Reading+Reflections

Third Quarter
We have been reading the book __Flowers for Algernon__ by Daniel Keyes. This book is about a man named Charlie Gordon who is mentaly retarded. He is chosen by a team of doctors to have an experimental surgery which can increase his intelligence. Dr. Strauss and professor Nemur, who are conducting this surgery, have Charlie keep a journal to document his progress. Charlie becomes upset when he does not see improvement directly after the surgery, but with the help of his teacher, Alice, he begins to improve slowly. As Charlies intelligence increases, he begins to shock the workers at the bakery, where he works, who used to make fun of him.hh He realizes that they were not trying to be his friend and that they were making fun of him.

Charlies intelligence has been rapidly growing. He is showing major improvements in grammar and spelling the most. The workers at the bakery begin to feel threatened by Charlie because they can no longer make fun of him because he is now just as smart as they are. Dr. Strauss and professor Nemur take Algernon and Charlie to a scientific convention in Chicago. Charlie is now able to realize that he is being treated like a lab project rather than a human being. Charlie soon figures out that there is an error in the experimental surgery that will cause him to lose him intelligence. After Charlies regression, he returns to his job at the bakery and has forgot about his intelligence.

Durring class we had watched a part of the movie Freakanomics. In this movie they went to one school who demonstrates the policy of good grades for money. The students who got a grade of C or higher at the end of the month recieved some money. The students whos grades are a C or above were also entered in a raffel where they chould get the chance to win $500. Throughout the movie teachers and students were interviewed on whether or not money based incentives for student achievement is actually a good idea. Most of the students like the idea of being paid for good grades while it does not really matter for others. The teachers seemed to think that this method is working, they see a great improvement in some students but not others. I thought this movie was good and it gave a good idea of how we can get students to do their work.

We recently began reading the book __The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time__. This book is about a fifteen year old boy names Christopher, who one day finds the dead body of his neighbors dog. He then decides to investigate the murder of the dog. Christophers autism gets in the way of the investigation at times, just like how he hit the police officer because of a misunderstanding. Christopher documents his investigation for a school project. Durring his investigation he interviews all of his neighbors on his block. While durring the interviews he finds out that his father was having an affair with the owner of the dog, Mrs. Shears. One day Christopher accidentally leaves his book on the kitchen table. When his father comes home he begins to read it and becomes very angry and takes it away. Christopher then goes looking for the book and stumbles upon a box of letters, addressed to him, from his mother, who he was told was dead.

After Christopher finds out that his mother had an affair with Mr. Shears, he passes out. His father comes home and finds him with the letters, and he begins to cry. He tells Christopher the truth about his mother and about his affair that he is having. He also tells Christopher that he is the one who killed her dog after they had gotten in to a big fight. Christopher then became uncomfortable and scared of his father, so he decides to leave and go live with his mother in London. Christophers journey is long and gruling. He overcomes many limitations and social fears of his autism. When he finally arrives at his mothers, she is very surprised to see him. She was very astounded to find out that his father had been withholding her letters to Christopher from him. Christophers persence at his mothers soon begins to take a toll on both his mother and Mr. Shears, which ends with his mother leaving Mr. Shears and returns to Swindon. Christopher moves into a new apartment with his mother and gets to see his father every week. I really like this book so far. I can't wait to see how it ends.

I finnished reading the book today. The way the book ends is Christopher has decided to take more A-level exams, since he recieved a perfect score on his math one. He also wishes to attend a university in a different town. He feels confident in moving to a different town because he was able to solve the murder of his neighbors dog. He aslo was able to find his mother, dispite his autism, and he worked through the hard times. This book was really great. It was one of the few books that I was actually able to read and be engaged in the book. Most books I find boring but this book was the complete opposite. This book gave a good look at how people with autism go about their daily life. It also shows some struggles that people with autism go through. ==

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Second Quarter
In the beginning of the secont quarter, Mr. Brunelli gave us a project. The project was to get into groups of three and go out and buy items that would be useful in a classroom. Each team was only given thirty dollars to buy all of our supplies. Kim and Laura were in my group. Instead of being traditional, we decided to think outside the box and buy supplies for a special education classroom. We bought many different items that can be used in many different ways. Most of the items we bought were very colorful and had alot of different textures. This is good for special education students because it helps most of them with their fine motor skills. I think that we did a great job on this project and we still had some money to spare.

Mr. Brunelli assigned us another small project. We have to pick a movie clip that we thought described us perfectly. Once we picked it, it would be played to the class and the class would tell me how they think the clip describes me. For my movie clip I chose a scene from The Blind Side. I chose this scene because I think it describes me perfectly. It really captures the motherly part of me and how I never judge a book by its cover. I also always put others before myself and I thought this movie clip showed this perfectly.

Bruno Bettelheim is the author of the book The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning And Importance of Fairy Tales. He became and expert in autism. He believed that autism was caused by the lack of affection of mothers for their children. He also believed that autism can be cured. He believed thnat it could be cured by telling stories to the children that were harsh and real to give guidance and to create structure. He believed that children should learn important life lessons this way and not to think of everything as a fairytale and that not everything has a happy ending.

In class we began to read fairytales. Mr. Brunelli brought a bunch of books of fairytales into class. We each got to pick which book we wanted. Everyone was picking Hans Christian Anderson or Grims, so I decided to pick something different. The fairytale book I chose is The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. I have never read the book before but I have seen the movie many times.

Today in class we talked about our fairytales. Everyone else in the class has books that have a bunch of different fairytales in one book. My book is not like that, it is a full story, it is not a bunch of short stories. All the other fairytales have a moral to the story. I do not understand how my book relates to the rest of the fairytales. There is really nothing different about the book from the movie. I do not understand how I am suppost to pick one story I liked, one story I do not know and one story that is different. My book is all one story.

I do not understand my fairytale book so I asked Mr. Brunelli to explain it to me. He asked me if I have ever heard the real story of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I did not know what he was talking about. He told me that the story of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is based on the late 19th-century debate regarding monetary policy between gold and silver. I found this to be very interesting. I did some extra research on this and found out alot of interesting things about the story that we all know to be a fairytale.

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First Quarter
As of right now I kind of like Miss Jean Brodie. I like that she has a more personal relationship with her students rather than just a student-teacher relationship. One thing that she does that I do not like is that she talks about her love life to her students. This is very unappropriate and and I really don't think that anyone would want to hear about their teachers relationships. I know I wouldn't.

I am very confused as to what is happening in this book. Who is Anna Pavlova? What doesn't Sandy want Jenny to tell Miss Brodie? What is happening with Sandy and Anne Grey? Who is Anne Grey?

I enjoyed the book. I also watched the movie My Fair Lady. There are a few differences between the book and the movie. Higgins is very rude to Eliza. He does not care about her as a person. He just wants to win the bet that he made with Pickering, that he can turn Eliza, who is a flower girl, into a social exceptable woman. In the beginning of the book Eliza goes to Higgins for help with her speech. Her dream is to work in a flower shop, instead of standing on the street corner selling flowers. When she arrives at Higging study, she wants him to know that she took a cab. She wants this because she does not want him to think that she is a social outcast. All in all I think that Higgings is not treating Eliza with respect so far in the book.

I found the movie My Fair Lady to be alot more interesting then the book or the play Pygmalion. The book was very hard to understand. I think I would have comprehended the book a lot better if we had read it out loud in class all together. Overall I thought that it was very interesting. Although at first Higgins does not respect Eliza, by the end he does respect her. He realizes that she is a person just like himself and she is not just a bet.