During my first year of high school we are studying themes such as coming to age, alienation and belonging, love and hate and good and evil. We will be exploring these themes through independent reading assignments, short stories, poems and classroom reading. We have also done writing assignments to practice our writing styles for different concepts.
Poetry
For the first month back from winter break we did a unit on poetry. I always was good at poetry so I found it fun and and interesting to do.
Book reviews
looking for alaska
The book Looking for Alaska (John Green) focuses on Miles "Pudge" Halter who falls in love with the mysterious girl named Alaska Young but after her untimely death he goes to learn about her death and what cause it. This was the first book I have read by John Green but my sister told me that all his books followed the same story of :boring guy meets a mysterious girl who he falls in loves with; said girl then disappears and the boy chases after her. This synopsis from my sister was shockingly precise as it was almost exactly what happened. So over all I felt it was pretty obvious about what was going to happen as its plot twists are pretty common in most stories of similar types. Despite theses flaws I feel that the story did do well at showing the steady growth of Miles as a character becoming more self standing and willing to do things. This is why i feel the book was pretty good although i am used to a lot of the tropes used I think that the book was well written especially sense it included alot information with only being 223 pages long so I would recommend it to people new to the genre.
The ABSOLUTELY true diary of a part-time indian
In the book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (Sherman Alexie) the read will follow along with a Native american teenager Arnold Spirit Jr., also known as "Junior" during his first year at high school in a white town. This book does a good job at focusing on Juniors struggle in life as it shows his discrimination of him at his home by other Spokane Indians as well as the racism he faces at his school with class mates and their parents. With this discrimination you get a good feeling on how Junior learns about not giving up and focusing on your dreams as even when he struggles he still finds hope some where. This is where I think the book shines best as it tells you these ideals early on in an modest way and then continues to grown on it until you understand its importance. This is why I feel this book is a great book for high schoolers as it teaches important lesson while still being a funny and interesting read as well as showing some real issues people have.
the Maze runner
In The Maze Runner (James Dashner) the reader follows Thomas as he is trust into the glade which is in the center of a massive maze and learn about the maze and how to escape it. When I first read this book I really liked the world building was great and the whole maze and Grievers had this mystery to them that made the story very captivating but after they explained it all it felt a bit cliche as it stuck heavily to the post apocalyptic stereo type. Although I loved the second book I felt that the last book was bogged down by the twist at the end of The Maze Runner and feel it would be more interesting if the maze really was just an endless expanse of curves and dead ends and would have made the books a lot more interesting. However despite that nit pick I enjoyed the book and though that it did a really good job at intriguing the audience and giving the world a well done uniqueness. This is why I feel that Dashner did a good job with the book and the way he set up the second book.