This past year has been a really big difference from my 8th grade year. Last year we rarely used the computer whereas this year we are on the computer everyday. This year I have learn a lot of things that I can use for the rest of my schooling career and so on. The skills I have learned this year will also help me when I am looking for jobs and filling out my applications.

Everyday when we enter the class room we are asked to go to our teachers’ blog where she writes down everything we’re going to do that day on a page called the chalkboard (coincidence? I think not!). On her blog we have many different pages that help us when we work on projects like our To Kill a Mockingbird newspaper. We also are required to use blogs to publish our work. I think having a blog helps you learn because it brings what you learn to life or what you create is brought to life. You also have a chance for other people you may not know to comment on it giving advice on what is good and what is bad and needs to change so you get other peoples point of view.

I have learned the difference between a coma splice and a run on sentence and how to fix them both. I have learned how to make a thesis statement and how to make it good. That is probably the biggest thing I have learned all year that I will not forget. I think that I became a better writer all in all because it actually makes more sense and sounds a lot better then my old writing style.

Even though we do not have any spelling test I think I have become a better speller then last year. I also think my reading skills have shot up because I am reading a lot of higher level reading books then I have ever read. The best book I have read this year would probably be Mostly Good Girls by Leila Sales because it brought me in to the story and made me feel like I was really there with the main characters.

 At the beginning of the year I was so nervous to write my blog posts because I would type something then freak out and think it was bad so I would always start over again and again. I never got my work done until the night before but that has changed a lot. I normally like what I write now instead of going through my “cycle”. So all in all this year really showed me how to become a better student in English while doing projects and writing all the time.

At our School you can look at your grades using Power School. I think it helps me a lot because I can go online and see what my grades are and if I’m missing any work. So I can make sure I get everything done. It also helps that your parents can access it too, because they can see what you are doing or how you are doing in your classes. They can help get you on track if they see you are getting behind on your work. It’s important to me because I like knowing my grades and I can see more clearly what I’m getting instead of sitting there wondering about it all the time.

Peer Review has helped me in many different ways. I think it helps me because it is kind of like I can see out of a different person’s point of view and see what they agree and don’t agree on. I wrote Food Culture with Justice B and people from a different school commented saying that how it’s amazing that two ninth graders can do that in depth of research and that it was really good. I also had people comment on my Hold Still poem saying that they really liked it and that I’m a strong writer. It really helps me because they agree on what I write and I know I’m doing a good job on it as well.

I think that it is really important for you to work as a team while doing projects. If all you do is fight with each other you are not going to get anything done and your project will be a total mess. I also think that you need to have good communication in your group to get the things you need and make sure they are done right. If you do not talk you will not have any idea on what is going on with anything you are going to do. The last thing I think is important for working as a team is making sure you understand your team mates and where they’re coming from so you do not accuse them of anything they have not done.

I feel way more confident now then I did at the beginning of the year with reading, writing, and my computer skills. At the beginning of the year I didn’t know what to expect because I didn’t really get the whole computer for English thing but now I’m glad we have it. I was a really bad writer for about my first two posts, but I think I’m getting better at it. My reading skills are impressive now because I used to hate reading. Whatever I did I never brought books with me, and now I take books everywhere. I think it is a lot of fun to read now because books can tell you things about other people that you might be going through.

My best piece of writing on my blog so far is The Perfect Setting because it has the most knowledge of the book in it. I think that I took time to write it out, and think it through more it was a better written post. Because I had a full class period to think it through I could visualize it and make sure it was good. Instead of doing it off the top of my head my post was better quality. I also think that I just rushed through all of my other post to get them done, so they turned out badly.

The most challenging thing for me in CyberEnglish9 is the fact that I can’t write things that greatly and that I’m really hard on my writing. I can’t just think of something off the top of my head and go with it. It takes me awhile to think of something to actually will work with what is going on with the story I’m reading. I’m really hard on what I write, I’ll write something down and erase it because it won’t make sense to me or won’t be good enough for my standards which makes it really hard for me to write in this class. I ask for help with my work to help me overcome that challenge if I don’t know what to write about.

If an outsider visited my blog I would hope that they would like it. I would think that people reading my blog would find it enjoyable and would want to keep reading. I think they probably say a few bad things about it but not so much that it would be like really bad. I do not think they would be like o my god this is unbelievable because I know I am really bad at this for my first time. I do wish they would like it and that they would say good things about it.

My favorite thing about my blog is that I can express myself in it. I loved writing in middle school but couldn’t really express myself that well. I did express myself a little how ever not that well because it didn’t go with what we were talking about. During Cyber English I like how we have to read books and then during our posts we can say what we feel or what we liked or disliked about that book. I not afraid to write how I feel either. During language arts last year we had a strict thing we had to stick to for our writing but this year we don’t and I really love that.

CyberEnglish9 seems way different then the past years because we do almost everything on the computer instead of paper. In the past years we focused on spelling and had spelling test’s every Friday or so, this year we are focused on our blogs and books. This year we are going to really look at the books and how they are made and things like that. We never did that in the past years or we barley touched base on it. In other English classes we barley went on the computers; we did everything by hand unless we had to do research on an author or book. Past English classes we also focused on our hand-writing, but this year since we are on computers we are not really focused on that.