Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht was born on February 10, 1898, in the medieval city of Augsburg, part of the Bavarian section of the German Empire. Married in 1897, his father was a Catholic and his mother a Protestant. Brecht was their first child, baptized as Eugen Bertolt Friedrich Brecht. His father, Bertolt Friedrich Brecht, worked in a paper factory. His mother, Wilhelmine Friederike Sophie Brezing, was ill with breast cancer most of his young life. He had one brother, Walter, who was born in 1900.

Brecht was a sickly child, having a congenital heart condition and a facial tic. As a result, he was sent to a sanitarium to relax. At age six he attended a Protestant elementary school (Volksschule) and at age ten a private school, The Royal Bavarian Realgymnasium (Koeniglich-Bayerisches Realgymnasium). Like most students, he was educated in Latin and the humanities, later being exposed to Nietzsche and other thinkers. He suffered a heart attack at the age of twelve but soon recovered and continued his education.

Significantly, Brecht was exposed at a young age to Luther's German translation of the Bible, a text considered instrumental in the development of the modern German language. Quotes from and references to the Bible abound throughout Brecht's work and can be found most particularly in Mother Courage and Her Children in the mouth of the chaplain.

Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei, often known mononymously as Galileo, was an Italian physicist, mathematician, engineer, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the scientific revolution. He was born in 15 Feb 1564. His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations and support for Copernicanism. Galileo has been called the "father of modern observational astronomy", the "father of modern physics", the "father of science", and "the father of modern science".

His contributions to observational astronomy include the telescopic confirmation of the phases of Venus, the discovery of the four largest satellites of Jupiter, and the observation and analysis of sunspots. Galileo also worked in applied science and technology, inventing an improved military compass and other instruments.

Galileo's championing of heliocentrism was controversial within his lifetime, a time when most subscribed to either geocentrism or the Tychonic system. He met with opposition from astronomers, who doubted heliocentrism due to the absence of an observed stellar parallax. The Roman Inquisition investigated the matter in 1615, which concluded that heliocentrism was false and contrary to scripture, placing works advocating the Copernican system on the index of banned books and forbidding Galileo from advocating heliocentrism. Galileo later defended his views in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, which appeared to attack Pope Urban VIII, thus alienating not only the Pope but also the Jesuits, both of whom had supported Galileo up until this point. He was tried by the Holy Office, then found "vehemently suspect of heresy", was forced to recant, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. It was while Galileo was under house arrest that he wrote one of his finest works, Two New Sciences, in which he summarised the work he had done some forty years earlier, on the two sciences now called kinematics and strength of materials.

Excuse for missing homework

Dear Ms. Guarino,

I'm really sorry that I lost my homework for last night. However, I wish I can be excuse by telling you the reason.

On the night of yesterday, when I was to do my English homework, something happened. The teacher on duty was Ms. Anderson. I went to the restroom that was near my room for a while. Because of the opening door, Mason, the dog of Ms. Anderson, came to my room. I was immediately feeling frightening. I was really serious that Mason has even took many girls' underwear last year.

I rushed to my room, and trying to rescue everything in my room because I didn't know what would capture his eye sight. It didn't mean I don't like Mason, but I was totally scared by he came to my room when I was in restroom. Unfortunately, he liked my English homework so much. He was staring at my English homework while I went back to my room; he opened his mouth up to my desk, and then he took my English homework before I came back.

I'm afraid that Mason would also like my other things, so I just make him get out of my room firstly. After that, I asked Ms. Anderson helping me to make Mason's mouth open again. This work was so difficult. When I got my homework from mason's mouth, it was totally wet and wrinkled.

As a result, I cannot finish my homework at all. I'm really sorry for that and I wish you would give me an excuse for that. I would absolutely finish my homework tonight.

Thank you a lot.

