My Year 8 English Experience

I have read many different opinions on blogging, so I have decided to write a post based on my own idea of blogging. I have answered the questions that Mrs McLeay set for us to answer, but I have also compared my answer with what other people think.

What have you learned through blogging?

Fran: Through blogging I have learnt about what different people think and what issues people like to address. It has helped me come to understand what different girls in my class and around the world write and think about the same issues and the way they respond to these. Blogging is all about sharing thoughts and feelings with other people.

Myself: Blogging allows you to say what you think about different things from your heart, without people interrupting you. Of course, there are guidelines to blogging. Although there are many people just like us who are students, teachers or just bloggers, we have to be aware that not everyone is trustworthy and genuine on the internet. Anyone can access our blogs, as it is open for anyone who finds it to come and read what we have written. There can be some dangerous people who use the internet as bait, so therefore we cannot give out any personal information such as the town that we live in, our address, our surname or any other information that can be used by these people who are up to no good. This is one thing I have learnt through blogging; about the importance of internet safety.

Like Fran said, by reading someone’s blog, you actually get to know them more. You learn about other people’s opinions from other countries, and you also learn what other people in your class think about different issues. As well as reading what other people think, you also get to voice your own opinion. Blogging allows you to share your thoughts with other people over the internet, and you can actually devalop an online friendship with someone.

What would you say to other Year 8’s about the possibility of blogging in English next year?

Sarah: I would say why. I don’t really get the point of it.

Myself: I believe that what you put into blogging is what you get out of it. I really enjoyed the opportunity to have a blog, write posts and communicate with other bloggers this year, but not everyone has the same opinion as me. As Sarah said above, she didn’t understand what they point was of blogging. However, I look at blogging as a different way of learning, instead of sitting there in class with a book open, reading about how to write and how to blog. I’m the kind of person who actually has to get in a try something instead of read about it. I really think that you have to give blogging a chance, and by doing this, I have got a lot out of it. Although blogging may not be the style of learning that everyone likes, I have found it a really great experience. I remember reading a comment that someone left which said something like, “Your blog is great, but why do you write so much?” Well, the simple answer is that I have such a strong passion for writing, it is natural for me to write such long posts. Not many people are like this, but and actually do the opposite. They can’t think of anything to say and their posts are usually quite short according to me.  

At the beginning of the year, I didn’t really understand blogs that much. I had never come in contact with one before, and I didn’t understand why we were doing blogs in English. I assumed that English was just learning about grammar and spelling, but as I looked into it more I began to realise that English revolves around us everyday. Communicating with people, understanding how other people live and basically “exploring the language we speak” is how I describe English. I have continued to write new posts throughout the year, and every new post has improved my writing skills. I have put the most into blogging, and have really got the most out of it. When I look back at my very first post, the length of the post was tiny compared to what my posts are like now. I can now look back and read all my previous posts, watching my writing grow, improve and become more passionate along the way. Blogging is truly a great thing to be doing, as long as you put a lot of effort into it.

People say that blogging is just a different way of learning. What do you say about the possibility of using blogs to learn?

Everyone has their own style of learning that helps them learn. Whether it’s reading from a book, listening to someone explain how to do something, following a picture or a diagram, listening to the instructions being sung out with music or building something that will help them understand the topic, everyone has at least one style that they know helps them learn well. Just like all these styles I have listed above, blogging is yet another type of learning style that some people prefer. I know that I’m definitely one of these people that’s learnt so much from blogging, but other people may not like this style as much as, just say, listening someone explain how to do something. It all depends on your personal preference to how much you learn out of blogging. As well as this, you must also give blogging a chance. If you don’t, you may miss the opportunity of discovering a great learning idea for yourself.

I just had my last 8Alive day two weeks ago, and it is sort of sad to think that never again will we be doing this program. I would like to share with you one activity that really stood out for me this week. By doing this activity, I thought beyond the basic idea of painting and decorating a mask, and looked into a deeper meaning where the colours in the mask represent my own personality and thoughts.

To start off with, I would just like to explain where the idea of painting masks came from. If you think about it, people that we know and meet everyday wear masks. Not physical masks like those that you physically put over your face, but masks that hide their true self from people. This mask changes their personality, and hides what they’re really like.

