Writing Portfolio English

Creative Writing Assessment

It was a normal day for me to enjoy my own time, to clear my stress and thoughts. Brown and golden leaves started to fall, the kids ran on them as the crunchy sound ringing my ear. I watched them from afar as a smile suddenly appeared on my lips. Moving my head away from them as I take a deep breath inhaling the fresh air. I continue to take my steps and explore the beauty of the park. Scanning the park, noticing those kids with their mum having a good time. Sadness quickly filled my body as I started to remember my mum. Think back on the time that we used to entertain each other and enjoyed the time together. Deep thoughts filled my mind as I continued my steps but stopped as I realized that I bumped into someone.

Turning my gaze down as I saw a little boy staring at me with his teary eyes makes me feel bothered. Getting down on my one knee to match with his level as I pat his head and ask what is wrong. Waiting for the response but, instead, he sobbed out loud, earning the attention of some people around us. I started to panic, and I didn't know what to do. I look back at him, who is continuing to shed his tears. I tried to think of a solution to stop the little boy as I remembered the leftover lollies that I hadn't eaten earlier, pulling them out of my pocket and giving them to him. I released a sigh of relief as the boy finally stopped crying. 

I was about to speak and ask the little boy but I was interrupted by a woman taking long steps going in our direction. Observing her actions as she hugged the little boy, fear and worries are visible through her eyes. The little boy wrapped his short arms around her as I stayed there smiling at them. I was about to turn around to leave, but someone stopped me. I turned around and saw the lady holding the boy's hand as they took steps towards me. She lost her grip on the boy's hand as he ran to me and hugged my legs. A chuckle escapes my mouth as I start caressing his head.  

The lady walked towards us as she thanked me for comforting and taking care of the boy. I smiled at her as she suddenly handed me money, widening my eyes as I aggressively shook my head and refused her offer. She continued to convince me as I kept refusing her. She finally gave up and asked me what she would do in return to repay me. I just smiled at her and told her that raising her son to be good, kind, and helpful to others is enough to pay me back. She hugged me as she said her final goodbye and walked away with her son. The boy looked back at me for the last time and waved his tiny hands as I waved both of my hands to him with a wide smile on my face. 

I looked at them as they finally out of my sight. I released a long breath, my lips curved into a smile as I continued to walk and enjoyed my time by myself. I can't stop smiling because of the scene that happened earlier. It makes my mood better. Little disappointment in my body as I remember that I didn’t ask for any information or even their name.  Time passes, I still can't forget that moment. I didn't expect that it would become one of the most important things that happened in my life without knowing them. If you're wondering why that small moment is important for me, and why that thing I didn’t take the money for, instead I asked her for a very simple favor. Because my mum once told me before she left me that we should have courage and be kind.

How Pearl Button Was Kidnapped

 Fashion from the 1850-1920 in New Zealand

Women used to wore long dresses, corset and hats. This fashions where based in London and Paris fashion. From 1850's sewing machine and paper dress making were quite popular and the most common way of making clothes. In the late 19th century they promoted practical clothes like Knickerbocker or baggy knee length trousers for women. 

For children, both boys and girls babies used to wear robes. After a couple of years, boys wore Knickerbocker suits, while the girls wore dresses. 

How Pearl Button Was Kidnapped

Who is the main characters?

-  Pearl Button - She's a little girl with blonde hair and really white teeth. She is wearing lots of layer of clothes.

-  Two Maori women - They have a dark skin, fat and dark hair. Their clothes were really different compare to Pearl's fashion. They don't wear any stockings, no footwear and completely opposite to Pearl.

What happened to Pearl?

1 - Pearl is in her front yard playing.

2 - She saw two large women walking down the street carrying a big flaw of basket of ferns. 

3 - They have a simple conversation trying to get to know each other. 

4 - They asked Pearl Button if she's going with them without knowing them. After that, they started walking with Pearl Button and went to their place. They treated Pearl with weird treatment, kissing her hair, her hands or neck. 

5 - After that, they bring Pearl to another place and went to the beach. Pearl had fun spending her time at the beach. 

Yellow Brick Road

Pre - Reading Question

Who is Witi Ihimaera?

Witi Ihimaera was the first Maori author that published both book of short stories and novels. Witi was born in Gisborne, in the east of New Zealand He is also the first even Maori author that be able to published and story about being Maori and not a European. Witi wrote a lot of good stories, and make a lot of good novels. Some of the example of his stories and novels are The Whale Rider, Mahana, Dewe Gorode, and White Lies. 

The Whale Rider - This one of his story that got adapted as a film. (2002)

Mahana - (2016)

Dewe Gorode - (2015)

White Lies - (2013)

What do you predict this story will be about based on the title "Yellow Brick Road"?