Sincerely,
Cherrie

My achievements of the first marking period

According to the first marking period, I did a lot of works for all of my lessons, and I think I learned and achieved a lot. I said I wanted to get a good score and some good feedbacks from my classmate and my teacher at the very beginning of this marking period. Till now, I’m still work so hard. At least it was a lot better than what I did for last year.

For the first thing I did, I tried to write details in my essay, especially for when I wrote stories. For example when I used the painting to write a story, which is called “the dead love”, I used plenty of descriptions to show how they fell in love and to describe how the main characters look like or how those characters thought. I wasn’t a good writer before because I found that thinking of details are too boring when I was writing. As I was a fast writer and reader, I just want to say what I wanted in a quick time instead of using a long time to express my emotion and express my characters’ emotion. Then, I changed in this marking period, I started to think of more details to make my essays a full and colorful one.

On the other hand, I wanted to improve my grammar also in the start of this marking period. In the meantime, I did a lot. For each essay I wrote, I used a long time to revise it and I usually asked my friends to help me fix it. It’s because people were always good at finding others mistakes instead of finding their selves. Even though there were still several grammar mistakes with articles, tenses and sentence fragments, it’s already getting better. Also, I would keep working on it. I believe that I would do even better later.

The reason why I got these developments should be that I was hard-working enough and I was focus on my projects so patiently and carefully. I had never doubted that I could achieve my goals and I was keeping working on my grammar and details for the formal essays and stories. I had never forgot my goals that I wanted to achieve in every homework or participation in this class. Then, I improved the quality of my essays and the ratios of my essays were higher and higher. Lastly, I think I achieve what I wanted for this marking period, a nice grade and some good feedbacks.

To conclude, I want to give myself some other goals. For being a fast writer, I wish my quality on spelling the words right would be developed. Also, I wish I would participate more during the class period. No matter the answer was right or wrong, I must think about more. Last but not least, I think I should paying more attention when others speaking, then I would notice more good ideas from other people. As a result, I would do better for class in the next marking period.

Project draft

Sentence fragment handout

1. Explain what is sentence fragment and give an example

A sentence fragment is part of a sentence set off by a capital letter and final punctuation.

Ex. The circus clowns under the big top.

2. Show what a complete sentence look like and what the complete sentence need

A complete sentence or main clause contains a subject and a verb and is not a subordinating clause, a clause beginning with a word such as "because" or "who." Check out our page on subordinating conjunctions.

Ex. The circus clowns work under the big top.

clowns = subject

work = verb

A sentence fragment:

lacks a verb

The colorfully adorned circus clown.

or lacks a subject

Tumbled across the entire length of the arena.

or is a subordinate clause, or dependent clause, not attached to a complete sentence

Into the lap of a ferocious, hungry lion.

3. Show why it always happens and where it happens.

4. Give some practice and making people fix the error.

5. Play Kahoot.

My moment with my friend

Hubert H. Humphrey said, “The greatest gift of life is friendship, and I have received it”. For me, my friends are the most important people for me. I have some great friends with so many beautiful memories that I would even forgot them sometime. However, I can remember what happened when I first went to a boarding middle school in Shanghai. Homesick was so normal for everybody that went to a new school, and I was also affected by that. As a result, this experience helped me to be independent and helped me to find my best friend forever.

I opened my eyes, and it was already six o’clock. Where was I? I was still not getting used to where I lived at that time. I had just started going to junior high school. That was the first time I went to a boarding school. After a month of school days and a seven days break, I started to have home sick.

It was just a normal day after the break. Octobers in Shanghai were always warm and peaceful. I would like the peaceful scene in normal time, but for the time that I had home sick, it just brought me irritation and anger. The leaves weren’t falling and seemed to be a little bit yellow; some small birds were on the branches. The soft winds blew to my face quietly. But none of these beautiful things can make me happy.

I started to complain in my mind. I did blame my parents who went to other cities because of work; I did blame my grandparents who left me and went to look after my little cousin; and I even blame my little cousin who took the love of my grandparents and make me to stay in a boarding school with home sick. It was a beautiful morning, but my mind cannot be as beautiful as that.

