In United States History, for our final project of the year, my group and I had to write a whole song and create a music video to the tune of "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel. We had to chose events from 1989 to 2014. I chose this piece of work because we really got to show our creativity for this project where for other projects, they were more strict. This project we could do anything we want which made it even more fun! When you click on the link to the video, you will see events that will take you way back. For example, Spice Girls, the Berlin Wall falling down, Zack Morris from Saved By the Bell, 90210 characters, and even the Toronto Jays winning the World Series. You will also see some cool events that are more recent. For example, Miley Cyrus performing at the VMA's. My group and I worked extremely hard on this project. We had great results when finishing the video/song because we got a 9.5. For me personally, US History has been a quite a struggle this year and I'm so happy to show how this project shows my growth for this class. Enjoy the video!
Fakebook Project
This is another US History piece I chose. This project also involved our creativity but we had to do a lot of research. For this mini project, we were assigned a specific president during the Cold War era. My group was assigned President Jimmy Carter. We had to create a Facebook page of his life during his presidency. Every little detail counted. We had to include his information. Meaning, where he was from, his networks, his birthday, his political view, his religion, and his hometown. We then had to add pictures of his "friends." For his wall posts, we had to create a conversation between him and two other people about his policies. For the "basic information", we had to give a biography of his presidency and what he did for the country. Where it says "personal information," we had to state two domestic policies and two foreign policies while he was President and give explanations of what they were and how they benefited the country. Doing this project really helped me boost my grade because I got two 10's. I'm really proud of this piece because this was a week long project and I put a lot of effort into it. It was fun putting some Facebook "slang" in there to make it fun and funny.
Geometry Unit 8 Test
Geometry has been very good to me this year. In this unit, we learned about circles. Unit 8 was a very difficult unit because we had to learn about different theorems and formulas and apply that to what we already know about circles. At the end of the unit, we had to be tested on all of the material we learned. In general, my test grades for geometry have been amazing but for the unit 8 test I got a 98.
This is the highest test score I have gotten in this class. I have been working extremely hard in this math class to get my grade in the high 90's and this definitely helped. I am very proud of this piece of work because math is not an easy subject for me and this definitely helps with feeling confident.
Year- End Reflection
I have made such a huge turn around from 10th grade to 11th grade. Last year, all I cared about was getting decent grades. I did not really care if I had a low 80 in a class maybe even high 70's. As long as I was passing, I didn't really care about anything else. I really just focused on my social life.
When coming into junior year, I made sure I was going to strive to be the best that I can be. I worked extremely hard this year, not only for getting into college but also just getting great grades in general and proving myself that I can do it. I proved to myself that I have the ability to get amazing grades like everyone else.
Throughout the year, I have learned so much. Working hard really does pay off. It really does. I believe that if you have a motivation (for example getting into college) and you set your mind to it, it will all pay off in the end. For me, getting into SUNY New Paltz would be the high light of my senior year because I know and that college knows that I have improved tremendously.