Immigrant Project Reflection

My experience with the lit circle book was good, especially since we did blogs this lit circle instead of the dialectable journals, character page, vocabulary and the log, because it was a lot more easier for me and probably the rest of the class since we didn't have to keep track of so many papers. I also think that it gave us more time to because instead of turning in in at school it could be posted at nine on our blogs. What was also good about using blogs instead off all those papers was that you got to read your group members post, which you understand more since with the dialectable journals your group members had to reads it out loud and sometime you could not really understand them. I was happy with my choice because when we searched up our three top book choices I looked up descriptions of all the book choices. The most interesting description was Tis since it was about a young adult named Frank McCourt who comes to America with only twenty dollars and he has no family in America and he plans to support and give his poor family back in Ireland(his home country) a better life. What I also like about this particular lit circle was that I was in a group with people I can relate to so it was easy to understand what my group members were saying in their post. Before I was in groups with people that I don't really know much about them.

Something significant about my book was to never give up until you achieved what you were aiming for and not settle for anything less. An example from the book was that Frank McCourt was in the army and the military provided military housing which was a lot better shelter than what his family was living in before and yet he decided to follow through his goal and get them a permanent and better house. I also learned that most of my group gave honest feed back on my post, and most of my group also didn't fall behind with the posts.

I think giving more time on the post would get more people to post since some people are late with their post they think was the point of posting if it's late. Like we first did blogging and posting in 7th grade and my teacher Ms. Interlandi gave us to midnight to do our post, and a lot of people did do their post and I guess it's because a lot of kids stay up late at night. I also think that lit circle meetings were good because we could know what page our whole groups at and also we could use that time to post or respond.

I think blogging was a lot more efficient since we weren't all disorganized with the lit circle papers. The blogs actually gave more space for responses because on the dialectable journal you don't get any responses only two questions answered , but with the blogs you get responses from everyone which means you can make your post a lot better. You can also read the post over while you are responding so you don't forget anything you read in the post.

The blogging didn't have much problems except when people wouldn't post because then you can't respond and if they post it later I think you would have to respond and that kind of gets annoying. I also would get confused about the time because sometimes blogger would mess up the posting time because if you post blogger can display a later time and that could affect your grade because that would mean you didn't post on time. Other than that blogger and blogging was a lot more easier and what was cool about it was that you could use gadgets and gadgets on blogger are things like polls, surveys and even links and the links could be to your other group members blogs and that is a lot easier than having to type in the URL. My group members were interpreting the book in sort of the same way or agree to my or another group member's interpretation because in the response my group would agree a lot and, other times they would have some question of their own. What I liked about the blogging was how our group members answer the questions because each member had their own answer.

My decision process was kind of simple since I just needed to keep in mind what part of the books struck me as interesting or surprising. My process was sort of an elimination process, like think of an image and see if its good and if not try and find another part of the book that was interesting to you. The book is about an Irish boy named Frank McCourt who came to the U.S to support his family back in Ireland and all these bad things happen to Frank McCourt and his solution was to drink beer. So my first sketch was him as a teacher because that is when Frank McCourt started to get somewhat close to achieving his goal, but was seemed good for Frank McCourt started to turn out into something he didn't want because his class did no listen to him. Every day Frank McCourt had to struggle at that teaching job because the kids really didn't care for an education. Then i realized that the most striking moment of the book was near to the end when Frank McCourt has a child and gives up drinking

I think my painting did make a connection with the book since its about him giving up drinking to become a responsible father for his new born child. The reason it connects is because it show Alberta(his wife) holding their child while Frank breaks the addiction to the beer bottle. I think Frank McCourt also gave up beer because he didn't want to be like his dad and choose the bottle over everything else.

The interview process went pretty good since I did to e-mail interviews and and one in person interview. She was actually pretty cool about answering question because I would be a little annoyed with someone asking me questions. The last interview was kind of awkward since it was in person and we were just silent unless I asked a question. The e-mail interview was smooth though because she just emailed me back her answers and then I would just print them.

I think interviewing you participant three time was a good idea because then you would get more answers and have a good story on how their immigration was like. I don't why we need three different methods because we would get the same amount of answers if we emailed them three time instead of going in person.

My last interview I learned the most since it was my in person interview and we had to have twenty to twenty five questions for our participant to answer. My participant immigrated to the U.S recently in last August and that would make her a modern immigrant so she didn't have to go through the whole long interrogation since her mom had prepared her documents. She said it was a little hard passing the test for getting a visa.

The gift i made for my participant was a painting about Chinese culture since she was born and raised most of her life in China. The images in the painting are a Dragon, the ying-yang, Chinese clothing, and a Chinese temple.