Significance of my chinese name

In chinese my name is 陈家乐, the fist letter in my name, is my sirname. As for the second and third letter, it means "happy house" in direct translation, and if I translate it using the chinese meaning, it means "making others feel happy", or "everybody be happy". This name is significant to me as it makes me different from the rest, as I have an identity, which is unique. I am glad to have such a meaniingful name, and I feel that my name really represents me, as I make others happy, and my name's meaning was also to make others happy.

My favourite memory of chinese new year

My favourite memory of Chinese new year was last year, when I had a gathering with my uncles and aunties in the home of my grandfather. We ate delicious food together, and played together. What made the Chinese new year last year so special was that we ate the food that was prepared by my father, and the food was very very delicious. Normally we would just eat normal food that our maid prepared, but last year, we ate top-quality abalone, which was prepared by my father, and my father cooked very well. At the first smell, I was so attracted to that heavenly scent that I rushed from my room to the kitchen. When I reached the kitchen, that dish was ready to be served. When I first saw the slices of the abalone, I was immediately attracted to it, and the desire of eating that dish grew stronger with every breath I took in which was filled with the heavenly scent, and every second I stared at the dish. Finally after much waiting, I get to eat the abalone. When I placed a slice of abalone in between my lips, I can feel how smooth it was. The taste of the sauce and the juice from the abalone blended together perfectly, giving me a taste of "happiness". When I moved my teeth slowly together, I could feel the chewy texture, and with even more flavour released from the abalone. Even after I swallowed the slice of abalone, the flavour stayed on my lips, and I can smell the great flavour coming out from even my breath! This was a truly wonderful experience, where I had tasted one of the most delicious food in my life.

Identity

In my opinion, I think that every person have a unique identity, an a person's identity is shaped by the environment he is living in, and the people he interacts with. For my identity, it was formed from many factors. The factors include the type of friends I have, responses to questions or things and the region I am staying in. When I was with my friends, my friends and I influeced each other, forming my personality, which forms to my identity. When I respond to things in a particular way, I will be used to that way of answering and that way of thinking, which is different from anyone else. If I stay in a particular in a particular region, I will be exposed to different things, that shaped my identity.

These are the few pictures that represent my identity.

People reponsible for Margot's treatment

I think that there are two person that are both responsible for Margot's treatment. The first person is William, who is the person that directly caused Margot's suffering. William gave the signal to his friends to start bullying Margot, ad he was the person that gave the idea of trapping Margot in a closet before the teacher arrives so that Margot would not be able to see and enjoy the sun after five years of waiting. The second person that should be responsible for Margot's treatment is the teacher, who indirectly caused Margot's suffering. First of all, the teacher did not pay attention to Margot and went away while Margot was with the other children. She should have noticed from the behaviour of the children that they dislike Margot, and should have know that Margot might be bullied, but, she failed to realise that fact and failed to be a responsible teacher. This was a strong reason that caused Margot's suffering. In addition, as a teacher, she should have taught the children not to bully other people, and also to teach the children to accept others, but she did not do it either. Lastly, before she left with the children, she did not bother to check personally to see if anyone was missing, and thus did not notice that Margot was missing and that Margot had been bullied. As a result, the teacher should be responsible for Margot's treatment.

If I were one of the children......

If I were one of the children, I would wait until William and his friends had left, before going to the closet and release Margot from the closet. This is to prevent William and his friends from locking me into the closet in order to prevent me from telling the teacher about what they had done. Then, I would comfort her, so as to let her fell so scared and angry. Then, I would accompany her to the teacher and tell the teacher about what had happened. The teacher would probably punish the boys severely as depriving a person in venus from seeing the sun should be a big offence, as people get to watch the sun once in seven years. The boys would probably learn their lesson and stop bullying Margot. In addition, Margot will also get to see and feel the sun as I had saved her before the sun was covered by clouds again. Thus, the ending to the story will be positive.

