nickerdg0910's Blog

One Assembly is All You Need

Are you stumped? Have you been trying to think of an idea, but nothing will come to your mind? Don’t fear one assembly lead by Kathleen Duble will help that. You will walk into it not knowing how to start a story at all and walk out a pro. She didn’t give us specific examples to write about, but she did tell us just about every place to find something to write about.

Step number one in writing a good story is to TALK TO PEOPLE! This is very important to writing a story. I feel as though I could use this in a very useful way in writing something because usually I need some help to get started and getting an idea flowing. I think it is like this for a lot of other people as well. Very rarely will something just pop into your head out of nowhere.

She also talked a lot about going and using personal experiences to get ideas. Using you own life to make a story is a very good idea because it makes it original and gives it your own personal touch to the story. I find this to make a good story because you can spend less time on the outline or the base of the story and spend more time on improving the story and adding to the story. By writing about yourself, you might find more stuff out then you already knew about yourself. In the end, I think that having Kathleen Duble at our school will improve my writing a lot.

The Griffin and The Minor Canon

Do you do things for other people so you get things yourself? Or do you do things for the sake of helping people?

Earthquake Resistant

KA-PLOW! A building crashed to the ground as a result of a devestating earthquake in Boston, Massachusetts. Too bad the last time this happened was in Colonial Times. Before yesterday, I had thought that Boston had ever had an earthquake before. If everyone thinks that and there hasn’t been an earthquake in over 100 years then why are scientists worried all of a sudden. Earthquakes are dangerous and some people are worried about when the next one will occur.

One earthquake could ruin a whole city maybe even state, but why would the government spend money they don’t have on something that hasn’t happened in New England for over 100 years. If I was in the government and I had to make the decision to spend tax dollars to reinforce public buildings against earthquakes, I wouldn’t for a couple of reasons. My first reason is that we need that money for other things like resources and other necessities and not on a few beams that earthquakes can’t penetrate. Another reason is that I believe that the 2012 disaster is true and I would much rather have tax dollars spent on something that saves as many people as possible from that disaster. Sure, if we don’t do anything about earthquakes there is going to be some destruction and lives lost, but if we don’t do anything about 2012 then there will be unimaginable destruction and lives lost.

If the government really wants to do something about buildings resistant to earthquakes then they might be able to if they get their priorities straight. First they have to do something about the war in Iraq because the only thing that is doing is wasting money and lives. Second, they have to try harder to get out of these economic times. With these two tasks done they will be able to accomplish so much more with these preparations and restiants they want to take.

Lets Start the Research!

As the brown haired, blue eyed everyday child walks down the rat infested, cold, dark alleyway into his home he can only think about one thing and it is when will this war end. Writing a story about history might seem easy but there are some important guidelines you need to follow to write a good one. Two important parts of a historical story is how you describe the character and how you describe the setting.

Character description plays a large role in writing an Historical Fiction story. Most authors will agree that the way you describe one of your charcters plays a big part of whether people are going to like the book or not. For one thing if your story was in a first person format then we wouldn’t know that much of a physical description of them because usually people don’t describe themselves down to every hair and nose feature. Sure characters are important in Historical Fiction, but like with all writings the real interest is fitting in the important things with suddlety.

Other authors believe that the truth between good historical fiction is to describe the setting in such way the readers feel like they are actually there.  Many authors believe that a historical fiction story will be nothing without a good descriptive explanation on where your story takes place. Don’t overload the story with the description, add it in without making a big deal ad sure enough the reader will enjoy your story none the less.

Let’s Read a Book

“The Alchemist” By: Paulo Coelho is about a boy who undergoes a journey, changing his life forever. This book tells people to follow their personal legend and to fight through things that are difficult. This is an exhilarating story about a boy who goes through everything to get what he was striving for. – Nick E (Me)

Small Steps by Louis Sachar was extremely entertaining to read. I would recommend it to anyone. It was fast-passed, but still easy to follow. I was able to understand most of it the first time I read it. Out of all the books by Louis Sachar, I think this is the best, and any eighth grader would love it. – Isabella G

I read Eagle strike by Anthony Horowitz. The book was pretty much filled withy action on every page. There were a lot of unexpected twists and turns as in any other respectable thriller. But, there were also relaxing and calm parts of the story witch were a good break from the action. – Peter W

