Dear Ms. Galang and 811,

I had pretty high expectations for the 8th grade in the beginning of the year, and I have to say it was just as amazing as I thought it would be. Although school is not always enjoyable, being in this amazing homeroom made it better. This has been one of the best years of my life and I have all of my classmates and teachers to thank for it. This has also been such a good year in ELA. We did so many fun units and I grew as a writer and reader so much.

One of my favorite units was poetry. I usually hate writing poetry, because I never know what to say, but writing in a response to a painting or photograph really helped. Coming up with a story to go along with a piece of art opened up a new door for me. It even helped when I wasn’t writing a poem in response to art. I could come up with a story for a poem and write it. I had never done that before this year, I always thought poetry was about expressing yourself, but now I realize it can be a creative outlet to write anything you can think of.

Another thing that I really liked doing was book clubs. I love being able to share ideas with other people, and working together to dive deep into the book and really figure out all the hidden topics. It helped to be able to bounce ideas off of each other in a small group. Reading To Kill a Mockingbird in book clubs for the banned books unit really stood out, because it has so many intertwined issues to discuss. Picking through and unraveling every little piece was really interesting and exciting.

I had fun all year in ELA and in all classes, thank you 811 for making this one of the best years of my life.

-Olivia