I can remember clearly a true story that I was told before we started painting the masks. This story was a perfect example of how masks can hide what someone’s true self is. The story started off at school, where a mask was hiding someone’s real personality. It was set back in the years when a female teacher went to high school with a guy. This teacher always saw this guy as a really ‘up himself’ person, who was always showing off and thought that he was better than everyone else. The teacher told how she didn’t like people who thought they were so good and superior, so she kept a distance from this guy at her school. However, during the school holidays, this guy turned up in the same camping area with his family, and set up camp next to this teacher, who was also camping with her family. Because this teacher knew this guy from school, she took a big step, and introduced her family to him. After spending a bit of time with him while camping outside school, she found out that he wasn’t so up himself, and was actually a really nice guy. His personality completely changed when he was with his family, and the two of them became very close friends. Now, many years later, this guy who this teacher met back at highschool, became her much-loved husband. During school, this guy wore a mask to hide what he was really like. This mask made him look like a show off, and if this teacher had never got to know him without his mask on, she would never have him as a husband like she does now. 

You may recognise this story, which relates to other stories where people’s personalities are hidden by a mask. I know that I actually wear a mask myself, and this is where my choice of colouring came into the mask I painted during 8Alive. Below I have explained all about my choice of colours, and what they really mean.

First off, I painted half the mask with a pale blue colour. Why did I choose the colour blue, you ask? Well to be honest, I don’t actually know why I chose this colour myself. Maybe it had something to do with my interests, as blue is one of my favourite colours. The colour blue has always been a special colour to me. It reminds me of the beauty of nature, and really is a special colour. Some people may say that they have the “blues”, but this did not come into my choice of this colour. I generally see myself as a happy person, so relating this colour to sadness and “blues” isn’t the path I chose to colour my mask as. Well, back to the reason why I chose this colour. Like I said before, I originally didn’t have a meaning behind the choice of blue, but the colour just stood out to me. The beauty inside this colour is just exquisite, and really reflects on the beauty of nature. I often look up at the strong blue in the sky and admire its colour, often wondering how the sky got such a beautiful colour. Another example is the ocean. The ocean, or beach as I know it, has always been a magical place for me, and it also shares the blue colouring of my mask. Just then I did a quick search on Google for “blue ocean”, and up came a whole lot of pictures of the ocean. These pictures were probably each taken from different locations, but they all share one thing in common… the beauty of the ocean. Just by looking at these pictures I can feel the shimmering, glamorous scenery, as if I was right there at that very place. All the shades of blue come together to form one stunning stretch of water which I look at as being a very special, meaningful place.

Talking about shades, I better start talking about the two different shades that I used in my mask. I divided my mask into two halves, and the first half was painting with a pale blue, that I mentioned just above. This half, with the pale blue colouring, represents my life at school. The other half of the mask is covered with the same colour (blue), but it is a darker shade. Now I will explain to you what each side represents. The first side (pale blue side) represents my life at school, and the other half (darker blue side) is my life at home. In each place my personality changes slightly. At school, I don’t feel as comfortable as I do at home. Because of this, I am much quieter, and my personality changes (which is the light blue side of the mask). Most people in my class have only met this side of me, which is hiding my more natural personality that comes out at home.

At home, I don’t restrain the actions that I often stop myself from doing at school. For example, at home if my brother has the TV on too loud, I would yell across the room at him to ”Turn the TV down!” This is what is represented by the darker shade of blue on my mask. However, in class, if a TV was on at a very loud volume, I would ask the teacher quietly if she/he would mind turning the volume down. This side of me is represented by the light blue on my mask, which is what most people in my class know me as. The difference between these two responses would basically be the word “please”. At school I would think about what I was going to say to the teacher for a while before I approach her, but at home I would just yell out what comes to the top of my head. The reason for this is probably because I’ve been with my family my whole life, and I’ve sort of adapted to them.

