AHW

My friend just took a Criterion test and he wrote too much, so the computer can not grade him. I think that Mr. Joseph has to grade it himself. I have never seen this happen before as long as I have done criterion.  He did really good. I think that I only wrote about 450 words and he wrote 800 words. I can't believe it! This is crazy. I think that I won't do something as good as that in 30 minutes for a long time. Good job Jake! Congratulations at breaking the system!

Criterion Essay

How would you feel like if you woke up and there were no cars or trucks to take you to school, or to work, or to anywhere you want to go. We know that this will almost never happen, but if it did, we would really feel the impact. Cars and trucks make a regular human being able to move quicker, store more, and stay cool or warm.

Cars and trucks make humans move quicker. Without cars and trucks, every day everyone in the world would have to wake up earlier, and walk or bike no matter how far away the school or job where you work is. You would have to get a job that is relatively close to your house, or else you'll be waking up early and getting lots of exercise. Your school would have to be close to your house too because you have to be able to not be really tired so you don't have to wake up so early.  Cars play a big role in how fast we get to other places we need to go to.

Cars and trucks let humans store more. When you go to the grocery store in your car, you have enough space and more to put all of your groceries into. If you didn't have cars, then you would have to use your bike to get all of the things you need from the grocery store. I think walking would be better because then you don't have to concentrate on staying balanced as well as holding the groceries. The grocery stores would have to use cargo planes for all of their shipments. That would mean that prices would go up on food across the whole world because they need to use planes instead of trucks and trucks are cheaper. The storage of cars and truck is very important to us.

Cars and trucks keep you cool and warm in the times where it is really hot or really cold. Without cars and trucks, in the winter in Michigan and other cold states and countries, you would have to walk or bike in snowstorms and thunderstorms. Or you could take a plane, but they cost very much, so it would be a waste. When you get in the car in the wintertime, you are grateful for all of the heat. Without that heat you would have to walk to work and school in snow pants and a full winter jacket with something to protect your face. The heating of cars and trucks is very important to us.

Overall, cars and trucks play a big role in our lives. They help keep us warm when it is chilly outside. They store our groceries for us. Finally, they let us move quicker.

AHW

I had baseball tonight, so that is why I am writing this so late. At baseball, we had a mercy against the other team. We were lacking one player on the field. You needed 9 and we only had 8. One of the guys from the other team was our 9th guy. None of the guys from the other team really did anything when they were out there as a substitute for one of our players because the ball never went back to them. I also went to the dentist and I got sealants on some of my teeth. Now whenever I touch my tongue to those spots, they feel very smooth. When they did it, my mouth got a bit cold, but otherwise, it was okay.

Journal Response Entry 2

Journal Response Entry 2

Journal Response Prompt: If you were stranded on a deserted Island, which character from the book would you like to have with you and why?

On a deserted island, I would want Ruth to be with me. On page 95, it shows that Ruth was working even after she had a shaking fit, she got right back up and got back to work: " Ruth was picking up the peas that she'd spilled". I would like he to help with the work on the deserted Island. She would help with all of the work and the cooking that we would need to do to stay alive. I would also like Ruth with me because If I had to nurture her on the island and tell her that everything would be alright, at least it would be something to do. She would also be the best person to play with. She would figure out something to play with so that we would not be bored. I would also feel good to have her with me because she would be free. I know I would not be bored with Ruth on the island. Overall, I think that Ruth would be a good choice on a deserted island because of all of these reasons.

AHW

Yesterday my baseball game got cancelled and today my soccer practice got cancelled all because of rain. I think that since it didn't rain much in April, the weather is making up now because it is raining quite a bit. I hope I have my baseball game tomorrow because I want something to do. It is nice that I get more time for my homework, but I really want something else to do. I really hope I don't have much homework tomorrow and that my baseball game isn't cancelled. Being at home isn't as fun and isn't as good for you than getting out and doing something. So that is why I like spring activities.

Journal Response Entry 1

Journal Response Entry 1 

5-28-14

Journal Response Prompt: What was the author's message? Which story events helped you figure out the message?  

