Poetry Prep

• What are your usual strategies for reading a poem?
• My usual strategies for reading a poem is to find the meaning of words that I don't know or am not familiar with and discussing the meaning of the poem with other people to look at different opinions.
• How many times do you read the poem?
• I would usually read it a couple of times to see if I had miss out on any important keywords or hints.
• Do you read the footnotes (if they exist)?
• Not really, no. :(
• Do you use a dictionary?
• Yes.
• Do you read the poem aloud?
• No.
• Do you take notes?
• Yes.
• What problems do you have?
• Understanding some words, but with a dictionary, poems are actually fun to read.

Reflection (17/9/12-21/9/12)

This week, the Figurative Rap rocked my socks off! I didn't think that we were actually assembling a lyric until we heard the song. I thought it was a really fun activity. Our exercises on simile, metaphor, hyperbole and personification were really comprehensive. I think that it was a good start to the idea of poetry with simple exercises as such as I am only warming up to the practice of using figurative language.

BTW THE ANSWER TO LAST WEEK'S RIDDLE IS WATER BOTTLE! :D

I would like to do writing exercises like the mini essay we did this week to apply this fresh knowledge as it will slip off my mind if I don't constantly practice using them. I am finding this topic to be more and more interesting as I'm exploring and learning about interpreting and digging deeper to find a meaning. I expect to improve in organizing the way I write and my interpreting skills through continuous, small writing exercises. It's been a great week! :)

Reflection( 10/9/12-14/9/12)

This week we reinforced our knowledge in producing an argumentative essay again. It's been a while since our Hero essays and as proven, I've forgotten to include many important factors such as topic sentences, zooming in to words and writing a conclusion. With a few nifty highlighters, I rewrote my essay. I do honestly enjoy writing essays for a change instead of typing them onto the laptop as it keeps my handwriting at practice. The only trouble is keeping it neat as I often cross out a lot of points and words. Regular short essay practices could seem like a great idea to help me build up on my essay writing skills as it took only a couple of months to flush some memories of producing a good essay down the toilet.

Today we also played a game similar to 'Taboo' that requires us to help our partners understand a word without using certain descriptive words. Great and simple game to see how we can expand our vocabulary as I find describing 'winter' quite a challenge when I'm banned to use the word 'season'. Creative writing has also never been this hard when writing about an inanimate object(check out my previous post!) but it was certainly fun to take on this new challenge. I hope to improve on this aspect of creative writing after seeing works of the previous Yr 11's  as it was certainly inspiring to see such brilliant works of creativity from them.

Familiar to unfamiliar

(Have fun guessing haha!)

Fit in my ravenous grasp. As I hold you near my lips. Keep me alive. I cannot get enough of you. Cool my body.  I long for the sight of you as I feel parched. Cool to my touch or warm according to your daily heart's content. One hand holding firmly onto your neck while the other clasps onto your waist, as we share a gentle kiss. Complying with all the necessary standards. Some of our relationships don't work out for a long time but if you are genuine on the inside, we will go far. Fill me up. I'll try not to put the extra heat on you. Let's meet up casually everyday. I'll be sure to keep you my by side.

reflection (3/8/12-7/8/12)

This week in English, I really enjoyed our class discussion on poetry. Poetry has always been a very foreign thing to me as it can always be seen in so many ways. I often get confused about the poem itself as I do not know how to interpret and break the poem down to search for it's meaning. I hope through more lessons on it, I will begin to grow out of my 2/5 rank for poetry.


Having the discussion on the carpet was really helpful and fun as we were able to conduct a productive discussion. I would like to do more discussions like that as we are all proactively engaging each other in discussion and it's not a bore. I am glad that we are all able to converse with ease as this also help those who do not speak very often.

I seem to feel that when we're in smaller groups, discussions were not as productive such as during the THG analysis session. I intend to explore more poems and find out the different types of poems. I've tried writing poetry but I would like to know what makes a poem good. What makes them stand out? What escalates them to fame? Why do so many people relate to it? These are just some of the questions I hope to answer whenever I ponder on poetry in the future.

reflection 27/8/12-30/8/12)

Holidays came to an end and work commences once again! This week had been a  productive and great start to English in Year 11 with great presentations from my fellow classmates. I really did enjoy some of them, remembering bits and bobs such as Idura's neutered cats and Afifah's obsession with sweet potato and lasagne. 

 Throughout the presentations given and my presentation today, I learnt that most of us have forgotten to include a debatable topic like our essays, hence our presentations were mostly one-sided and had no arguments in it. 

 I also felt that I've somehow went off topic when I presented today as my classmates could not answer my questions with positive feedback. I noticed that Ms. Abena and my fellow classmates seem to be a confused with my presentation as they look rather perplexed so I  was perhaps rather vague in presenting my points in the presentation. 

 The feedback session then proved to be of help in gathering whether or not have my classmates fully understood my driving question of comparing and contrasting how Suzanne Collins and one other writer(George Orwell) deal with the idea of violence in their novels.

reflection (2/7/12-6/7/12)

This we began writing our commentaries and also talked about the whole point of reflection again. It was good to talk about reflections again as I look back at the past few months and pondered on the effectiveness of it once more. Here I am right now, trying to recall my lessons this week. This is hard enough to recall and I simply do not agree with those who want it to be a monthly assignment as it would then be completely useless. We even forgot to discuss about whether or not we've to write one this week as agreed. So, I really do think we should stick to writing a reflection once a week as it doesn't seem to be a problem at all at the moment.

The guide for our commentary is really useful as they're all the key questions that I need in mine. It's almost spoon-feeding but definitely serves as a great guideline for us to produce a good and thorough commentary. The mix 'n' match exercise was really good too as it was anything but easy. My group members and I definitely had different opinions when it comes to some replies and by exchanging views, it made us think about the relevance of the answers and whether the answers are really 'answering' the question or not.