Marks

This year in English I have improved and learned a lot of new knowledge. Last year, I struggled heavily in English because it was my weakest subject. I mainly was weak in my grammar, analysing and writing. I usually scored around B’s or C’s on the rubric (I got an overall B in semester 1 in year 7) until I finally started to slowly but surely improve on English (I got an A in my semester 2 grade). This made me determined to improve and score better in English. In fact, that was one of my top goals for year 8. This year I stayed focused, took notes and asked questions/feedback (which I never did last year). I quit procrastinating and stopped leaving tasks to the ‘last minute which was an amazing goal achieved. I also was forced to withdraw from my 12 hours of ballet a week which also meant I had more time to prepare for assessments like English. My marks this year were so different from last year. I have been scoring well on all my assessments which is great.

Confidence

I definitely am more confident in English and I will try and continue to improve. My confidence has been slightly boosted ever since I started to study and score well on my assessments. I have especially scored a lot better in writing tasks in which I was less confident. Last year I started losing all my confidence in English because I had a fixed mindset (negative). I also tend to struggle with timed English assessments but I have gradually improved. However, I am not super confident in English still. There are times when I don’t understand the topic we are learning (e.g. boy in the striped pyjamas was difficult because my teacher was absent due to covid and reading is a weakness of mine) I hope to continue to get more confident in English over the duration of my high school life.

Skills

There are a lot of skills in English I have yet to learn however, I think I upskilled in a lot of areas in English compared to my past years of English. I have improved my preparation for tests (for example for the boy in the striped pyjamas I wrote many versions of practice essays). Another skill I have developed this year is creativity. I have been a lot more creative in the tasks that allowed creativity. I haven’t been that creative in the past. However for example the poetry anthology, I had the opportunity to try and improve my creativity. I have further developed and improved my creativity and I am starting to enjoy creative tasks (e.g. writing) Other skills I have well-adapted are organisation, collaboration and involvement. I also have stopped being scared of asking for feedback or asking a question. For some reason, I used to and still sometimes do be afraid of asking something to my teacher mainly because I didn’t want any judgement. I did not want to seem ‘dumb’ to my teachers so I just kept it all in my head (which therefore lead to not good results).

Organisation

Organisation is a skill that has always been one of my strongest. I almost always stay on top of things and I don’t leave things behind until the last minute. In terms of English, I will say that organisation hasn’t improved too much since I was already organised in the past and with other subjects. I came into English this year with a positive mindset and promised myself that I would be productive and on track. To put this into an example, we had a poetry anthology project that was introduced to us at the beginning of term 4 and it was due in week 4. Because I wanted to be on track and well-organized, I worked on it as soon as we got it and made sure to give myself deadlines and daily goals (like finishing a poem by a certain day). Because of this, I finished my poetry anthology booklet by week 3. I definitely will continue to develop and strive to be more organised through my high-school journey especially in English as it is a subject I have not yet dramatically improved in.

Collaboration

This skill was needed throughout our English unit. I found I had to use this skill, especially for the production of our current affairs segment. It was the first group project this year and it was an enjoyable and fun experience. During this project, I worked with Poppy, Amber and Jess. We started off by discussing what we had to do each day and from there we made sure to always get things done to do our part. This task wasn’t much of a struggle as we all collaborated and communicated effectively. I always made sure to listen to others’ opinions and thoughts. Because everyone contributed and never gave up, we produced a funny and excellent video result which we were all proud of. In the classroom, I collaborate with fellow peers. An example of this was when Shi Ying and I would always give each feedback and help each other. We always helped each other with projects like short story writing and poetry anthology. I feel like English has improved my collaboration skills. I have always loved collaborating with others and I am a people person.

Involvement

Prior to this year, I never got involved in classes like English. I had a fear of being judged since what I said might sound dumb. I had a bad habit of not asking questions to the teacher because of my fear. This year was a huge jump for me. Over time I recognised that I was vastly improving in my English understanding and results. This gave me more confidence and my fear started to slowly fade away. I now tend to ask plenty of questions. I still sometimes am afraid of sharing my answers because I fear that I would receive judgement or be embarrassed as other people’s answers sounded better. However whenever it is a short answer and I feel confident I do get involved. If my peers think my work is good enough to share I sometimes will. Sometimes I am glad when my teacher picks on me even though he is unaware that he is slightly helping me improve on my fear. Sometimes however I hate getting picked but not very often. I am still trying to improve on this but I definitely am getting a lot more involved.

