Today is pep rally and I'm excited because I am a senior! The cheerleaders get to perform and almost every senior has a whistle. Anyways, I am looking forward to that. In class, we are working on our blogs. The only thing I need to work on is my book blogs, which I don't really understand. I am going to have to look at the examples Mrs. Fassbender sent. This should be a good day. 

Today in class we did concept maps. At first I did not understand fully, but soon grasped the idea. I partnered up with Raymond and we were one of the ones who did it correctly. At first we listed all the key concepts of chapters 1-7. We ended up with a copious list of words. We grouped them together and that is the only thing we got to today.  

In class today, we worked on our senior project proposals. I really needed this time because I am always busy. This is a requirement for graduation so I can't just procrastinate on this project. My proposal is about anti-bullying. Now I need to work on my book blog from the book the plague. 

We ended up not taking the quiz today. I was glad because I did not study. We read articles on how to annotate and book blog. The class picked out our books for the year and I picked up the plague. It was pretty laid back.

Today one of my favorite homework assignments was the paragraph with gibberish. We made a paragraph with nonsense words to identify with verbal context. Verbal context is understanding what a word means in relation with other words around it. I made a story about a princess that got married lol. I also learned euphemism which is a phrase to take place of an unacceptable one. Slanting was brought up and it's a feeling that is influenced by something.

Today we read chapter 4 and 5. These chapters were dedicated to context and connotation (obviously). I learned there are two meanings; extensional and intensional. Extensional meaning is something that cannot be expressed in words because it is that which it stands for. Intensional meaning is that which is suggested inside one's head. We also have "unmentionables" which everyone does not speak of. It's like saying someone psssed away is better than someone died.

In the beginning of class we talked about our purr and snarl words. Some we said for our class are; diverse, athletic, entertaining, broke, and ignorant. What makes us human also came up in the discussion. The way we use language makes us human. Understanding that words have different meanings makes us human. On the computer we read this article on AP Blather. It was pretty interesting.

We started on this book called Language in Thought and Action written by S.I. Hayakawa. At first I thought it was going to be boring but it actually turned out to be interesting. We read chapters 1-3 and learned about language. As a human we can understand the many meanings one word has. Example: "Shut up" could mean literally be quiet or you can't believe it. It could be used as a mean word or it could be nice. It all depends on how you say it.

This day is when 9/11 happened but I didn't hear anybody do a moment of silence. Which was weird, are they trying to let it die down or erase what happened? Anyways, we did two major essays which I did not get. 

I just made my first website. It was pretty cool to design your own website. We had to do another pre-assessment which was very long.