Alice in the Wonderland

Book Report about Alice in the Wonderland

The title of the book that I read is “Alice in Wonderland”. The author of this book is Lewis Carroll. The main character is Alice, a curious, well-mannered, and reasonable young girl. Alice’s constant resource and strength is her courage. The story takes place both in our real world, and in the fictional world of Wonderland. Wonderland is a strange and crazy world where animals act like normal people and physical size and time are relative. Alice enters this world when she and a rabbit are dropped into a hole. The main idea is when Alice, found herself in a fantasy world when she fell down a rabbit hole while chasing the White Rabbit. The trouble begins there, where she found a key sitting on a glass table in the hallway she landed in. She also ended up drinking from a bottle that shrinks her and eating a cake that caused her to grow to the size of the ceiling. The three main points were Alice’s dream where the story happened, is when she enters the magical wonderland garden where she has to face difficulties with the people and animals that live there, and is when the Red Queen commands Alice’s head to be cut off.

The first main point was Alice’s dream. She was on a riverbank on a sunny day, looking over her sister’s shoulder, when she saw a White rabbit running around with a pocket watch. Alice was very curious, so she chased after him and both ended up going down a hole, which was an entrance to Wonderland, where Alice’s dream took place. The rabbit and Alice landed in a room with a table and the only key that could open the door was on the table, they couldn’t reach it. Alice found a bottle marked, “Drink me,” so she did. All of a sudden she became bigger, and yet couldn’t reach the key. Then, she found another bottle marked “Eat me,” so she did again. She became very little, but she got the key. Alice and the rabbit opened the door that led to a beautiful garden of animals that could talk like humans.

The second main point was when Alice and the rabbit were in the garden and the obstacles that they had to face. After some animals treated her badly, Alice went off into the forest, where she met a caterpillar that helped her get back to her normal size by eating a piece of the mushroom he was sitting on. Eating the mushroom, actually, made her grow back to her normal size. Alice walked until she found the Duchess. The Duchess was really rude, because she had to prepare for a game with the Queen. In the forest, Alice found the Cheshire cat, who explained to her that everyone in Wonderland was mad and crazy. The cat gave her directions to find the March Hare, the best friend of the Mad Hatter. Alice went to the Duchess’ game with the Queen and joined them. The Queen got really mad, because the Knave of Hearts was being accused of stealing the Queen’s tart. Many people gave their testimony, but none of what they told made any sense. The White rabbit called Alice to give her testimony. After many accusations the King couldn’t find anything that proved that the Knave of Hearts was guilty.

The third main point was when the Queen ordered Alice’s beheading. That happened because the White rabbit heard evidence, that proved the Knave was innocent, in the form of a letter written by the Knave. The King thought that the letter could prove the Knave guilty and Alice protested his interpretation. The Queen was furious because she thought that the Knave had really stolen her tarts, and she wanted to destroy Alice because she and the White rabbit helped the Knave, but Alice grew so much that she was able to destroy the Queen’s army of cards and everyone that was making that place, into a bad place where all the people were mad.

The story ended when Alice woke up on her sister’s lap, back at the riverbank. Alice told her big dream to her sister and they both went for tea. In “Alice in Wonderland” you learn how to manage your personal growth, you learn how to challenge your creativity, and you also learn that you have to follow the advice you give yourself. All these things were learned from Alice’s dream, when she entered the magical garden, and when the Queen ordered Alice to be beheaded. The concluding statement was when we, readers, find out that everything was a dream and Alice’s sister hears the story she pictures what the characters look like, causing the story to be recreated in Alice’s sisters head. Trying to figure what everything was and how things happened, which give us the same felling because as readers we need to picture the setting from books ourselves.

Reading: The Fault in Our Stars

 

Everyone knows and loves the heart rendering story of Gus and Hazel more commonly known as The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. I have watched the movie of this novel countless times and each time I do so, tears swell up in my eyes. While watching the movie a weekend or two ago, I decided that maybe I should read the book. And this is how I fell in love with a beautifully written book.

As everyone knows (you have to be from Mars to not know this book), that this book is about two cancer fighting patients who fall in love and the girl, Hazel Grace, ends up completely shattered and heart broken when her boyfriend, Gus, dies.

Since I had already watched the movie, I knew how it was going to end but even then, I felt my heart drop as the book came closer to Gus’ death. Just the way the writer built up all the words that led to the end were sad itself. I also found it really ironic how Hazel said to Gus, “I’m a grenade and at some point I’m going to blow up and I would like to minimalise the casualties” because at the end she was the one who was hurt so bad after his death. I really pitied her because; I can’t imagine how painful it would be to have someone you love pass away. The part where they performed the eulogy for Gus in front of him was very heart breaking. Especially when Gus’ friendship with Isaac (who was blind) was shown when Isaac said “I do not want to see a world without him [Gus].”

Overall, I really liked this book because it showed a lot of love, not only with relationship partner but also with friends and family and I think that nowadays there are not enough stories that do the same.

Assessment Task: Response

Last Friday was our due date to turn in our Summative Assessment Task. We had many options on how we could write and do that, the only objective was to engage a variety of texts, explore and compare themes and ideas within and across texts, and finally express a personal response to a text.

My Project was a magazine article, it talked about everything we had learned since the beginning of the unit. First, I talked about culture, how it was important for everyone and how influenced everything around us. Second, I talked about how culture was connected to the book that I read, which was “How to kill a Mocking Bird” by Harper Lee.

