iWicked to the pissath power

• Math class: In case you’re wondering why some of my classmates are doing one thing in math class and others are doing different things, that’s because some of us are in Honors Math and others are in Regular Math. I am in Honors Math and we are learing about stocks. We all have 10,000 fake dollars and we can “buy” any stock we want with our money. We also have checks to buy stocks with and a checkbook to balance our money. I have three really good stocks. They are Micron Technology, Agnico Eagle Mines, and Blockbuster. If I could change one thing about this project, I would give all of us more money in our checkbooks, more time to work on everything, and it would be nice if we could work on our stocks every school day. I forgot to mention that we are given one quarter (half a semister) to work with stocks. We only work with them on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The other days we have regular math calss and learn about pythagorean theorem and stuff like that. We can still balance our checkbooks and look up stocks whenever we want.

• In science we just took a mastery test on forces. One lesson in the chapter was about speed, velocity, momentum, and the three laws of motion. (I really don’t need or want to right a novel about everything we learned, so I won’t really explain everything.) One lesson was about gravity, gravitational pull, unbalanced forces, and balanced forces. The last chapter was about friction, overcoming friction, examples of how to overcome friction, and how friction can help us and be unhelpful. I didn’t like the fact that a group had to report on every lesson that we had because I never learn anything when fellow classmates are whispering while reporting, going to quickly, not explaining anything well enough, rushing to report, or practically reading to us instead of reporting. I only learn and understand the lesson when I go home and read it after reporting. Plus, we spend so much time and concentration on one lesson, so it can be harder to remember the others. I am much better off if my teacher teaches me instead.

• In English class, we are reading The Giver. I like to know what we are reading and what we will read so I can understand everything. I also like to know what’s going to happen in the future. For example, people in the community are realeased for 1 of 4 reasons. 1- Each age group is made up of 50 people, so if a birthmother has twins or triplets, only the heaviest one will stay and the lighter one or ones will be released. 2- When people get way to old and tired, they are released. 3- People are released for multiple yet pretty serious or even one very dangerous wrongdoing that could harm or endanger the others in the community. 4- If newchildren are too weak, cry too much, are hard for their caretakers to handle, or their bodies or minds develope slowly he/she will probably be released. Well, almost everyone in my class is wondering what happens to people when they are released, they say people might be given to another community, just left to die, kept in a special facility, etc. I already know what happens, because I read the whole book, unlike most of my classmates, and I won’t ruin the suspense by telling you. The Giver is about a utopian society where everyone is given a job in the community, food for every meal, and a house to live in. If you apply for a spouse, the commity will make a perfect match for you and if you apply for children, you will get one boy and one girl. You can apply at different times for a boy or a girl. Every year there is a ceremony where all the people in one age group advance to the next. It’s not their real birthday, some kids in the same age group are months older than others. These ceremonies stop after the ceremony of 12, when you receive your job. The main character, Jonas, is chosen to be the next Receiver. This is a very important job and there is only one Receiver in the community. The Receiver holds all the memories of true pain and suffering in the “world of the past”, which is exactly like our world today. Regular people know nothing of war, starvation, real suffering, and climate. People don’t even have weather, it just gets bright during the day, dark at night, cold during the winter, and warm during the summer. There really is no sun and even the children’s science class is very often incorrect. The Receiver is the most important member of the commity because he knows what can happen if certain rules are changed because he knows about true pain and suffering. Jonas is chosen to be the next “Receiver of Memory” as it is called, and this book is about how he goes through training. It’s a really good book and I advise you to read it in your spare time.

• In Social Studies or Social Science, whatever you want to call it, we are doing our second video podcast, or vodcast. Actually, for Ysabel, Andrew, Xiang, Brian, Kathy, Alvin, Phoebe and me, this is our third vodcast because of various reasons which I won’t go into at the moment. We just recently split our class into groups of 4 and we did a vodcast on the issue of Mexican immigration to the United States. We all had our own scripts and everything, even the outcome was known by the groupmates. We had to “decide” if the Mexicans should be aloud to enter the U.S. freely and without restrictions. Of course, even though we weren’t told to do so, every group ended with the people for the borders to stay winning. Two people where on one side and two people where on the other. Everyone wanted to be on the group wanting the border to stay, but we had to seperate. We just got into our groups for the up-coming vodcast. I don’t know what it is about. I don’t like doing vodcasts. I wish we could do a debate with half the class on one side and the other class on the other side like we did last school year (last year, we had the same social studies teacher.) because only our arguments were memorized and our rebuttals had to be thought up. I always got a much better grade with debates.

• In P.E. we have 4 different classes that are randomly split up with the entire middle school. I am learning about badminton this quarter with Ms. Carrera. The next half of the quarter it will rugby with the same teacher. In badminton, the class is split up into groups of two. One person is there for P.E. every day and the other is there only part of the time. I am in P.E. on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. On Monday and Wednesday I have Japanese lessons (optional). Badminto is really fun. Some teams like Kathy’s are super good. Kathy is pretty good, but her partner Roman (eighth grade) is an island-wide tennis champion, therefore, he is also very good at badminton. My group is pretty good. There is nothing much I would like to change.

If you want a little more information on anything, just leave a comment and I will reply. But for now, I don’t have much time to write a book.