A situation in which I collarborated with another person

This situation happened when I was doing a project with another person for our school's annual projects day competition. I needed to work with another four group members, and our project was about white tigers. Through the course of the entire project, my group members and I cooperated and work together, although some of us did more than than the others, we were overall well organised and all of us did the job we were assigned. I found it supprising that we were not quralling about our job allocation, and we eventually went into the finals. Through this project, I found out that I could actually get along well with my group members, and all of us worked together for a common goal. I learned that in order to work with others, we should not quarrel about small matters like doing a little more work than others. We must think of the benefit of the group, only then can the project be successful.

Reflection on "Comic Strip"

In the home learning on 24th January 2011, I was instructed to make a comic strip and was told to describe my comic strip. I really enjoyed that experience. This was the first time that I was exposed to this type of learning, and I feel that this was a really meaningful experience. This assignment was a new approach on how to describe the narrative elements in a story. We made use of pictures of different darkness, sizes, colours and emotions to make the short comic strip interesting and also to express the details of the entire story to the reader within a few pictures. Through this assignment, I was able to use a different way to express the opening, climax and conclusion. When I chose the pictures, I chose them carefully so that they can add some "colours" to the story, just like how I add words and phrases to a composition in order to make the story interesting. I found out that when we combine a few pictures together, they would form a new picture that express other meanings, like how we add words to a sentence to give impact to a story. From this assignment, I recapped the usage of the narrative elements in a story to maximise the impact of the story, by using different pictures to depict the opening, climax and conclusion. I also learned skills needed for a more in-depth expression of feelings and actions, like describing the feelings of a character by describing the actions of a character.

By chanchialer View this Toon at ToonDoo Create your own Toon

I chose the background of a forest, with two characters, a large strong caveman with a weapon, and a small cute and helpless cat. This is to show readers that there will be a high chance of the cat being eaten. Furthermore, the forest indicates a place where help is hardly found, thus strengthening the fact that the cat is going to die. The big caveman very evil as he preyed on a cute little animal for food, and he was so engrossed in torturing the cat that he did not realise a friend of the cat, which was a large and strong tiger, had arrived from behind, and this caused the death of the caveman. In this comic, I made use of the story of the caveman being killed to elaborate on the fact that we can never afford to let our guard down. In addition, this story also show what bullies gets when they attempt to bully the weak, and thus, tells us not to bully the weak. In conclusion, this story made use of the fact that carelessness and evil doings are both strong factors for the failure of many people, to show that we must not do bad things, as life is like a boomerang, where what we do will eventually come back to us, and we must also not be careless, as the smallest carelessness can lead to tragic outcomes.

My learning goals for this year in Language Arts this year

In this new year, I would like to improve on my comprehension and summary skills, which includes understanding the contents of the comprehension passage in detail, in a short time, and correctly summarising relevant points. I set these goals as I did not perform up to standard for this two parts of the test. In addition, for my summary, I often include irrelevant points, and miss out relevant points. As a result, I hope to learn more in this two sections

The most valuable thing I learned in LA last year

The most valuable thing that I have learned in Language Arts last year was how to enjoy and analyse poems. I have rarely or even never been in contact with poems until last year. It was the topic of poetry that made me understand how a successful poem is organised and the poetry skills writers used to make a poem give more impact to readers. With the new skills of analysing poems, I am able to understand how writers think and write in order to maximise the meanings and impact of the poem. I am even able to create simple poems of my own!

My favourite book

My favourite book is "To Kill a Mockingbird" by harper lee. I liked this book a lot as it is very interesting. The story revolves around the "dark side" of the law, where people are not judge in court based on evidence, but instead, their skin colour. In the story, once you are a black man, no matter how innocent you are, you are convicted of a crime as long as you step in court.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2657.To_Kill_a_Mockingbird

This story is fresh to me as this is one of the more realistic books I have read, as it is about how bad the prejudice in America was, and not just plain imagination from authors. After reading this book, I felt of how fortunate to be able to live in a world with so much lesser prejudice.