Another example would be when the class starts talking really loud. Some people may find nothing wrong with this, but because I am very sensitive to the volume of noise, this really annoys me. I hate discos because of the booming, loud music, and I hate any kind of loud sound. If you are like this as well, then you would know exactly how I feel. If not, you may find it hard to understand why this bothers me. Well, this has always bothered me. Whether it’s a balloon popping, people screaming, music that’s at the maximum volume level… I get very sensitive to the noise. Well, back to the example. It just happened that yesterday at school, we all had to do a test. Usually, no matter how fast I try to go, I am always the last one to finish a test. Well, it was all quiet and I was working away at this test, and then the sentence that I feared was announced. “I’ve finished!” someone yelled out. “Yes, I’ve finished the test!” Well, I would probably say the same thing if I was doing the test at home with my family, but I know that my family wouldn’t react so much to it. At school, I would quietly hand up the test, and find something else to work on. The thing is, in our class, there are not many people who do the same thing as I do. When more than one person finishes a test, the noise begins. There was talking that followed the announcement, and as soon as someone else finished, they started talking as well. Of course, a pattern began to form. As more and more people finished, more and more people began talking. And when more and more people start talking, everyone raises their volume so they can hear each other, and so on. Meanwhile, there I was sitting there, trying to get through this test. No one had any respect to the people who were still finishing their test, and the more they talked, the more annoyed I got. Anger was building up inside me because not only was I finding the test hard, and because there was a certain time limit for the test, but mainly because I could not concentrate with everyone else talking. They could at least show a bit of respect by staying quiet until the time limit was up. If anyone from my class is reading this right now, you won’t believe it when I say that I really felt like screaming at everyone to “shut up”. And no, I am not joking. I meant what I said, but my light blue mask fought this temptation and won against it. No matter how much I wanted to do this, my mask prevented me from this happening. It would be a completely different story at home though. If this was my brother making all this noise while I was trying to do something such as homework, I would have easily told him to “shut up” in a very angry way. This is what I would naturally do, but because masks are so strong, they can actually block you from showing what your true reaction would be. If you don’t know a person very well, it will be quite easy to hide what you’re really like from them. However, the more you start to get to know a person, the more their real personality will start to unfold.

Now that I have explained the main colours used in my mask, I will explain the colours that I used to outline the features of the mask. To begin with, I outlined the two eyes with half black, half white which represents how I see the world. The white represents all the good things that happen in this world. Friendship, love, compassion, enjoyment and nature all fall into this category. However, with the good there’s also bad, and this is what the black represents. Hatred, wars, pollution, murder and depression all fall into this category. So in this world, there are both bad things, and good things. We like to encourage good things that will make the world a better place.

I have also outlined the nose as well with half black, half white, which is how I smell the world. Once again, the white represents the good smells, and the black represents the bad smells. Good smells include things such as flowers and trees which are mainly natural, but the bad smells include pollution such as car fumes and rubbish that are man-made and help to contaminate the planet.

Finally I outlined the mouth, which is how I word things. In other words, this is what I encourage people to do and not to do. Like the nose and the eyes, I outlined half the mouth with white, and the other half with black. The white side is what I encourage people to do, and a lot of these encouragements I have previously written about on my blog. These include doing things such as recycling, saving water and being compassionate to others that have a good effect on the earth. The black side of the mouth is basically the opposite, which is what I tell people not to do. Not littering, not bullying and not wasting water are some examples, and there are many more examples for both what to do and not to do that I haven’t listed.

Well that pretty much rounds off another long post. Unfortunately this will probably be the last post I write about 8Alive (since the program has now finished), but I will be back to post about other experiences and ideas.

While reading our new class novel ‘The Dons’, I have learnt a bit about different people’s characters, and have had a deeper look into people’s behaviour. One example I would like to talk about is a lady in the story called Zia Rita.

The first thing I will tell you before I start talking about Zia Rita’s character is the meaning of this word. ‘Zia’ is Italian for ‘Aunt’. I know that I went through the whole book without knowing the real meaning for this word, and I always thought it was just part of her name. ‘Nonno’ is also from the Italian, which means ‘Grandfather’. However, in this book we start to think of this word as Zia Rita’s father’s name.

Well with Zia Rita, the first thing I will say that will describe this lady is that she is like a book with a piggy bank on its cover. If you’re wondering why I have linked a human character to a book’s cover, then I’m just about to explain it all to you right now. This is where the saying “don’t judge a book by its cover” comes in. Throughout the book, we get the impression that Rita is just a selfish lady who doesn’t care about her own father. It is her behaviour that makes us think that she’s just a selfish person, which is like the cover of a book. Have you ever looked at the front cover of a book and gone, “Gee, that book looks so boring!” because of the cover? However, if you read it, you may find that the book itself isn’t what it seemed like when you looked at the cover. This is exactly the same as Zia Rita! People make their mind up on what she’s like based on her actions (which is like judging a book by it’s front cover) instead of looking deeper into her inside feelings about the whole issue with Nonno. The piggy bank on the cover represents the selfishness that people see in Zia Rita, but it’s a completely different story when you look into the situation more closely.

So what is Zia Rita really like inside? Inside, Zia Rita was afraid of what might happen to her father (Nonno). She couldn’t cope with all the changes that were happening to her own father. It was this same person that used to laugh and talk to Rita when she was a child. It was this same person who would play the piano accordion and dance around the garage… the only thing that had changed was that Nonno was getting old. He was losing his mind, and Rita had no control over what was happening to him. She was confused, and afraid of what was going on. What was happening to her father that she always loved to socialise with?