In my opinion I think the story might be about someone who treasure this type of road in a particular reason or might be someone who makes a lot of memories in this type of brick road. It can be also about prosperity, wealth or success.

What does "Yellow Brick Road" mean for you?

I haven't seen this story and I don't have any idea what can this story be about so I can't use it to reflect to myself and what it means to me. 

Yellow Brick Road

The narrator believes they are moving to Wellington because he wants to be rich and made a lot of money. He said the money is in Wellington and he believes that to be able to be rich you have to go where the money can be found. 

According to the narrator, there are many difference can be found in Wellington such as those pakehas that they will meet in Wellington. Also, they starting to noticed that people is starting to be unfriendly to them not like those people that they met in Waituhi. Lastly, the life that they can make in Wellington and the life that they had in Waituhi. 

Dad said to uncle Same that we are moving in Wellington because he wants us to have everything that me and my sister deserves. He said that while growing up the don't have anything so we wants us to have everything. Dad wants to start a new life in Wellington and chase our dreams. He also said that it will be easy for us to find a job because they are plenty of factories. My dad wants us to gave us a good life in Wellington. 

The narrator's thought about moving in Wellington started to change as they experienced a lot of things on their way. As they got closer he noticed that he is the only one that is happy and he started to feel bothered about it. He keep asking himself if they will be able to start a new and good life. 

In my opinion, the narrator compare his story to The Wizard of Oz. He thought that in Wellington they will have a perfect life but in reality it was all fake and he started to realise it as they started to notice how people in Wellington treats them. 

English Short Film - "Kasunduan"

In English, we spend four weeks doing our short film. This film project is base on the court scene in "Merchant To Venice. In that part, they're arguing about the deal that Sherlock and Antonio made, and in this scene, Sherlock wants to take Antonio's flesh base on the contract. Our film is has a lot of similarities in that part of the movie. After we filmed the scene of our short film and edited it, we saw that it's six minutes long. We added the subtitles since we did our short film using the Tagalog language.

The film that we did is about the two sisters who made a contract. The contract that they made is very powerful. Once you sighed it and you put your blood you need to do all the things that are given to you. However, in our film, my character is the sister who signed the contract, and my sister which is Skyler asked me to kill my husband and my children. I didn't agree to this so we talked to our father about it, but when he saw my blood on it he said that I need to choose who's gonna die, me or my family. But since I know my sister's plan I killed her instead, our father gave me 24 hours to leave and take my family away from them because our relatives will surely kill me because of what I did. This is the reason why we called our film "Kasunduan" because kasunduan means contract/deal in our language. 

The film that we made is retelling the court scene in Merchant To Venice. Where Sherlock wants to take Antonio's flesh base on their deal. As I said, our film is about a contract between the two sisters. Both of them are made by the contract and seek revenge. We used the "eye level" and "above shoulder" camera shots since we have a lot of lines that most of the part of our film is our conversation with each other so it's great to use this kind of camera angle.

During our filming, it's really hard for us to express the emotion that we needed to express to make our film more realistic. For the script, it's really hard to think of what are you gonna say since we didn't make any script for us to memorize. But after we take some shots we started to get the hang of it. Next time, I think I should improve my acting since I was not satisfied with my act. I think I need to add more emotions. But I love the way our film turns out. 

Kasunduan

English Assessment

Do you have that moment when you feel proud of yourself for a small thing? And that moment that you remembered your past to another kid?

It was a normal day for me to enjoy my own time, to clear my stress and thoughts. Brown and golden leaves started to fall, the kids ran on them as the crunchy sound ringing my ear. I watched them from afar as a smile suddenly appeared on my lips. Moving my head away from them as I take a deep breath inhaling the fresh air. I continue to take my steps and explore the beauty of the park. Scanning the park, noticing those kids with their mum having a good time. Sadness quickly filled my body as I started to remember my mum. Think back on the time that we used to entertain each other and enjoyed the time together. Deep thoughts filled my mind as I continued my steps but stopped as I realized that I bumped into someone.

Turning my gaze down as I saw a little boy staring at me with his teary eyes makes me feel bothered. Getting down on my one knee to match with his level as I pat his head and ask what is wrong. Waiting for the response but, instead, he sobbed out loud, earning the attention of some people around us. I started to panic, and I didn't know what to do. I look back at him, who is continuing to shed his tears. I tried to think of a solution to stop the little boy as I remember the leftover lollies that I haven't eaten earlier, pulling them out of my pocket and giving them to him. I released a sigh of relief as the boy finally stopped crying. I was about to speak and ask the little boy but I was interrupted by a woman taking long steps going in our direction. Observing her actions as she hugged the little boy, fear and worries are visible through her eyes. The little boy wrapped his short arms around her as I stayed there smiling at them. I was about to turn around to leave, but someone stopped me. I turned around and saw the lady holding the boy's hand as they took steps towards me. She lost her grip on the boy's hand as he ran to me and hugged my legs. A chuckle escapes my mouth as I start caressing his head.  