The author's message was that Africans were not treated well in the 13 colonies by some people. This is proved on page 149: the spark kindled on my cheek flared and spread through my entire body. First my eyes, then hair, then down my limbs, until even my toes and fingers felt they were aflame. This story event helped me figure out the author's message by telling me that even if a slave tried to run out a window and escape, they would be treated very harshly, to the point where they would sometimes get burnt or sometimes even die. Another place where this was proved was on page 33: "Madam slapped my face so hard it near threw me to the ground. " This story event helped me figure out the author's message because one of the slave girls giggled, and she got slapped very hard for it. This is another event where African slaves were not treated well. One more place where this is proved is on page 133: "Sold?"  I repeated". This proves again how African slaves were not treated well because you could get sold away from your family or your family could get sold away from you. Overall, these three parts of the book explain why African slaves were not treated very well in the 13 colonies.

First Draft Literary Essay

Have you ever felt lonely without any friends? In the story I Survived the Shark Attacks of 1916 by Lauren Tarshis, Chet realizes that friends are important. 

Chet is upset that his friends don't like him anymore because he played a bad prank on them. He worries that he will not be able to become friends again. Without friends, you are not very happy.  "He kept thinking of that furious look on Sid's face when Chet came out of the water" (48). He understands that he needs friends to be happy, or else he will be lonely, and his old friends will never come back to him.

Chet's friends will still not come back and make up with Chet, and Chet is too scared to go back to them. He thinks they will just push him away if he tries to come to them. But when Chet realizes that there is actually a shark in the creek, his friends won't listen to him. He thinks his friends will be at the creek and he rushes there. Chet dives in to save his friend Sid. This is another reason that friendship is important, because if you are in a tough situation, you still have your friends to help you out.

After the incident, Chet is in the hospital healing his bottom leg. He thinks that he will be alone in the hospital doing nothing for a long time. When a knock on the door comes, he thinks that it is his uncle, who is taking care of him, but it turns out it is his three friends who just came on a 2 hour train ride to the hospital. They came to apologize: "We're sorry about everything" said Monty" (84). This is another good thing that friends will do for you. They will come to comfort you. 

In I Survived the Shark Attacks of 1916 Chet understands that he needs to have friends to feel good in life. He knows that friends are important which indicates that he grows and gets wiser about things in life.

AHW

I was up to bat, last inning, 1 out. I go up to bat. the pitcher raises his arm and I put my weight back. Boom. It hit the catcher's glove. "Strike" I heard the umpire say. Another pitch. Again, pitcher raised his arm and I put my weight back. I took a swing. It was terrible. I was using my hands and the bat kind of just galloped along like a horse. "Strike". I knew I was in a tough situation, but I put myself calm and said if I struck out, everything was going to be alright. Pitcher raises his arm. I put my weight back. I swung and I hit it! Next thing I knew was I was going to first base as fast as I could and all of a sudden I was jogging back to line up to say good game while everyone on my team was coming and patting me on the back or hitting me on the helmet or doing something else in encouragement. I was soon saying good game to all of the people on the other team who I didn't know and I was jogging back to the dugout to get patches. Our coaches give out patches for people who do good or people who are leaders. They gave out victory patches which means you won the game. Then came the individual awards. The coach said "Ryan: Lightning. That was a great hit for a game winning hit" Everyone was cheering and I gave out some fist bumps.

AHW

Today was Memorial Day and first I got up at 7:40 to get to a flag retirement activity with my Boy Scout troop. The fires that they make there have to be big because we have to retire a lot of flags. But when all of that nylon gets into the fire, it starts to look like gooey black liquid that would be very creepy if it was a monster. Then, since we had less flags than the year before, I went to the Beverly Hills parade with my family. It was fun. My sister and I got lots of candy, so I am happy. But with this post, I also want to honor all of the veterans that risked their lives and sacrificed to make this country what it is. This country is a free country and that is very nice.

Complaint Letter

Have you ever felt lonely without any friends? In the story I Survived the Shark Attacks of 1916 by Lauren Tarshis, Chet realizes that friends are important. 