I stayed in the school’s dining hall by myself and I didn’t want anyone to stay with me. “Having no friends is better in this condition”, I thought. However, someone came to me without invitation. “What are you doing here? Eating breakfast by your own in a beautiful morning is really a waste of time!” she said. I was a little bit shy and I didn’t know what to say that time. Then, I just stayed and listened to her.

She tried a lot to talk with me. “Why you just don’t talk?” she was confused. “I think the best thing in the world is to talk with your friend!” She smiled like the sunshine in the sky. I looked in her eyes and saw the color that had been reflected by the light of the sun. I asked, “Are we friend? We even don’t have any conversations.” She answered happily, “Of course we are! And we can start the conversation now! Let’s see, um… what’s your favorite activity?” She spoke a lot and she’s really an outspoken girl. I knew more information about her later. She came to me and “forced” me to do things that I seemed don’t want to do. She knew I yearned for doing that. As a result, I found the air changed, everything became better.

Since the relationships between people are so magical, we soon became good friends. Later, my friend also helped me to join in the new place and I started to do something I didn’t want to do before. She made me feel better and told me what she felt when she got homesick at the first year of boarding school. For my friendship, my best friends are always with me and helped me a lot to be a girl with confident instead of being a shy girl. We would be best friend forever and I would try me best to help her if she met any problem.

Then I became an independent girl, which can help me a lot. During my middle school life, I learned how to wash my clothes myself and I learned how to learn by myself with no one helped me. Also, I started to do better for working in pairs and helping each other, because I’m in a boarding school that all my classmates need to help each other as family members.

As a result, I got into the new condition that I lived. After 3 years, I got to Cheshire Academy and tried to help other people who had the same feeling as me at that time. Also it made me better for fitting in my high school life in another country. Lastly, I want to say it’s difficult to live by yourself in a new place, and it’s really great to be an independent person, but if people have a friend, that’s even better.

The hardest part for a paper

For writing the paper called “Significant moment”, I had lots of difficulties such as writing analysis, finding the story and using the best words to describe the story. However, the hardest part for me is to write the story in the form of an essay and making it a full essay.

First of all, when I start to think about the moment I had that was significant, I realized I had so many memories but I cannot really find the best one with the definition of “significant”. I’m not a person that would remember the past really clear. Then, I thought a lot about what I should write and chose the experience when I went to middle school. After writing for paragraphs, I found that I didn’t write anything about why I got better, so I added I found a friend helped me after I wrote half an essay. As a result, the balance of my thesis changed to the side of the importance of having a friend.

During writing my first draft, I tried a lot to explain my story in a good way and I just forgot to write any analysis paragraph and my introduction. It’s so difficult for me to realize that I was writing an essay instead of a story. And I firstly didn’t understand what it meant for an essay. So, I spent a lot of time on thinking for analysis and introduction. A story can be a piece of independent writing that doesn’t need introduction or analysis, people can just tell what happened in that. However, an essay cannot, people should write enough thins to explain, to write what happened and to analyze the importance of that story.

I was truly confused as a person that always writes stories instead of a formal essay. I tried to find some hook in my first sentence of the essay and I tried to analyze why my experience was so helpful for my later life. Also, I went through the conclusion to talk about what happened and what influenced me after my middle school life. These things did work, but the essay was still seemed like a story. After that, I found that I didn’t have an analysis paragraph for being independent and an analysis paragraph for explaining why having friend helped. I added more information and making the amount of analysis kind of the same as the amount of telling story. Lastly, my work seemed better.

To conclude, I used a long time to make my essay a full story with enough analysis. It seemed better now and there were still some grammar mistakes or confusing sentences that needed me to change. I would try my best to make the essay to be a good one and I am extremely sure that it was already developed a lot than it before. Admittedly, I wish I would work more on my essays and make the analyzing part fit better in the essay.