The lady walked towards us as she thanked me for comforting and taking care of the boy. I smiled at her as she suddenly handed me money, widening my eyes as I aggressively shook my head and refused her offer. She continued to convince me as I kept refusing her. She finally gave up and asked me what she would do in return to repay me. I just smiled at her and told her that raising her son to be good, kind, and helpful to others is enough to pay me back. She hugged me as she said her final goodbye and walked away with her son. The boy looked back at me for the last time and waved his tiny hands as I waved both of my hands to him with a wide smile on my face. 

I looked at them as they finally out of my sight. I released a long breath, my lips curved into a smile as I continued to walk and enjoyed my time by myself. I can't stop smiling because of the scene that happened earlier. It makes my mood better. Little disappointment in my body as I remember that I didn’t ask for any information or even their name.  Time pass, I can't still forget that moment. I didn't expect that it would become one of the most important things that happened in my life without knowing them. If you're wondering why that small moment is important for me, and why that thing I didn’t take the money for, instead I asked her for a very simple favor. Because my mum once told me before she left me that we should have courage and be kind. 

All Summer In A Day by Ray Bradbury

In our lesson in English, we read s short story called "All summer in a day", after we read this story we answered some questions about it. This story is about the people who moved to Venus and their feelings after they experienced the summer after 7 years of rainy weather. 

The Reading: https://www.mukilteoschools.org/site/handlers/filedownload.ashx?moduleinstanceid=183&dataid=731&FileName=6-All-Summer-in-a-Day-by-Ray-Bradbury.pdf

1. Avalanches - mass of snow, ice or stones that are falling in the mountainside.

2. Tumultuously - Making a loud or confused noise.

3. Solemn - Deep sincerity

Expositions

Characters 

Margot is one of the characters in the story. Also she is the only character who has a name in the story, her classmates and the teacher are also examples of the characters in the story.

Settings

The story is about the characters waiting in the underground houses to see the sun, for seven years in Venus. This is telling us that the setting of the story is in the underground houses in Venus. 

Mood

Since we have different characters we have a lot of different moods in the story. 

• Isolated

• Satisfied

• Guilty

• Amazed 

• Rage

Simile - " Then, wildly, like animals escaped from their caves."

Metaphor - "She was an old photograph dusted from an album, whitened away, and if she spoke at all her voice would be a ghost."

Sensory language - A few cold drops fell on their noses and their cheeks and their mouths. The sun faded behind a stir of mist. A wind blew cold around them. They turned and started to walk back toward the underground house, their hands at their sides, their smiles vanishing away

Show Not Tell - "The children lay out, laughing, on the jungle mattress, and heard it sigh and squeak under them resilient and alive."

Narrative Opening - English

 In English, we are still continuing our creative writing: The Narrative. We are doing different tasks for each activity, I just finished the show and didn't tell the task, now I am doing the Narrative opening. Narrative Opening is a technique that you can use to hook your readers attention by making the opening really interesting and make them feel curious about your writing. In this task we need to do 3-5 narrative openings, I decided to do 3 since I still need to do the other tasks. I enjoyed this because it challenged me and I've learned a lot while doing this task but I'm not sure if I did it right. 

This is my work:

                                                      Narrative Opening # 1

Hugging my knees, trying to keep myself warm. Smiling to those people walking passed as I got my phone out to check the time but my smile faded as I saw my background on my phone. I took a deep breath and put my phone back in my pocket. But someone caught my attention, widening my eyes as I realized taking my phone out and yes, it's him.

Narrative Opening # 2

Sneaking and hiding trying my best to avoid those suspicious stares. Sweats starts to drip all over my body as I get closer to the exit. I started to close my eyes and take the last step and leave the store without feeling guilty at all.

                                                     Narrative Opening # 3

Crying, shouting, those are the sounds I can hear around me. Firefighters trying to stop the fire as I stand there comforting my sobbing mother. A tear escaped my eyes as I saw the firefighters bringing someone's body from the burning house. As they get closer, realization hits me, there he is the most important person to me. 

Show Don't Tell - English

In our English class, we started our new creative writing activities matrix. Unlike the first one, the activities this time is harder compare to those activities that we did in our first creative writing matrix. The first activity that we did is the "Show no Tell", for this task we have to rewrite some sentences without telling the actual meaning of it but instead you need to show the meaning but writing the sentences that in your own words or way. This is the sentences that we need to rewrite for this task:

"The buildings were tall

Sarah was really upset

She was so happy to see him

The lake is beautiful."

