Completed Website

http://stemmlerd1.weebly.com/

"I'm Flying"

The ever so famous "I'm Flying" scene from the classic movie Titanic, is one of the many incredible moments from the film. Taking place on the front of the grand and magnificent ship, the cinematography of the scene is beautifully captured with the wind and the sunset as main elements. This peaceful yet alive scene is perfectly and most beautifully captured. Music plays softly in the background, as a haunting yet captivating voice sings. As Jack covers Rose's eyes, helping her up onto the railing, the music reaches it's peak of powerfulness, as Rose is "flying". The elements of the scene take over you, overwhelming you as you can hear the waves, feel the wind, and the sunset looming in the background. The chemistry between actors Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio fit the scene perfectly, and they display their immense love for each other wonderfully. Their performances in this scene, and throughout the movie are excellent oscar worthy, for the actors displayed a wide variety of feelings with such strong emotion. In the scene, Winslet is displayed with beauty and innocence, excellently showing feelings of pure excitement and amazement. Her facial expressions show her wide range of acting. The scene is overall breathtaking, incredible, and perfect.

Research Resources

In part of the reading for homework, a table was given with a number of different sources that could be used while doing research, what it provides, usefulness, and where to find it. This table will be extremely helpful when doing research. The sources they included were scholarly books, scholarly journals, newspapers, magazines, encyclopedias, wikipedia, government or academic web sites, commercial web sites, blogs, and personal web sites. These sources were listed from most to less useful. Scholarly books are the most useful, while personal web sites are the least. This page in our text book will come in great use when researching, and I am sure I will look back at it several times.

Rhetorical Analysis

The article we had to read on Rhetorical Analysis from our book "How To Write Anything" taught me a lot I had not known before about rhetoric and rhetorical analysis. To be honest, I did not know what a rhetorical analysis was before I read this. I discovered that when you pick apart an advertisement or speech, and express what you think in words, that is a rhetorical analysis. I discovered that it is an argument that takes several strategies to express. You must take words seriously, make strong claims about texts, and mine texts for evidence. Knowing how to do this will help us a lot on our next project when we have to do an analysis or an advertisement.

Portfolio

http://stemmlerd1.weebly.com/

Revising

The readings for homework from both books give great advice on revising. Revising and editing a paper is very important. Once you are ready to write your final draft, the revising stage is extremely necessary and important. From the article "Revision" by Anne Doyle, I learned that revisions involve four things: you can add text, delete text, move text, and substitute text. A lot of what I read about revising I had already known.  In high school english classes, revising was important, and I always revised what I wrote multiple times before handing in the final draft. In writing, you have to find the focus, and ask yourself if your project met the assignment. Revising overall is extremely important and several things are necessary in your writing that you must check for. The essays gives really great and helpful tips to writing and revising, ones I will certainly use.

"A Twisted World"

The article "A Twisted World" by James McMorrow Jr. discusses an accurate portrayal of politics. The article was great; and probably one of the most enjoyable. A world run by celebrities would be a very twisted, but fun and interesting one indeed. As strange as it would be to have Tom Cruise as president, or Oprah as vice president, people in society look up to celebrities as role models. Wherever you go, you hear about what a certain celebrity has done. Celebrities would be extremely popular politicians, and specific celebrities would fit certain offices best. The overall point of McMorrow's article focuses on how like celebrities, politicians are judged far too quickly. Like how McMorrow states, we need to be patient no matter how difficult the times are, and no matter how terrible the politician is. Things could always be worse, and they will get better.

"Reading for the Future"

The literacy narrative project I liked the most was at this link:

http://blorsbon.weebly.com/visual-literacy-narrative-project.html

It was titled "Reading for the Future", and I thought it was the best out of the ones posted. The student excellently creates a video to show his progression and hard work until he graduated high school and made it into college. I would have chosen to make a video to do this as well because a video can incorporate pictures, videos, and music. Overall, the visual was great and the overall purpose of his project was very clear.

Ideas for Essay #1

To me, learning math is like learning a foreign language. Math is not only about coming up with the correct answer. Math itself requires understanding terms and methods in order to get the concept that is being taught. Concepts build on each other in math, so if you don't understand one thing, in later chapters you will be even more confused. Like a lot of different topics, math has its own literacy that must be understood in order to succeed. For me, geometry was a difficult class in high school. I had the worst math teacher our school had to offer, and the class was destined for failure. For my literary narrative, my idea was to show my experience sophomore year and how I had to overcome the difficult circumstance and learn the language of geometry. By learning the literacy geometry had to offer, I was able to understand and learn the methods any math class required to learn. I wanted to display this by creating a collage as my visual. I would use different formulas and concepts that gave me trouble along with pictures. I would separate the collage by having the struggle on one side, and the final achievement on the other.