So what was all the selfishness about? Why didn’t she show how she really felt about Nonno? Zia Rita loved Nonno so much that she didn’t want to face what was happening to him. She was so afraid of what was happening to him that she tried to escape the situation by avoiding the fact that he was losing his mind. She seemed like a selfish lady throughout most of the story because she continuously refused to look after Nonno, but it wasn’t Nonno who she was refusing to face; it was what was happening to him that she couldn’t understand.

But why didn’t Zia Rita talk to people about how she felt? Well I believe that this is an indication that gives a bit more information about her personality to the readers. Because she would not talk to anyone about her fear, she  striked me as quite a hollow person. The kind of person who cannot understand that it’s better to talk to others about how she feels instead of keeping it all inside her. This may be a problem of trust, or she may only be scared of what people would think of her.

However, there was one part of the book where Zia Rita did actually mention how she missed the old times she had with Nonno. The sound of Nonno playing his piano accordion brought back memories of her childhood. All Rita’s worries was swepted away by the music, allowing her to reveal how she missed the good times she had with Nonno.

Zia is dancing in the silence, her arms out over her head, her head to one side. It doesn’t take long for Nonno to start playing, and when he does Zia Rita grabs me by both hands and we whirl around her garage the way we did at family get-togethers before Dad died… I see Nonno hunched over his piano accordion. His head is rocking from side to side and his eyes are closed. There is a grin on his face and his right foot is tapping time. “Gee, I miss this stuff!” Zia cries as we lock arms and twirl and stomp our feet.

Zia Rita’s way of trying to cope with the huge change in Nonno was to try and block him out of her mind. She wanted to pretend that she had nothing to do with him anymore, instead of face that Nonno was not what he used to be. This approach is what makes her seem like a selfish person in the story, however, by reading this book, I have learnt to understand people’s actions and learn what causes them.

Her final decision to move away so she could escape the stress of Nonno was a selfish decision that proved how weak she was when it came to accepting reality. However, this was caused because of her inside fear of what is going to happen to Nonno. Therefore, I don’t consider Zia Rita as simply a selfish person, but only selfish on the outside because of her lack of understanding and dealing with the situation.

This rounds me off to the cover of the book again where it has some small writing. I think that the whole issue of Zia Rita running away from her family to live in Sydney is one reason for this little sentence on the cover, as well as some other issues in the story. Really, when you think about, it all winds up to this very sentence on the cover of the book. This is the sentence that I never really understood until I finished reading the book. When I started talking about the family issues that have been faced in this book, everything begun to link up with this little sentence.

You can never escape family

When I say the word ‘compassion’, what do you think of? What kind of things do you imagine someone doing which involves compassion? Why is being compassionate so important? Today I have decided to write a post which is all about compassion, which will answer all of these questions.

Have you ever heard the saying “treat others how you want to be treated”? I believe that this saying is in the center of compassion. If you do not respect people for who they are, and do not show kindness, don’t expect people to treat you any better than you have treated them. People must realise that everything doesn’t revolve around themselves. The key words that need to be focused on in compassion are kindness, empathy and generosity. I have explained these three words below:

Kindness- Kindness involves treating people in a manner that would make them feel comfortable. Showing kindness could simply mean saying greeting someone friendly, including them, starting a conversation with them etc.

Empathy- I would say that empathy is one of the most important points in compassion. The word empathy basically means understanding how others feel and trying to put yourself in their shoes. Instead of only thinking about yourself, you are imagining what things would be like for someone else. When I say “putting yourself in someone’s shoes”, I don’t mean this by physically putting on their shoes, but I mean imagining that you are actually this person, and how things would feel like from their point of view.

Generosity- Generosity is giving up something of yours for someone else. This may simply mean sharing your money with a friend so they can buy a chocolate muffin from a cake stall, or it could mean giving up your bedroom so that your new brother has a place to sleep at night. No matter how big or small the sacrifice is, it will always make someone else happy.

Now, can you imagine a world where there is no compassion at all? Try to imagine what things would be like for not only you, but everyone else as well. Everyone only helps other people for money, the poor people get left to starve because no one cares about anyone but themselves, everyone uses everyone else to please themselves… it wouldn’t be a very nice world at all! Everyone is capable of showing compassion, but not everyone is willing to do so. That is why today I would like to thank everyone who have taken time to read this, and everyone who has shown compassion in this world, or will do after reading this.

So next time there’s a job that needs doing, do it out of good-will instead of only doing it to gain money for yourself. I know that this week I’m going to set myself a goal of to do things out of good-will instead of money, and I hope that I have aspired you to do the same.