Chet is upset that his friends don't like him anymore because he played a bad prank on them. He worries that he will not be able to become friends again. Without friends, you are not very happy.  "He kept thinking of that furious look on Sid's face when Chet came out of the water" (48). He understands that he needs friends to be happy, or else he will be lonely, and his old friends will never come back to him.

Chet's friends will still not come back and make up with Chet, and Chet is too scared to go back to them. He thinks they will just push him away if he tries to come to them. But when Chet realizes that there is actually a shark in the creek, his friends won't listen to him. He thinks his friends will be at the creek and he rushes there. Chet dives in to save his friend Sid. This is another reason that friendship is important, because if you are in a tough situation, you still have your friends to help you out.

After the incident, Chet is in the hospital healing his bottom leg. He thinks that he will be alone in the hospital doing nothing for a long time. When a knock on the door comes, he thinks that it is his uncle, who is taking care of him, but it turns out it is his three friends who just came on a 2 hour train ride to the hospital. They came to apologize: "We're sorry about everything" said Monty" (84). This is another good thing that friends will do for you. They will come to comfort you. 

In I Survived the Shark Attacks of 1916 Chet understands that he needs to have friends to feel good in life. He knows that friends are important which indicates that he grows and gets wiser about things in life.

AHW

I was up to bat, last inning, 1 out. I go up to bat. the pitcher raises his arm and I put my weight back. Boom. It hit the catcher's glove. "Strike" I heard the umpire say. Another pitch. Again, pitcher raised his arm and I put my weight back. I took a swing. It was terrible. I was using my hands and the bat kind of just galloped along like a horse. "Strike". I knew I was in a tough situation, but I put myself calm and said if I struck out, everything was going to be alright. Pitcher raises his arm. I put my weight back.

AHW

I had a soccer practice tonight and even though it was very tiring, I think it was the best one yet. We don't have a game during the weekend, but since we missed last practice because of rain, we decided to have this one. We worked on scoring a lot because we are pretty bad at scoring and better at defending. We did a scrimmage against the girls that were there and we lost, but in our defense, they had substitutes and after about 5 minutes in, we didn't even have a full team that is supposed to be out on the field. I think that if we had the right amount of players on the field, we would have won.

AHW

My mom got a new car yesterday. It is another minivan because those really work with our lifestyle and when we go on vacation with a long car ride they are a big help to carry all of our suitcases and have snacks and things. Some good new things about it: it is red, which will really stand out, just like my dads, it has a GPS attached to the monitor. It will update automatically, which is nice. A few new bad things about it: it does not have a AC plug, there used to be a little screen above the steering wheel that told you about a bunch of facts about the car right at that moment that were kind of interesting.

Literary Essay

Have you ever felt lonely without any friends? In the story I Survived the Shark Attacks of 1916 by Lauren Tarshis, Chet realizes that friends are important. 

Chet is upset that his friends don't like him anymore because he played a bad prank on them. He worries that he will not be able to become friends again. "He kept thinking of that furious look on Sid's face when Chet came out of the water" (48) He understands that he needs friends to be happy, or else he will be lonely, and his old friends will never come back to him.

Chet's friends will still not come back and make up with Chet, and Chet is too scared to go back to them. He thinks they will just push him away if he tries to come to them. But when Chet realizes that there is actually a shark in the creek, his friends won't listen to him. He thinks his friends will be at the creek and he rushes there. Chet dives in to save his friend Sid. This is another reason that friendship is important, because if you are in a tough situation, you still have your friends to help you out.

After the incident, Chet is in the hospital healing his bottom leg. He thinks that he will be alone in the hospital doing nothing for a long time. When a knock on the door comes, he thinks that it is his uncle, who is taking care of him, but it turns out it is his three friends who just came on a 2 hour train ride to the hospital. They came to apologize: "We're sorry about everything" said Monty" (84). This is another good thing that friends will do for you. They will come to comfort you. 

In I Survived the Shark Attacks of 1916 Chet understands that he needs to have friends to feel good in life. 