Creative Writing Reflection

 After 3 weeks of working in our creative writing matrix, I finally finished all of them. We started to do this after we talked about the different type and genres of creative writing. We also brainstorm as a class and in groups what makes a good writing. I can tell that this discussion helped me a lot while I was doing the different types of creative writing.   

What are the different types/genres of creative writing?

• Romance
• Horror
• Fiction and Non - fiction
• Historical
• Fantasy 
• Science fiction

This is just some of the genres that we've been talked about as a class. While doing the different task, I also started to discover and learned different things because of thee activities. I also applied to my work some of the ways that we've discussed how can we make our creative writing good. Out of all the activities that I did, y favourite one is the Haiku poem. I like this one because it challenged me and I found it really fun. But if we are talking about fun then the task that I enjoyed the most is the 5 senses sensory language. It is really fun and enjoyable because you can use your imagination to work on this task.

I enjoyed and I found it really helpful for me if we are doing this type of activity. For me it is very helpful cause even though we went to different school or even university it is important that we know this type of things. Also after I did this I learned a lot of different things like what is haiku poem, what is slam poetry and more. All of the activities are interesting because I don't know or I didn't know some of them, and I would like to do this again. 

Haiku Poem - English

In English, we are finishing our creative writing matrix. I just need to do one task and the refection before I finished the matrix. In this blogpost I will be showing the Haiku poem that I made. Some of you might not know what is haiku poem, it is a type of poem that containing 3 lines each. In this 3 lines you need to have 5 syllable on the first line, 7 on the next one and 5 on the last. Same with the other poem you can make this poem with different topics. But for our task we need to do haiku poem about the 4 different season. It's not perfect because it is really hard to make a 5  to 7 syllable sentence for each of them so I don't think my work will make a lot of sense but I hope you will like it. 

Slam Poetry - English

In English, we are still continuing in our creative writing matrix. I am almost finished with the activities but still need to do some of it. The activity that I am doing right now is the slam poetry. For this task we need to watched some of the slam poetry performances about New Zealand. We need to choose one of those videos that we liked and enjoyed watching. We need to explain why do we like that performance and give some opinion about it. 

There are a lot of videos but I only watched 4 of them. On those 4 videos of slam poetry there is one video that make a lot of sense to me. I don't really understand some of it so I don't think I can write my opinion about it if I don't fully understand them. But this is the favourite performance among those videos:

This one is my favourite because as I said it makes a lot of sense for me compare to the other performances. This slam poetry is called " Poetry Slam Matariki 2014", I  liked this because as I was watching the video I can feel the emotions and how proud the performer on his culture. His poetry is mostly about the society that is happening in this time, but also he explained some information about the society that happened in the past. Hes performance was really amazing and he knows how to make his performance interesting for this audience and those skills so the audience will not lose their interest while his performing.  

Sensory Language - English

For our English, we are still continuing our creative writing matrix. I have done some of it and this blogpost is my 3rd task. In this task we need to write a sensory writing using our senses, we are writing this without using those words like hear, saw, smell and more, we have to use a different word for each of those sense. Our writing can be base on reality or it can be an imagination. For my writing I decided to use my imagination, my writing is a quit sad and I am not sure if I did it's good.

This is my piece of writing:

The sound of the waves ringing in my ear. Sitting on the sand, inhaling fresh air while enjoying the view of the beautiful and blue water. Letting all my tears out and hugging my knees. Closing my eyes as more tears came out. Shivering because of coldness, hugging myself  tightly trying to get warm. My salty tears keep falling as I put my head down, standing myself up as a go near the water. Removing my shoes as I walked into the water, I began to scream and let my emotions out, creating an echo along with the sound of the waves. Getting tired, I started to walk back as I felt myself get better, plastering a small smile on my face. I started to walk back and leave all my problems behind. 

Metaphor & Simile - English

 In English we're still continuing our creative writing matrix. I finished one of the activity and this blogpost in the second task that I choose to do for our matrix. I decided to do the metaphor and simile, I know this so it didn't take me long time to finished it. We just have to write the definition of this words. I made a poster to show my learning. I also wrote some example how metaphor and simile can be used on the sentence. 

Language Feature - English

 In English we will be doing different work, for this work it is our choice which one we want to do. We have a lot of different work but we must do all of them in any order that we want. The first task that I chose is the "Language Features". On this task we will be writing the definition, example of each word that we choose. We have to choose 3 different words, I decided to choose Alliteration, Anaphora and Onomatopoeia. 

This words are some of the example or figure of speech that have a different purposes in your sentence. You will see in my presentation work the definition, some examples and the effect of this figure of speech.