Quarter 2

The activity that I am going to be doing this reflection on is the book "The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle" by Avi. This novel is about a girl named Charlotte Doyle who went on a ship, the Seahawk in the 16 hundreds and the time she had on this ship changed her values in life forever.

The purpose of this in class novel is, first, to enhance our reading assets using this book because of the type of literature that it uses and the different words that the author uses. Most of these words I have never even heard of and this book has taught me the meaning of all these words along with some quizzes, homework, and assignments that our teacher, Mrs. Dodd, has given us. Also, teaches us that all people have different values and some perform a "paradigm shift". A paradigm shift is when you shift from one idea to another or one belief to another. Another purpose of this class novel is to expand our understanding of values and also our understanding of what the situations all the way back then was like.

I have learned a great many things from this class novel. As I have stated above, it has taught us the meaning of values and that not everyone values the same thing, also, people can change there values from one to another just as Charlotte Doyle did during the voyage. Before embarking on the voyage of her lifetime, she had only valued her education, etiquette and these to contributed to her value of fulfilling her all her father's expectations. With these values she had barely had any sort of fun, barely any freedom because the etiquette that she must have to fulfill her father's expectations did not allow for neither. Although when she did have any free time, her father would simply restrict her from ever going fourth to play outside or even get close to enjoying her much needed freedom.

After disembarking from the voyage, her values had changed in a very dramatic way. She did not value her etiquette as she had before. She did not value her education as she had before. She also certainly did not value her father's expectations and this specific change in her values has led to what happens in the end of the book (I cannot say or it would ruin the whole experience of reading the book for you). All of these once valued things became replace by one thing and one thing only: her freedom. From this, I have learned values play a huge role in one's life. This also relates to an activity that Mrs. Dodd has given us, we had to fold a square to make two triangles and on the bottom triangle we had to draw something that we value that we can touch. On the top triangle we had to draw something that we value that we are unable to touch. For Charlotte Doyle, all her values were changed to freedom which cannot be touched. Now, this paradigm shift from education and etiquette to freedom has bestowed upon her a great decision that she is willing to make at the end of the book, showing how values can change your view of the world, your view of other people and your view of yourself.

There is not much that I could have done differently because this was simply a class novel and not something I could have done differently to improve in anything other than my reading. I think that I could have changed when I read the book because I always read it in times where I had a lot of free time. This led me to reading ahead because I knew many things that my classmates did not know like who has died and what has happened to Charlotte. Also, I could have asked the meaning of some words that I did not understand or check in the dictionary what the word meant. Doing this would have allowed me to get a better understanding of the literature and also a better understanding of the story its self. I might even have a different perspective of the story and its moral.

My goal this year in Language Arts is to enhance my grammar in creating sentences and such. This class novel has contributed greatly to this goal because when I read it, I can notice some different types of grammar that the author uses so that I can use the assets of literature in my own writing. It has also given me a whole different set of vocabulary words that I can use in my writing, improving my grammar skills and the way that I write.