AHW

I had a soccer game this weekend, our team isn't the best, but we are always cheerful, even if the other team creams us. This game was the best so far. We lost, but it was only 1 to 0 so it was the best we ever did. We have a pretty good goalie on our team named Henry, but he likes being put in the game for half of the game and being in goalie for half. This game however, he was doing so good, we decided to keep him in. He still did good. He only let in one. As for me, I did okay defense. Most of the time this one guy was tricking me to the right and I was going to the left. That was my main weakness. But I mostly ran him down and got the ball back so I could kick it back up. So I didn't do that bad.

AHW

We went back to Africa and there was one ride which we had a fast pass for the Kilimanjaro Safaris. It is pretty much a safari where you see giraffes, elephants, rhinos and some other animals that are in Africa usually. It was fun. The people that drove the trucks had some corny but funny jokes. There were also some parts with water where the truck just went right into them and it was fine. After that we went to the Asia area where there was a trail where you get to see tigers and some other animals that are usually in Asia. After that we went on the Kali river rapids, which was one of my most favorite rides. It is a circular raft, and it seems pretty calm at the beginning. Then, something crazy happens.

Literary Essay

Have you ever felt lonely without any friends? In the story I Survived the Shark Attacks of 1916 by Lauren Tarshis, Chet realizes that friends are important. 

Chet is upset that his friends don't like him anymore because he played a bad prank on them. He worries that he will not be able to become friends again. "He kept thinking of that furious look on Sid's face when Chet came out of the water" (48) He understands that he needs friends to be happy, or else he will be lonely, and his old friends will never come back to him.

Chet's friends will still not come back and make up with Chet, and Chet is too scared to go back to them.

AHW

Rafiki's planet watch was a place where you mostly look at animals and go to a petting zoo. Pretty much, it was a tiny zoo with only some animals outside and a reptile and amphibian house. There also was some spiders and other insects in the building too. We went to the petting zoo and it was kind of fun. We pet some goats, which have really  rough hair.  Then we went on the train back to the Africa area. There we went on some rides there. There we not many rides in Africa.

AHW

The show was pretty good. There was a story with it, and pictures on a globe, but we were far away from the globe, so mostly it was a fireworks show for us. It was still really good. Its hard to describe, but it was at least 5 minutes. We got back to our bus and back to our hotel fine that night.

The next day we were going to the Animal Kingdom. This one is cool because you get to see some animals so it is a half zoo half amusement park. We started going to the Africa area. We went to the train that went to a place call Rafiki's Planet Watch.

Literary Essay

Have you ever felt lonely without any friends? In the story I Survived the Shark Attacks of 1916 by Lauren Tarshis, Chet realizes that friends are important.

AHW

We had only gone to the front part of "Epcot", so we wanted to go to the other part. The other part is a place where they have all of the main countries of the world, and you can eat the different kinds of food and go on rides or watch movies about the countries. There were two rides, one for Mexico, and the other one I can't remember which country it was. They were both boat rides, one was really calm and the other had one drop, but it didn't get you wet. It was getting very late and there was going to be a show on the water in the middle because this whole part of "Epcot" was a circle shape.

AHW

After that we went over to the test track because we had a fast pass for it. We were a little early for the fast pass. We waited for a little bit because we just wanted to rest. We got to go in, and you got to design your own car. They didn't have it before. They did a big add on. You got to make how you wanted your car with four different elements. I made an orange one and it looked pretty sweet. Then you got to use that to do the ride. It rated you against the other people in the car.

AHW

The turtle talk ride was an interactive where you talk with the turtle from "Finding Nemo". It was different but fun. After that we went over to this building that had a ride that was called "Imagination with Figment", or something goofy like that. We were intrigued, though, so we went on it. It was going around the building and this little tiny purple dragon told you about using imagination. I thought that was pretty weird. There was also a ride call captain EO with Micheal Jackson. We didn't go on it.

AHW

We went over to the other rides that were in the building. First we went to the circle of life. It was a movie about the earth and how we affected it. It was pretty good. Next we went to the Living with the land ride. It was very interesting. It was mostly about agriculture. Right on site there was many plants. I thought it was interesting. After, we went to a "Nemo" Ride. It was mostly a quick story of Finding Nemo. Then we went to Turtle Talk with Crush. It is mostly for little kids.