Have you ever been in the company of a group of which you were clearly not a member? What was the circumstance? How did you act? How were you treated?

The answer is yes. This incident happened when I was doing a science project in primary five. My science teacher arranged us into groups of four, based on our sitting arrangement, and I was chosen to be the leader due to the fact that my behaviour was the best among the four of us. When we started discussing about our assignment, my teammates seemed uninterested in doing the work, and did not contribute anything constructive. They just talked among themselves and when I told them to contribute some ideas, they refused and said that since I was good in science, I should do all the work. I felt that it was an unreasonable request to make a person do the work of four people, and I felt angry and forced them to contribute by threatening that I will complain to the teacher. They then contribute to the project, but did not allow me to join in. When I was singled out, I felt very upset and did not know what to do. I remained ignored for the entire course of the project. As we did not have good teamwork, our group did not perform well in this project. After this project, I requested for a change of group whenever I was assigned to do work with any one of the three of them.

The peom that had a great impact on me

If you think you are beaten, you are.
If you think you dare not, you don’t.
If you like to win, but you think you can’t,
It is almost certain you won’t.
If you think you’ll lose, you’re lost,
For out in the world we find,
Success begins with a fellow’s will—
It’s all in the state of mind.
If you think you are outclassed, you are,
You’ve got to think high to rise,
You’ve got to be sure of yourself before
You can never ever win a prize.
Life’s battles don’t always go
To the stronger or faster man,
but soon or late the man who wins
Is THE MAN WHO THINKS HE CAN!


Reflections


From this peom, I learned that whatever we do, and how gifted we are, we will not win if we think we cannot win. However, when we change our mindset into believing our capability, we stand a chance against others, we stand a chance to win, for we are who we think we are. The part that impact me the most is "but soon or late the man who wins is the man who thinks he can!" When I stopped to think, I found out that every successful person thinks that he/she is capable of achieving something, before he/she actually achieves it. Example, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew believed that he is able to lead Singapore, before he led Singapore into a world-class nation at only around forty years. In conclusion, I fell that this poem is a very meaningful peom and had a great impact on me.

Answers to question on 'Big Fish'

1) The phrase means that something which is big is contained in a small place, which means that something outstanding is unable to release its full potential.
2) Edward Bloom told this story to show that the only way to capture a woman’s heart is by offering a wedding ring.
3) He was very interested in his father's story when he was a little boy, but felt that his father's story was irritation and untrue when he was older.
4) He thought that in doing so, he will be able to remember his amazing achievement.
5) The tale revealed that Edward Bloom and william did not have a close relationship.
6) Fictional stories. This type of story are more interesting and exciting, thus capturing the reader's attention, making the reader "unable to stop reading".
7)Yes. When we exaggerating the truth for the purpose of conveying an entertaining story, the reader's attention will be on the exaggerated part, as it is interesting, and thus readers might get misleaded into thinking that the exaggerated part was the truth and thus tall tale are not so credible as compared to straight reportage of the facts.

Poems by Shel Silverstein

The Little Boy and the Old Man by Shel Silverstein


1) The poem is trying to convey the similarities between a child and an old man.


2)Every comment made by the child is followed by an agreement made by the old man.


Messy Room by Shel Silverstein


1) Yes. The narrator was scolding himself that he should be ashamed of himself. When he realised that he was scolding himself, he made up a useless statement in hope to divert the attention of the person he is speaking to. He wanted the listener to think that he was smart as he realised that the room is familiar.

2)People liked to complain about other people's actions, but they try to make themself look clever.



Cloony The Clown by Shel Silverstein



1) When he tried to make other people laugh, no one laughed. When he was telling others about his sadness, everybody laughed.

2) Yes. He conveyed the fact that people can hurt us by laughing when we are sad, but we cannot do anything as we cannot control them.

3) The poet repeated the last sound of the last word of each line to stress on the difference between his intended reaction and the reaction from the audience.