1st Quarter Reflection - October 17

     This first quarter has passed by really fast, and I'm actually really glad because I really want winter to come. Looking back at what seems like a few days, I can see that I have learned a lot about world issues that I would have never made the time to learn about on my own. For instance, the Ebola viruses that started South Africa. That topic was first brought to my attention when it was mentioned in class. Now, a few weeks later, everyone in the school is talking about it. Another world issue that has helped me throughout this quarter would be the debate about social media/the Internet. Doing that extra research and learning all different types of facts, like that 1/3 of the entire world has at least one social media account has helped me make a lot of well thought out responses to this topic.

     Looking at what I have read just this quarter, from the entire school year of last year, I see that I have read books that have topics that take a bit to understand. For example, last year I would read a lot of fiction books that just entertained me.  Like How To Deal With a Ghost, which really didn't make me have to do some research on the side to understand it. But with Sold, a book that I have read this quarter, I had to do some research on; country boarders, and child prostitution. This book had a lot more topics that needed more thinking. I chose to compare these two books because, even though they were about two completely different topics, they both belonged to the same genre; fiction. During this quarter, I feel like I have gotten plenty of real world knowledge to be able to make sense of more challenging books.

     This quarter has helped me learn how to analyze whatever I am reading, through a lens. For example, when we had to annotate the short story, "The Most Dangerous Game" through the lens of character development, it really helped me see things that I didn't the first time I had read it. One example would be how General Zaroff changes his mindset towards Rainsford. In the beginning of the story, the General is very welcoming, but once it starts to get dark, he starts telling Rainsford that he murders people for his enjoyment. I wouldn't have known the process of how he changed without looking for it through the other elements in the story like reactions, setting, dialect etc. Looking through lenses while I read