Language Arts Portfolio ReflectionStorybook ReflectionThe Storybook was a project in which we made a book for 3rd through 5th graders teaching about conflict resolution, a wellness topic. We also illustrated the book using watercolor. For this writing I am going to talk about the writing itself and the process it took to make a story for these young kids.

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Before we even started the Storybook Project we had to learn about what writing a story is about and how to make a great story. Before we started to official start writing we took some time to brainstorm the perfect idea. Our story and idea was about a tomato that didn’t understand if it was a vegetable or fruit. In this story he learns to make friends and use communicating skills. We were required to use at least two literary techniques which are words or phrases in a story that help the reader to either visualize, understand, or interpret the story better. Literary techniques help me to understand the purpose of writing and the main ideas of it. An example of a literary technique is personification which is giving a human characteristic to an idea or thing.

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Other requirements were to have a repetitive phrase in our story that repeated at least five times. Our repetitive phrase was “Me too, Me too?” Another requirement was to have at least three exchanges of dialogue. This requirement was important because, it helps move the story along and brings it to life to the story when the characters talk. We also needed to have a consistent narrative perspective (1st, 2nd, or 3rd). If you don’t follow this rule the story may be very confusing to the reader. Our group decided to do 3rd person limited. 3rd person limited is when the narrator is limited to one character and tells the thoughts and feelings of more than one character. The signal words for third person is he, she, her, they, them, or character names.

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My partner, J’La, and I struggled in communicating our ideas. At that time I can say that communication is to talk to my partner J’La with communicating techniques that I learned from other teachers that helped me to move forward in the project. The result was an inadequate first draft. I tried to overcome this challenge by advocating for myself to our 7th grade teachers at STEM. I got advice that helped me to grow in communication because, I learned how to talk to J’La a lot easier than I did before. One of my strategies was to put accountability on myself to not come across as putting the blame on my partner. One thing that I said when she had a hard time with me double checking work was to say that: I’m sorry I’m really picky. I just would like our grade to reflect our best ability-not just some effort. This helped us to better get along, I think, because the next week we received a perfect score on our 2nd draft. We kept this work up until our final draft (below) was great and to our best ability. This growth in communication skills is definitely going to help me in the future when I want to strive for a career. I will need these communicating strategies to help me to talk to other.

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You can see in these drafts there is a dramatic difference that is the result of collaborating growth. The first draft is marked with color coated revisions that need to be made to get the perfect score from our 1st draft to 2nd draft. If my partner and I didn’t grow in communicating we would not be able to make a great improvement like we did. Therefore we had to have grown in such a quality as this to be able to agree the way we did after we used communicative techniques. Most schools don’t teach about the techniques of effective communication. STEM does tech us these important keys to success and I I’m very proud of that.

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One of the biggest things that I learned in this process was how to compromise. Compromise is the act of each person getting part of what they want. You do not get everything that you want! This lesson is a major implication on my life, because you almost have to compromise every day. If we learn how to compromise now, we will be able to accomplish more in the real world and in the future.

I also grew in another quality, persistence. Persistence is the moving forward in the Storybook along with my partner J’La, even when circumstances get tough and when there are many revisions to be made. J’La and I had many revisions on our story before we reached a final product. We brainstormed, then wrote many drafts until we reached an exceptional final draft. To get to that place, cost a lot of persistence. We would get very discouraged in many instances where we would not get a good score on a draft. When we were challenged by getting a bad score on a draft we became stronger in persistence because, we moved through that barrier and kept writing a new draft. I like to think of persistence like being waves in an ocean. Sometimes it is easy to move past them but, sometimes they might knock you down but you don’t stay underwater. You get back up and keep moving forward. This is what persistence is all about!

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If you refer back to the previous artifacts they also show persistence because, our first draft required many revisions to get to the final draft that we finished. These show us moving past the barrier and “getting past the wave.”