Reflection Entry #34 May 18 ,2009

Today I lost my 500 word essay which was in the progress of completion along with my plan. I had to restart my whole essay and now I currently have 256 words putting me behind the rest of the class. I'm hoping Mr. Sparks will give some more time to complete my essay. Since I already had a backup plan printed out already, i don't have to worry about losing the plan. To catch up on the class, today I went over my note cards to try to remember what I wrote in the essay I lost. As I remembered I typed it down on my new essay. I think I'll stick to the strategy I made earlier: I'll simply just type every important note down on my essay regardless of the word limit and make the changes earlier. This strategy should be effective because it's straight forward and I don't have to take pauses between my work time to think what I want to write, i'll just copy down whatever's on the note cards without taking any pauses or getting distracted. Once I'm finished: I'll reduce the word limit and improve and explain my ideas better in the essay or discard any unneeded information. Also, I think it would be better if I saved my work on my school drive and my USB so there's a slim chance of me losing my work.

Reflection Entry #33 May 7 ,2009

I was able to complete my plan in the beggining of the lesson. My plan which is for the paragraph structure which helps me to concentrate on the main points of eachy characteristic and guiding question. Since I used up some time in class for my plan and got distracted a little, i fell behind the class in typing the essay. Most people have about 900 words now and i have only 200. Next lesson I should really work hard and type without getting distracted and really fast. The strategy I used of just typing every single piece of information down on my essay and then organizing my essay afterward is working well. What I fear is that not all my information will be able to fit in my essay. I think if I go over my notecards and discard any repeated or unneeded info i might make it into the limit. I'm glad that the information I'm putting in th essay are the complete answers to my major guiding questions.

Reflection Entry #32 May 5 ,2009

Today I wasn't able to complete my plan and I'm in the process of planning what I'll write in each of the paragraphs. This will however get me to fall behind the class because we're suppose to start writing our essays today. So I'll have to complete part of my plan on thursday. I'll have to start typing my essay with speed first I'm done with my plan to catch up. What i'm I having trouble with is dividing the paragraphs and going over the word limit. What I've planned is to write everything I have to on my essay without any means of organization. Once I complete writing everything down then I'll organise everything. I'll take away any words I don't need and I'll choose three good guiding questions for each characteristic and then see which information fits which guiding question and put that information in that paragraph. I'll put the plan into action on Thursday.

Reflection Entry #31 May 4 ,2009

Today I was quite confused while doing the plan. I did not understand how to explain why the six characteristics are important to make a civilization. Since this is a major part of the introduction i must have a section about it. I'm still thinking of a way to organise the characteristics into paragraphs of the most important characteristic. I'm still finding a way to connect the characteristics together with each other with certain transitions which lead from one major idea to another. I think I should've done a bit more research when I had the chance to answer these troubles. But I have plenty of information about time which I'm going to use as the main focus in every paragraph to show what the Law + Government was at the time and how it changed time to time as the civilization developed. I think to tell why the 6 characteristics are important for a civilization, I'll have to read my notecards and hopefully learn something from them to answer Why the 6 characteristics are important for a civilization.

Reflection Entry #30,May 3,2009

Today was our planning day for the essay. I decided to make my plan on Inspiration, so when I'm writing my essay it would be easier to just open another file and check the steps on the plan whether the essay follows them. I think my mind maps are a bit too complicated. In my mind map each heading as too much information. If I had subtitles it would make it easier. I should also write in bullet points. This will make my mind map simple to understand and follow. I also think I should organise my notecards and see how they refer to the humanities aspect of "time" I have to skim the amount of information i have and get it to fit the word limit. I also have to write a reminder in my plan about NOT WRITING 1st PERSON!

Reflection Entry #29,April 30,2009

Today was our last day of research and I was able to complete 85 notecards. Overall, I think I've worked in the MM labs and the library productively throughout the whole research. I think if I got less distracted and talked in the lesson I might've been able to complete more note cards. The stratgey I used which is to open two webpages at the same tiome and collect the information at the same time woked quite well and it was also easy to summarize. If I used this strategy earlier I might've been able to get more information as well as efficient. I think when I'm planning my essay I might have a hard time because of the great amount of information I have. I think I'll have to organise it well by taking out some unneeded information. I think when I'm writng in paragraphs I'll write in this order: Introduction, Law and Government, Education, Religion and Conclusion.

Reflection Entry #28 April 28, 2009

Today I tried a new strategy to gain all the information I need. I opened two webpages at the same time and collected information from both of them at the same time about the same topic. SO it's actually taking a part of one source and blending it with another. it worked quite well and allowed me to complete quite a plenty notecards. I also summarized well. I read a big chunk of text from both sources and noted down the information I needed. i think this strategy is working really well and it got be 75 note cards today. I'm going to use the same strategy on our last day for research next lesson which will hopefully put the finishing touches and wrap up my research. But i still need to improve on noting down my information well because it looks really untidy. Since it's becoming really difficult to read for me, I've decided to use a pencil and a rubber instead of writing with a pen and scribbling over it. Other than that I pretty much have all the information I need.