1st Quarter Reflection

     I have learned a lot from this class just in the first quarter. I have learned simply more about history, but I have also learned new thinking and tech skills. As far as history goes, I now have more knowledge about how bad slavery really was. I really enjoyed the movie 12 Years a Slave because that is what made me realize the truths about slavery. It answered and cleared up a lot of questions that I have had over the years when we study slavery because it was always briefly mentioned. I also learned that slavery had a lasting impact. I thought it was so cool to see how the states that had a high percentage of slavery are now some of the poorest states. I had never thought to connect those together and never realized how many aspects of life slavery affects. This quarter we discussed empathy and sympathy a lot. At first I was very confused on the difference and had no clue how we were going to incorporate it with our learning. I learned a lot from it, I had never deeply thought about what it meant to empathize with people especially people in history. Being able to empathize is a new thinking skill that I have learned and since learning it, I have already applied it to other situations outside of US History. Another skill that I have strengthened is being able to paraphrase and quote effectively. This had always been challenging to me because I know it is easy to mess up and plagiarize so I was scared to do it, but now I feel more comfortable incorporating them into my writing like I did on the essay. 

     I have also learned new tech skills this quarter such as hyperlinking. In my past writing we usually just had to refer to the source, but this year in this class I have learned how to put the source directly into my writing by hyperlinking. An area of strength for me has been being able to empathize and understand how the people in the situation felt and incorporating quotes in my writing. This quarter I have also been on top of doing the worksheets and trying to understand them. However, an area where I think I can grow is to make connections and draw conclusions from what we are studying. I struggle to see the reasoning of some of it and how it connects to other aspects of history or even how it connects to life today. I hope that I am able to develop the skill to be able to do that. This quarter I feel like what we studied just became more clear. I had heard about most of the topics and knew little parts of them but after studying them I have a clear understanding of them. I like and hope to continue investigating topics that have a lasting impact such as slavery. It is interesting to me to see how it connects to our country today and how our country today came to be. I liked the essay we did where we had research going into it so I hope we continue to do that. I will tell you that usually I don't obtain information from history classes well because they are usually lectures and boring to me. But this year I have really enjoyed what we have been doing in class because it is engaging and gets my mind thinking in a different way. Therefor I have learned a lot so far and can remember the topics we have been discussing which is a goal I had set for myself this year. It makes me more interested to learn history when it is presented in an engaging way and when I am interested in it I can then see the values of studying it.