouncing and music bleeding out of headphones but I feel I managed as well as I could.

Summary: we wrote the final essay

Reflection: I should invest in noise cancelling headphones

Why is drafting an essential step in the writing process rather than going straight to a final version? Use your own experience from this essay to explain how drafting improved (or revealed weaknesses in) your thinking.

 Prompt Response: drafting helps you really see weak points in your explanations and wording, allowing you to already start with a base and replace words to strengthen your point rather than writing straight from scratch and coming up with things on the spot.

Summary: We wrote our draft

Reflection: I wish I prepared a little bit more of a strong thesis.

Reflect on your writing process for essays. Which part of writing an essay do you struggle with the most (for example: developing a thesis, organizing ideas, finding strong evidence, writing introductions, or explaining your analysis)? Which parts of essay writing do you feel most confident about? Explain why you feel strong in those areas and what specifically makes the challenging part difficult for you. Include at least one goal for how you plan to improve your essay writing skills.

 Prompt Response: I really struggled with finding evidence as it felt like such a vague goal, with an entire book of evidence its difficult to only choose 6 pieces for an entire essay. For me personally I had to really just narrow down to specific ideas and rely on memory of what words were used in those moments so I could search for them. 

Summary: We continued preparing for our essay

Reflection: Combing through an entire book for evidence is exhausting

After viewing your classmates’ digital posters and reading the feedback comments left on your work, what new ideas or perspectives did you gain about your poster? Reflect on how the feedback influenced the way you think about your creative choices and describe what you learned about the creative process while designing and presenting your poster.

 Prompt response: People seemed to really like my poster and a common opinion was how mine stood out in format and color especially. I had alot of fun making my own poster from scratch using some y2k assets I found on Pinterest rather than just using the stock assets from adobe.

Summary: We reviewed each others posters

Reflection: Im lowk goated at graphic design and thats definitely not ego talking

Reflect on the simile and metaphor worksheet. Which topic challenged you the most when creating your figurative language, and why? In your response, explain what made that topic difficult and how you worked through the challenge (or what you might do differently next time).

 Prompt Response: Appearance challenges me the most, I could have chosen something harsh or negative but growing up, in middle school people didn't really care for comparisons, they would just look at you and call you ugly. My mom is an English major so she tends to use alot more figurative language than the average person would so I quoted her instead.

Summary: We worked on our simile and metaphor posters

Reflection: Making a poster from scratch was really fun and I liked the creativity of it.

Today you created similes and metaphors that reflect your struggles, growth, and resilience. In a well-developed paragraph, reflect on the process. What did you learn about yourself while writing your figurative language?

 Prompt Response: Frankly the most difficult part of the process for me what remembering specific times that I could use as inspiration for my metaphors and similes, I didn't want to just make up a generic scenario like being a beautiful butterfly or my hair being a rats nest, I wanted to choose specific times from my life so I could be more creative.

Summary: We created similes and metaphors about ourselves

Reflection: I can remember alot more experiences from elementary school in vivid detail than I thought, alot of the experiences I used for my quotes came from grades 3-5.

Describe how you spent your time, any activities, traditions, travel, hobbies, or moments that stood out to you. You may also discuss something new you tried, something you learned, or how the break helped you reset before returning to school. Keep your response appropriate for a school setting and focus on experiences you are comfortable sharing publicly

Prompt Response: Over break I got the opportunity to meet my future illustration professor at CU Denver, and show him my current artistic portfolio. I was able to receive critique as well as praise from someone ill be learning from for the next 4 years.

Summary: We read and analyzed Maya Angelou's "Still I rise"

Reflection: Every year of high school in our English class we review this poem and every time I feel like I understand a little more of it.