Epcot Vacation (Spring Break)

We wanted to go on one more ride, but we had to get on our bus by 11:30PM. We had to get out of there to catch our bus. we started to walk fast to get to our the transportation center where the buses pick up. We were think about going on the monorail, but then decided that we should go to the ferry boat because it could hold more people. We got in the line and we were cutting people left and right because we had to catch this bus. We got on the boat at about 11:15. We got right to the front of the boat so we could get off first. It was probably about 11:22 when we got there. We had to run off of the boat and to the bus parking, where we made it there at 11:27, 3 minutes before the time the bus came. It felt really good to sit down, even if it was on a cold sidewalk. We got on the bus. I was so sleepy, I was starting to fall asleep on the bus. I couldn't keep my eyes open. I think some people came even later than we did right when the bus was about to leave. We got back to the hotel and almost all of us just barely brushed our teeth and fell asleep really quickly. 
The next day we were going to Epcot because it was going to be a pretty hot day so we wanted to be indoors for most of the time. We went to Soarin' first, which is a ride to simulate as if you were in a hang glider and we gliding along in many different beautiful places. We got there first because it is probably the most popular ride there.

Here is a picture of the Soarin' ride Soarin' Link

AHW

We were walking really fast to get to the parade. We stopped to take one picture and then went on. We got in just as the park workers were closing the gates that people used to get through to the other side of where the parade was if they wanted to. They closed those just as we got there, SO WE GOT FRONT ROW SEATS! We think it was because of the the good deeds that my dad and I did over the day. It was a very nice parade. The music was a little loud, but I could plug my ears and watch at the same time. It was still awesome to see a bunch of floats lit up and they looked really nice in the dark. Again, I would say about 10 floats. They have good detail, too.

AHW

 When we got off splash mountain, I picked up someone's card that you use to get in the park. I thought it was nice to help him.After that we went over to the circus fantasy land area where there was a dumbo ride. The line was pretty weird because you went into this play area where you got to play, but it was more for little kids. My sister was supervising me because you can't be under a certain age. We went on dumbo, it was fun. Then we went over to this one called the barnstormer. It was really quick, but it was really fun. After that, we had to walk fast because we had to go to a light parade.

AHW

My sister, my mom, and I were ahead of my dad. He stayed back and walked slowly. On his way out, he noticed a girl that was leaning back on either a bench or a stool. He realized that she was going to fall so he rushed in and saved her. Another man had seen the whole thing and he said to my dad: "Nice catch man" We didn't even know this had happened until later when he told us. After, it was getting close to a fastpass time. We had the "Splash Mountain" which was a really good fastpass to have. We passed lots of people in a long line and we were able to get in in barely any time. It was awesome.

AHW

After, we went to eat lunch. I got a burrito. After lunch we went to see a parade called the festival of fantasy. It had all of the princesses and their stories with the villains. It was really cool. There was probably about 10 floats, maybe more. The bunny with the stopwatch from Alice in Wonderland shook hands with me! I don't remember much of what we did after lunch.  I got a hamburger for dinner.

AHW

We went to space mountain, and there was barely any wait. It took us longer to walk through the whole place where you would wait then it did for us to actually wait. We went on twice because the line was still short after we got off. After that we went to the other rides in the Tommorowland area which is pretty much the area with space themed rides and shows. After that we went along and did some other rides. Eventually we got to the point where you have to go in long lines. We had to go to the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad because that is one of the main attractions. It was a long time, but it was worth it because it is a good roller coaster.

AHW

I know it has been quite a while since break, and in about 5 or 6 weeks it will be summer break, I am still going to write more about spring break because there is a lot to tell.

The next morning we woke up even earlier, about 6:00 AM to get to our shuttle with 2 hours to eat breakfast and get ready. We decided to ride our car to the place where the bus picks up. It is still in hotel grounds, but it is a little bit far away. Right as we parked, the bus pulled up. We got out of the car and walked over there. We put on sunscreen on the bus. We also started planning our day. We decided we were going to space mountain.