Help— Gabriel Molina

I think I would honestly say this has been one of the most growing English classes for me. I appreciated the "teaching to the test" approach, actually. There's a reason the AP program tests us on what they do, and they most definitely are useful, practical and necessary skills. I thought the frequency of practice tests and timed writings was pretty good. Writing as much as we did and receiving feedback really improved my writing. I think it was an effective change when we began revising the essays in smaller groups. People were encouraged to speak more and participate.

I thought the Socratic seminars were not as effective as they could've been. The word limit for each question seemed to have us focused on just filling that limit rather than making thoughtful insights on the text. The last one, where you graded based on quality not just the word count, forced us to analyze deeper and I think it turned out a little better.
I'm not super confident in the effectiveness of this semester's final. There were a few reasons, which I think most people covered. For me personally, my topic which had worked for the speech didn't work at all for the PSA. Therefore I had to change it and didn't get as much in-depth research. I think it would be helpful to make it clear in the summer assignment what the research topic is going to be used for.

It's been a great year. I've learned a lot and definitely become a much better writer. Thanks for helping us out, Mr. Logsdon.