My Fifth Day

On February 22, I was in Mr. Jones's class again. At first, Anna and I decided we would switch between classes, but I wanted to stay in Mr. Jones's class. I like the upper grades better, and it was more writing help than grammar. The week's schedule was modified, so classes stopped after one. In order to be able to fill my normal hour and fifteen minute time, I stayed for first and second period.

In first period, I helped a student with an essay. The assignment was to write about a moment in her life when she showed courage. At the bottom of her essay, Mr. Jones wrote where there needed to be improvements. The comments applied to the entire class, so after reading them, I focused on the ones specific to her essay. I enjoyed her essay a lot, and was surprised on how well she wrote. A majority of the language was informal and slang, but since it was a personal narrative, I think it reflected her voice and personality well. However, the organization was pretty confusing. Her story just begins without an introduction, and has a lot of background information. There were also many moments of courage in her story, instead of just one. However, her conclusion only mentioned one moment.

With Mr. Jones's comments in mind, we spent the class working on an introduction and revising her conclusion. First, I asked her to say what her main point was. What did she want her reader to take away from reading her story? Then, I told her what I took away from it based on her writing. I explained why the beginning and ending was a little confusing. So, she worked on introducing her essay and stating her main point. She would just type and I would help when she was stuck on expressing her ideas.

For her conclusion, I explained why she needed to revise it. What her story, and what she told me, was conveying did not match up with her conclusion. She told me her point was that she made it through each hardship, and that was courage. However, her conclusion only mentioned one moment. I had her explain why each moment was important, and how does that contribute to her definition of courage.

In second period, I helped on the same assignment with another student. While I focused on helping the previous student to write an introduction and conclusion paragraph, this student needed multiple improvements. Mr. Jones required the page length to be around three to four pages. Total, this student had about one and a half pages. Her main problem was her language was too broad. In order to increase her page count, I asked her to explain certain statements and go into detail about specific moments of courage. We also worked on developing an introduction paragraph. By the time class ended, she still did not have enough, but there was a huge difference with what she had before.

I really enjoyed working with both students. The writing level was high compared to the ninth grade class I was in. I think that is why I enjoy working with older students. At a ninth grade level, their writing is not going to be great, but that's okay. It's really hard for me to accept that. At eleventh grade level, there still some issues, but I can work with it more and help. I know I have to learn how to have reasonable expectations for writing. Ninth graders aren't going to write as well as me or an older student.