I talked about independent learning, what it is, what were an independent learner’s characteristics and how being an independent learner could help in your future. I talked about the cultural Iceberg which was really important to culture, it means that you can’t really see what a person is feeling, her values, her desires, so that’s like the part of the Iceberg that stays under the water, where we can’t see.

Another topic for my Task was the research question, which was: “Why is racism one of the most devastating factor between cultures?” and I think this is one question that many people ask themselves because in this book, there are many different cultures and people, styles, how people dress, religions, skin color, and everything sums up to racism. Of course, there are people that respect the difference in each one of us, and know that they can’t change any of it, but there are also people that can only protect and respect what they believe on and not look towards the different people.

This project helped me to get my final response to my learning, it was definitely a good experience, where I was able to learn more about culture and how it affects us, how the author’s background can also affect his/her writing.

Field Trip: Hei Shui and the Tibetan Culture

This week grade 9 and 10 went on a field trip to Hei Shui. We stayed there from Sunday to Wednesday afternoon. We were able to learn a lot of things about their culture, costumes, and typical food of the Tibetan people. One of the main topics was their religion, buddhism, which “means the liberation from the sufferings of cyclic existence as originated from ancient India by Shakyamuni Buddha or Gautama Buddha.” http://www.exploretibet.com/tibetan-cluture-arts/

Now, I feel so much better about what I believe culture is and how it influences us in our daily life. In Tibet they speak. Sino- Tibetan languages. I’ve learned that the people there can be happy no matter what, most of the population is really poor, but that is not a bad thing for them. They work hard, try to do their best to be able to have a better education and have good food. Even though they don’t have many material things they are still happy. In my opinion they were actually much better than many people that have material things. For me this means that we should appreciate culture and beliefs and not valuable things. We should look towards their culture, what happened to their lives and not just what they have and/or own.

The Tibetan population do a lot of prayers, messages that are made to encourage other people and give them peace. Also, in most places they have colorful flags hanging on doors and roofs. The colors means five different elements in the same order, blue is the wind, white is the air, red is the fire, green is the water and yellow is the earth. Tibet is a place where you go to see how beautiful can nature be and how kind can people be even after everything they have been through.

Tibet has many landforms like high and steep mountains, deep valleys, glaciers. The region has an average altitude of more than 4,000 meters, earning it the nickname “the roof of the world.” We went to the glacier and stayed there for 1 hour. Tibet’s capital is Lhasa, it’s population is 3,002,166 but it’s all the time getting bigger. The economy there consists in Subsistence agriculture, tourism, infrastructure-related construction, mining, hydro-electric power, etc.

Students as independent learners

To be an Independent Learner

 

This week in Language Art class we talked about being Independent Learners. Students today are relying too heavily on other people’s thinking, the internet, teachers, etc. Which means that we should have our own perspective of what is and how we learn for ourselves. To be an Independent Learner, you should be engaged with your future, because what you learn now, you will need for something bigger when you get a job. You need to have different points of view, so you can compare them and see what is the best and more effective way to learn.

Independent Learning is learning that is self-directed. This kind of learning has to be organized and completed. We, Students have encouraged to know our own interests and what will help to improve our knowledge. We need to know when is the right time to ask for someone’s help. We need to practice a lot, so we know that we are not wrong, and that takes a lot of responsibility and self-discipline. We got to be interested enough so we can enjoy while learning, and enjoy what it is that we are learning.

Also, Independent Learners have a little of sense of insecurity, which is caused by the absence of an adult or a teacher that normally give students help and security. Those who are Independent Learners teach themselves and only ask question after a failure to find a solution on their own. Finally, I think being an Independent Learner is a great thing because students can accomplish many good characteristics from it, and be ready for their future, without many people’s help all the time. They know how to discover things for themselves which gives them responsibility.

To Kill a Mocking-bird: Reflective Blog

Link

          In Language Arts class, we have been talking about culture and how it affects the author’s writing.  I am reading the book “To Kill a Mocking-bird” by Harper Lee. Throughout the book we can notice that Harper Lee’s life was described in the book. We can tell that  many things happened in the story because of her life when a child. Her culture affected her writing, it helps us realize that she didn’t have a perfect childhood or an easy one. Harper Lee lived in a small town called Monroeville. She was the youngest of four children. She was born on April 28, 1926 in Alabama. Lee was always known as a loner and individualist person. Which explained her childhood and why she got the idea to write her first book in centuries.

          When Harper Lee was 10 years old, a white girl that lived near her hometown accused a black man of raping her. The man’s trial were covered by her father’s newspaper. This fact helped to build Lee’s sense of a dramatic story. Just like in To Kill a Mocking-bird . Harper Lee’s dad was a  lawyer, just like Atticus, she was a tomboy like Scout.

        Many people believe that Harper Lee was influenced by what influences many writers and that she took the idea of the book from her own personal experience and culture. Both cities, her hometown and the book’s setting had  courthouses, neighbors who knew everyone’s business, and a resident who terrified local kids. Harper Lee said that To Kill a Mocking-bird was not a book of  autobiography, but that she took scenes and characters from her childhood to remind Maycomb’s landscape. Harper Lee got a lot of insperation from her town and also from her culture. Anyway, this was my point of view about culture,  Harper Lee’s writing background and how it affected the way she wrote the story.

My sources were: http://www.harperlee.com/bio.htm

http://www.biography.com/people/harper-lee