Final Portfolio Reflection

The two assignments that I am most proud of are the creative project and the comparison/contrast summer reading paper. I’m very proud of these two pieces because they were my favorite ones to complete and they both show evidence of my best work and most effort.

The Swimming Home assignment was a favorite of mine because it gave me a chance to dive into the complexity and thoroughly analyze a book I had read and enjoyed. Initially, the book was confusing for me, but by the end I discovered details and meanings of the work. I was very proud of the creative aspect of the assignment and had a great time contemplating items of loss in the book and relating it to water with the fishbowl and items. My strength through this project was deciding meaning of the book to the chosen prompt and coming up with and creating a project. My weakness was, like always, coming up with the perfect thesis statement. I tend to want to use run-on sentences but had to limit myself to short, simple, and straightforward statements. This assignment was very helpful for me with regard to writing and interpreting meaning and thesis statement.

The comparison/contrast summer reading was my other favorite assignment because of very similar reasons. Like the creative project, I was given the opportunity to dive into the complexity and analyze a book I had read and enjoyed. I was very interested about learning mis en scene and picking a scene and comparing the book and movie. My strengths throughout this project were connecting the meaning of the book to a certain event as described in the prompt. My weaknesses were tackling and comparing the en scene since it was a whole new assignment to me. I worked really hard at learning, though, and came out of the assignment understanding elements of mis en scene and with new knowledge and skills for comparing and interpreting meaning of books and movies.

My participation in regard to this class has varied over assignments given throughout the course of this past trimester. In terms of participation in class, I’ve come to class everyday prepared with the materials necessary and have frequently given and asked for help among my peers. With this class I have learned what determines self-motivation for me. If I am given an assignment I’m excited about, believe I can accomplish successfully, and believe I have enough time to do it, my self-motivation and determination will be very high. Whereas, If I am given an assignment that does not interest me, that I don’t believe I can accomplish successfully, and/or don’t have enough time, I’ll psych myself out and have very little motivation to do my best work.

In terms of my participation for individual assignments, such as papers and collaborative group assignments, my self-motivation varies as well. I find myself putting in the most effort when it comes to my individual work because I know that the grade I receive is all on me. I also prefer the challenge to learn and produce on my own because it gives me the opportunity to grow as a student. When it comes to group work, my motivation is half and half. I do my best to contribute and offer my vision and ideas but most of the time I find that another member of the group has a better idea than mine. Although this is a frequent occurrence for me, I always find a way to compromise and work with the group so that we all end up doing an equal amount of the work. Knowing that there are people relying on me to finish an assignment motivates me to make sure the work I’m assigned gets completed and no one is let down.

Taking the AP level of English IV pointed out my strengths and weaknesses better than any other regular and Honors English class I have taken in the past. I have learned many things about myself and my abilities that will help me to improve and succeed in the future. I was surprised to learn that I do not know nearly as much about literature and writing as I originally thought I did. This was evident when I took my first AP literature practice exam the first week of the trimester. I could hardly recognize or define most, if not all, of the literary terms and devices or various types of poetry, sentence structure, etc. Along with those struggles, another major struggle I encountered was that I did not understand how to dig into the deeper complexity and overall meaning of a piece. I also found that I had trouble with completing poem analysis with the amount of time I was given.

For the future, and more specifically before the end of my high school career, I’m going to make it a goal to familiarize myself with and memorize literary devices, different types of poetry, and sentence structure before my second trimester of English.  I will also continue to practice my time management skills when taking a test with practice exams and, of course, tests taken during the school year.