WW Fenn
02/22/2019
O Captain! My Captain!
February 2019
What Music Means To Me
02/21/2019
Finley Stevens
Fitz 8th grade English
Music in my life
“One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.”
-Bob Marley
Music can provide so many different factors to help someone in certain situations. In particular music helps me stay focused when I’m studying, doing homework or doing class work. When I listen to music I like to listen to Rap and Hip-Hop, I like these genres because they usually are fast and high energy songs not a slow song with very little energy in it like country or something. Every study hall or class I’m allowed to listen to music I’ll take out my headphones and listen. I do this because I would rather listen to music then to listen to a kid complaining about the work or a teacher yelling at a kid for doing something stupid. An example of this is during Latin class Mrs. Libby usually lets us use headphones and I think when she doesn’t since we have a very loud and talkative class we get distracted and talk but when everyone’s using headphones people can’t hear each other so there’s no one being super distracting to the rest of the class. Some people may argue though that the listening music gets us distracted shuffling between songs and some people start dancing and singing to the music their listening to, I think that yes sometimes there is that kid who starts singing along to his favorite song besides that kids don’t really get distracted by their music. It doesn’t matter what type of music you listen to or why you listen to it music can help provide the energy or calmness you need at that time. It also helps to cancel out the noises around you so you can focus on what your doing.
WW Fenn Literary Reflection
02/13/2019
Finley Stevens
Fitz 8th grade English
O Captain! My Captain!
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
-Walt Whitman
Where on the deck my Captain lies, fallen cold and dead. This is my favorite line from the poem O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman. Everyone in our class had to choose a classic poem to memorize for a school wide competition called the WW Fenn. I chose the poem O Captain! My Captain! because I didn’t want anything to long because I’m not very good at memorizing but I didn’t want to choose anything to short or else it would look like I just choose the easiest piece I could find. I found a random poetry website and was only finding poems that were really good but way to long. Then I found O Captain! My Captain! The words that are used in this poem would make you think that it’s a poem about a captain on a ship but it’s actually about the death of Abraham Lincoln. When I heard that we only had one week to memorize our whole poem I was a bit worried, but now that were a few days in I realize that it’s not as hard as I thought it would be originally all you have to do is keep practicing.
Literary Reflection
02/06/2019
Finley Stevens
My Oveall Experience
Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.
-Fredrick Douglass
Reading provides a totally different experience that nothing else can provide. The Swiss Family Robinson is a great classic that provides an experience that no other type of book can provide besides a classic. While reading The Swiss Family Robinson it brought me to a place that nothing besides reading can bring you to. This project is an experience that I’ll never forget, not only because it taught me new vocabulary words or because it was a completely different style book then I like reading but because it was one of the very first classic books I’ve ever read. I started reading The Swiss Family Robinson because we were required to read a classic for a project that Fitz does every year with his class. We were expected to read the book that we choose in one month, and along with that we had to write a literary reflection and a blog post about anything every week. Along with a lot of other people I was not excited for this project, but after I got a few chapters into my book I wanted to keep reading and eventually didn’t have much of a problem with the reading part of the project. About a week in I got into a flow and was finally ready to face the fact that I would have to read every night. There were so many different themes portrayed throughout the book, I found these themes in many different instances, for example when the father and one of his sons are going on adventures around the island looking for sign of life or when they have to figure out a way to get to land from the boat after it crashes. Just like the family they had to accept the challenges about living on a remote island I to had to accept the challenges of this project. At the beginning of this project you may have heard me complaining about having to read a book and write two paragraphs each weekend. But after everything I would say that it was a good project and it was well worth it in the end.