ELA Reflection+Summer Bookshelf

Reflection:

Dear Class and Ms. Galang,

I learned a lot this year in ELA. I learned to write more insightful and thoughtful poetry in our poetry unit, especially when we learned all of the literary devices. This really helped me include new devices in poetry now that I knew the meaning of these devices and how to best use them. I feel that I was able to improve my poetry and make it more complex and have a deeper meaning. I enjoyed the poetry unit because it really expanded my horizon on the different styles of poetry out there such as haikus and free verse.

I also learned a lot from the Romeo and Juliet unit, especially when we had to annotate Juliet’s soliloquy. I noticed while annotating it that Juliet had another facet that I did not notice the first time I read the soliloquy. Looking carefully at the wording and what topics she talked about, I was able to see another side of her and realize there was still some part of her that was overwhelmed by everything happening to her. I was able to sharpen my skills of analyzing characters and really understand their motives and who they are, why they are that way. 

In high school, I hope to sharpen my skills of analyzing the text even further and pick up on little things authors put in as symbolism that readers often miss. For example, in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the weather is a symbol of what is going on in the story. I hope to become better at noticing connections and symbolisms like this. I also hope to be able to read and understand more complex novels that are of higher level. I want to expand my vocabulary further and really understand what the text is saying. I also would like to add this complexity to my writing when I write my stories. I also hope to use my knowledge of analyzing characters that already exist to making my own characters, and making them as complex and human as the characters in stories such as Romeo and Juliet. I also would like to come up with creative plots and interesting themes for my stories when I write. Overall, I really enjoyed ELA this year and learned a lot. I also believe I grew both as a reader and writer, and hope to continue to grow in the future. 

My 2015 Summer Bookshelf:

Series/Books to finish: 

• Silence By Becca Fitzpatrick (Hush, Hush series)
• The Interestings By Meg Wolitzer

Summer Reading:

• Jurassic Park By Michael Crichton
• The Girl with Pearl Earrings By Tracy Chevallier
• Prep By Curtis Sittenfeld

Reading List (Other):

• White Oleander By Janet Fitch
• The School of Night By Louis Bayard
• Bittersweet By Colleen McCullough
• Scarpetta By Patricia Cornwell

Romeo and Juliet Project

Letter from Juliet's POV:

Dear Family,

I wish I could have apologized to you all in person for keeping this secret. But I have fallen in love with Romeo of the Montagues. I hope you understand why I pretended I was dead and ran away with Romeo instead of marrying Paris like you wanted me to. But I could never marry someone I don’t truly love. Maybe you were right and Paris would have made me happy. Maybe if I married Paris I wouldn’t have to be doing this. It’s too late to turn back now, I made my decision the day I married Romeo and became his wife. I am forever bound to him now, even in death. I wanted you to be proud to have raised me, I wanted you to be happy. But the day I met Romeo, at the party where I fell in love with him, I realized I could never be that girl who makes her family proud. 

I drank a potion Friar Lawrence made for me that stopped my heart without killing me. He was the one who married me to Romeo. Please don’t blame him for my disappearance. He only meant to do good. He wanted the Capulets and Montagues to cease their fighting. Maybe he realized when Romeo killed Tybalt that it would never work. Romeo being banished was out of everyone’s control, and it is the main reason why I am not here in front of you, telling you this. Maybe I would have told you in person had Romeo not killed Tybalt. Maybe you would have been enraged by my foolish actions. Maybe you would have accepted it. Who knows what could have been, for what is done is done.

I am writing this in my chamber, I just told Nurse and Lady that I needed rest, that I would be ready tomorrow. I am sorry to have deceived you all, I wish there was another way. 

I don’t know what will happen to me. I don’t know if this potion will work, or if it will kill me instead. I write in hopes that you find me gone from the vault and only this letter in my place. To be honest, I am afraid of what will happen to me. But I long to be with the one I love. I hope you will understand, even though I know you most likely will not.  

Farewell,

Juliet

Reflection on Romeo and Juliet Performance:

My character, Juliet, was a very conflicted character. She had experienced her first love and the feelings of love made her in a way, addicted to the feeling. She wanted to feel this way forever, be with Romeo forever. However, she also had a duty to her family and parents to be the perfect daughter and to bring honor and pride to the family. These two strong emotions, of love and the natural desire to please parents conflicted with each other. She also had this other facet of her personality that was realistic to an average modern teenage girl: Wanting to be mature and an adult, but still lacking the qualities of an adult such as foreseeing the consequences of actions. She showed us this in Act 4 Scene 3, where she talks to herself about all the things that could go wrong. I wanted to convey how she had these conflicted emotions but also these worries that really showed she was still a child. 

I believe the performance went well. I believe I was able to really project my voice so the audience could hear me and I also made sure to really put the emotion into my voice, show the audience this intensity of this scene. I wish I could have spoken more slowly, taken the time to pause and slow down, for the sake of the character and the audience, because people have normal pauses when they talk and the audience may have trouble hearing me if I’m talking fast.

I learned about how deep this story was, that it was more than a stereotype in a movie and really understand why each character did what they did. To the reader, at first glance, it may seem idiotic to have all of this drama over a romance over the course of about three days. However, when you really look at it, you see it was human nature and its flaws that really led to this tragedy. If you were a character in this play, it wouldn’t be so easy to figure out a solution because you wouldn’t know what others are thinking. I learned that to this stereotype of star-crossed lovers, there is actually a deeper meaning. I can apply these skills of improved analyzation to high school English by focusing on the characters and why they are the way they are, why they think the way they do. I can also use it when writing stories of my own, leaving hidden bits of information to the reader that is really trying to find it, creating characters that are human and relatable. Overall, I learned a lot and enjoyed this unit.