Learner Agency

Learner agency is shifting the ownership from teachers to students It enables us to be proactive and to have the understanding, ability and opportunity to be a part of learning design. I definitely think that this year was proactive. I felt like I had a voice, choice, and ownership of my own learning. We could learn flexibly most of the time and the relationship between the teacher and students becomes a partnership.

Goals

My goals for English 2023 are…

• Get rid of the fear of involving me in class decisions
• Still improve gradually in English
• Read more

This semester for project x in dance we worked and produced a dance based on the theme of illuminate. This final product would then be presented to our parents and peers for the end-of-transition festival. It was a challenging but rewarding process.

Choreographic Process

At the start of term 3, we were introduced to tutting and were spilt into groups of 3. With Eden and Ruby, we produced and experimented with tutting. From there, we grouped back together and worked to create our first counts of 8 tutting for the dance routine. I made the majority of the first count of 8 which was fun because I love choreographing dances (hopefully I can choreograph dances in the future). Then we had to choose a toy and produce a few stiff movements that represent the chosen toy which was then converted into different rhythmic patterns. For example, we had to do 4 stationary movements that could be reversed, 4 moving movements that could reverse, and 4 movements with a strict timing pattern. I chose to be a ballerina doll since I am a ballerina and know the basic moves. After that, we did an activity in which we controlled our partner like a puppet and vice versa. After experimenting with the way we get moved, we all made 1 count of 8 as the puppeteer. We then went into 3 groups and combined our movements. Over time we added more counts to our tutting section, climbed Eden up a tree and polished other areas of our piece. With the help of our dance teacher Cod, we managed to join everything we created together into a dance piece. During this were required to collaborate and work effectively as a group. I think we did pretty well except sometimes it was a challenge. An example of this was when we created the second part of our tutting section. Our dance teacher was absent when we were tasked to produce a few more counts of 8. Because we weren’t under proper supervision, our group was a lot more distracted. Beth and I ended up making the second part mostly by ourselves. At other times it was a challenge because of absences. However, the majority of the time we were collaborating effectively. All of us put our efforts in and everyone contributed. We listened to each other’s ideas and always gave everything a go (like me trying to do a sit-up). Personally, I think I was focused most of the time. Sometimes it was hard because I can get easily distracted but I have grown out of that slowly. I think we could improve on getting less distracted as a group.

Our dance has a binary structure (two sections) that symbolises our schooling journey. The first section represents our first couple of years in senior school. It was ‘stiff’ and nerve-wracking. We portrayed that as toys with stiff and trapped movements. The moves we used were mostly armed movements with limited movement with the lower body (besides walking). Our movement was percussive and strong. We had a lot of levels in the first section of our dance and faced a lot of directions. Our tempo was slow until we got to the tutting section which was vastly fast. We were on beat with the music’s beat. The second section represents the smooth transition into high school after the stiff first years. Being ‘free’ in other words is what our second section represented. The moves we used were whole-body movements which included running. Our movement was slow and sustained. We were very flowy and floaty. The section was on a high level throughout. And we were on the beat.

Performance

The evening of the performance was to me a fun and exciting process. It was the only day we practised with the other class. I think our class did a great job performing. We all committed to the dance, used our expressions (especially the break-free part), had accurate timing and performed with the correct spacing. Performing on The Common was a unique and quite challenging experience. We had mostly practised in the dance studio so practising on the Common was a bit hard. It was different from performing on a stage. An example of the difference was that we had actual levels in the common (the stage/dance studio is flat). The common has a lot of things that were exciting. For example, climbing Eden up a tree looked really cool. I think that our group performed really well, we all enjoyed performing the dance. Personally, I think I did well. I believe my timing was good, especially during the tutting section. I also think my expression overall was good. I think I could improve on my expressions, in the tutting section in our groups of 3 I was squinting a lot due to the sun in my eyes. I also managed to do a sit-up properly which was an achievement. I think my favourite part of the dance is the break-free part as we used our expressions well and it was really fun. This semester was a lot of fun and we all made great memories together. From this dance project, I have learnt that when everyone contributes, the end product is a lot better than just one person leading the group.