Hi! Welcome to my (Ari Isenberg’s) website. This website is a portfolio that I have created for the final project for Ms. Crowell’s English class at the end of my junior year at The Galloway School in Atlanta, Georgia.
When I first started Ms. Crowell’s English class this year, on August 17, 2018, I did not like writing. I had never really had the chance to write on something I actually cared about and wanted to write about. (Instead, I have had to write papers about the Brooklyn bridge, lab conclusions, historical wars, etc.) And, to be honest, now that I am at the end of the school year and this class, I still don’t like writing. But, don’t get me wrong: that doesn’t mean I haven’t gotten better at writing over the past nine months. I would say that my writing skills have definitely improved since the beginning of the year. At one point during Ms. Chapman’s English class in 8th grade, we learned how to implement quotes from a variety of sources into our writing. And, it was at this time that we also learned the phrase: “don’t drop the baby” (this was one of many of Ms. Chapman’s funny phrases to get us to remember writing concepts). Obviously, we all thought that this was hilarious, but it had a greater meaning. It applied to quotes by helping us remember we shouldn’t just drop quotes (aka the baby) into our writing. Instead, we should seamlessly implement quotes in our writing but then make sure to elaborate upon those quotes and explain why we used them. Even though we learned and understood this topic, I, personally, was not too good at it during the 8th grade. And, I was still not great with it during 9th and 10th grade. It wasn’t until this year that I really started to get good at using quotes in my writing. Most papers that we were assigned had a requirement to use quotes and so I had the chance to practice not dropping the baby many times throughout the year. Our essay about Night is a great example of how I improved with this. We were required to use textual evidence in each paragraph, and so after getting peer edits and feedback from Ms. Crowell, I was fully able to understand and use my knowledge about implementing quotes in my writing to further my arguments and make a point with evidence. Also, this year in English has helped me because Ms. Crowell has given us the opportunity to write about subjects that matter to us. In doing this, we have been able to put more effort into our writing than in the past when we have written about subjects that we don’t really care about. Through this, I have mainly improved on two things: (1) organization in my writing to have a more cohesive and better thought-out paper, and (2) the use of figurative language to write a more enticing paper. Our argumentative, personal narrative, descriptive, and college essays were great opportunities to write about something we cared about and to improve upon my organization and figurative language. English has been great this year. I hope to continue to improve my writing and also to keep getting the chance to write about subjects that matter to me. Here we go, “Senior Seminar”! - Ari Isenberg To continue learning about me, clicking here (FAQ); or here (magic bio); or here (photography bio). |