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