Pumpkin Skies

Applying Past Knowledge

You may not know this, but we do this all the time in school! In fact, is the main reason why we were sent to school in the first place: to gain new knowledge and to be expected to use it in the future. Think about the time when you first learned how to read. Well, aren’t you reading this post at this very moment? Or maybe when you first learned how to write. Haven’t you been writing that history assignment and jotting down those science notes? This is what it means to “apply past knowledge to new situations”. You are taking things that you have already learned and using it to help you do other things.

Finding Humor

Ok, doesn’t everybody like it when something funny happens during class? A well executed joke could brighten up the class, and the students. A lot of people think that a class is more fun if a teacher tries to sneak a little humor into our studies, and it sometimes helps us to be more attentive to what we are supposed to be learning! Not everybody has a talent for bringing smiles onto our classmate’s faces though (I certainly don’t). But the point is not only to be funny, but to maybe try to smile when the teacher is lecturing us on algebra. Yes, I know it’s hard, but a positive aura spreads easily throughout a gloomy classroom. Try it sometime, it might just work.

Tags: advisory, advisory8, gr8

…and I’m not talking about soccer….

In the beginning of the year, I had a goal to gain at least 3,000 pageviews on my DeviantArt account, which I achieved (I have 3,501 pageviews at the moment). I had to draw and submit more drawings and I tried to draw more popular fanart instead of artwork centered on my original characters. I also had to give up more of my free time in order to draw more effectively and more skillfully. As a second goal, I had wanted to get at least 90% in all of my classes, which was a goal that wasn’t achieved because I did not complete all

Some rights reserved by billsoPHOTO

of the homework given to us which brought my grades down. I learned a lot in Algebra this year, which is a new subject for us, because Mr. Elshoff helped us learn about how we needed to keep organized and keep moving forward with our studies and homework. I think I did well with keeping my homework under control this first quarter and putting more detail into my assignments and blog posts for Humanities. I struggled with some of the Algebra test because even though I study pretty hard for them, I still have trouble with some of the word problems that require more thinking and problem solving. Sometimes if I needed help with my homework, after school I would ask my friends to help me understand what the question was asking more. This quarter, my goal is to start off a new webcomic that I had in my mind for a year now, titled Stained City. I already started an account on the web comic hosting site, SmackJeeves.com, and I plan to start posting pages by next week. Another goal is also to balance my free time and my school work time at home. My academic goal is to achieve and maintain at least 90% on all of my classes by completing all of my homework in order to learn the content necessary to achieve good scores on the assessments that determine my final grades.

Tags: goals, gr8, middle school

“ Now that you have completed two assessments, does your final grade (to-date) represent your learning of our Algebra thus far? Why or Why Not?”

Tags: goals, gr8, middle school