I read the book The Titans curse. I thought it was a very good book. The book was full of action and kept me wanting to keep reading. The book never got boring and I couldn’t wait to finish it. It was so good I’m now looking for the next sequel. – Noah P

Toby Wheeler Eighth Grade Benchwarmer by Thatcher Heldring is an underdog story with a message to never give up. Toby starts out as a bad, unskillful, “gym rat” and by the championship he becomes a starter. I liked this book because he proves everyone wrong even himself. I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars. – Chris P

Sweet Science

“Now make a 90 degree turn and hold your moons above your head”, and “Please turn on your Senteos”. These are just some of the things said to the class so far this year in Science. When i first entered the classroom at the beginning of the year I had no idea that we were going to be learning so much about Astronomy.  All of my past science classes were good, but not like this one. In the other science classes we switched topics every two weeks, but in this one we are sticking with a topic for a long time and luckily it’s a topic I like. From Earth’s Moon to the Big Bang there is a unlimited amount of knowledge i am gaining from 8th grade science class.

 I found the Astronomy unit very interesting and not just because I like Astronomy anyway. I love knowingthat there is a whole other area of environment and space still to be explored. There is one thing I did not enjoy however. thsi was the moon ball activity. It helped a little in learning the cycles of the moon, but in the long run it confused me even more and wasted too much time. everything else seemed pretty interesting though. I especially liked learning about the universe and how it was started. I liked making the galaxy models because it gave kids an understanding about galaxies and how different galaxies looked, it also shows teamwork and cooperation throughout group projects. Another thing this project does is shows how to use everyday objects to make a large, informative model.

I feel that the most important thing I’ve learned is how large the universe is and how many different things there are in space. I liked learning about that we as humans actually have the technology to examine all the distant, foreign space materials that are in space. i have enjoyed Earth Science this year and hope that Science class in High School is as interesting.

Am I A Patron?

Imagine you own a convenient store and someone comes in and buys something. That person would be a patron. But, imagine if someone came into your store, looked around and left. That would just be another person who came into your store.

The word patron means “customer, client, or paying guest”. We all see patrons everywhere and all of us probably are patrons. At some point in all of our lives we are going to have to buy something, and at that point we become patrons. Even if it’s just buying lemonade from a lemonade stand. Another meaning for it is “a person who supports with money, gifts, efforts, or endorsements”. This means even if you just give to charity or give a gift to someone then you are a patron.

My family and I are patrons. Every year we give money to St. Jude’s Hospital and that makes us patrons because we giving to a charity. Giving to a charity is being a patron, but giving someone allowance is not. Allowance is not part of patron because you had to work and do chores to get that money and getting payed for chores does not fall under any of the categories of being a patron. But, when you work for a company then you are a patron because that makes you a client and client is also considered a patron. Patrons are all around us.

Galaxy Model Video

To check out me and my Science Group’s galaxy model video,

visit this link: http://drop.io/mhytps3

A Look through A Telescope

Space is a vast and indescribably large ocean of stars and matter. When we look up into the sky all we see are clouds, the sun, and blue as far as the eye can see. Then at night when we look up we see more of what space looks like, but still nothing like what it looks like from space. Our planet orbits around a star called the sun. When we make one full orbit around the sun then we have completed a full year. But are we the center of the universe or just a tiny spec on the vast majorities of galaxies all around us.

Our solar system compared to the rest of the universe is like a grain of sand on a beach. Although it our Earth (and solar system for that matter) seem huge to us, we aren’t even considered when looking at the universe. I would think that the universe is a couple other galaxies just floating around in space, but I learned that there are hundreds (maybe even thousands) of galaxies in our universe. If only there was someway I could learn more about our universe.

Thanks to a few different Deep Space programs we are finding out more and more about Outer Space and the galaxies around us. One thing that we found out is that there is a dwarf galaxy slowly moving towards us and that when it collides with the Milky Way it mutate our galaxy. That is no big problem compared to another monster galaxy charging toward us. The Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way galaxy are slowly moving toward each other. When they collide it will do more than mutate our galaxy. It will change our night sky forever!