My Reflection On Speech Unit

Which steps of the speech unit did you complete? I completed all of the speech unit steps. From the communication self-reflection to the unit reflection posted on blog. That includes writing a speech and presenting it, researching my topic, posting a short video on my blog about speech techniques and more.

Which steps did you not finish? I completed all the steps.

How well did you manage your time in class and at home? At the start of this unit I was not managing my time to well which meant when the speech was almost due, I had to start managing time a lot better, which means I had to go home and work on it and concentrate in class on it.

What have you learned from this process? To not leave doing most of your work until the last minute. And that researching your topic before you write the speech is super helpful and it means you have all the information there when you go to write your speech.

For our next unit, which is the NCEA static image/poster assessment, what are your goals in terms of the learning process, managing your time, and achievement? To get it done easily in the amount of time we have, manage my time well from the start.         

Speech

 In my English class, we have been writing a speech. This is my finished speech.

This is the link to my speech

Reflection on the unit Night

1. What did you learn about Judaism? I learnt about Rosh Hashannah, which is the Jewish new year.

2. What did you learn about the Holocaust? I learnt how horrible the holocaust truly was. I never knew what actually happened in it other than lots of Jewish people got killed, but it has made me realize all the awful things that went on.

3. Do you think you increased your own empathy, integrity, and compassion, and how? I definitely think it increased my empathy, Integrity, and compassion as now I have a completely new understanding of what people had to go through. And to never judge someone before you actually know what they're going through.

4. Which activities did you enjoy the most? I really enjoyed just listening to the book as I found it really interesting and I learnt so much.

5. What recommendations do you have for Mrs Torley to change anything if she is teaching this again next year? I think that she did it pretty well this year and made it quite interesting to learn about. She was super helpful whenever I got stuck on something and supported me through my learning.

        

        

My Video Reflection

 In my English class, we have been reviewing some speech techniques and this is my video reflection on what I think a good speech is and some of the techniques that go into a good speech.

Essay about the memoir Night

 This is the essay I wrote the memoir my class has read:

The Holocaust, where over 10 million innocent lives were taken. The Holocaust started in 1941 and dragged out for many years. My English class has been reading a memoir called "Night" written by Elie Wiesel who was a Holocaust survivor. Some of the techniques Elie Wiesel used throughout the book are sibilance, repetition, metaphor, hyperbole, and first-person narration. Elie's writing which included these techniques shocked me, they made me feel horrible and disgusted at humanity. No person should have to go through that.

An incident from Elie's story that affected me was when children and infants were thrown into the fire while they were still alive. This happened on the first night Elie was at the concentration camps. A quote that was in Elie's writing when this incident had just happened was, "Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky." One of the techniques Elie used in this quote is sibilance which is the repeat of the S sound. Another technique Elie used in this quote is repetition, in the poem, he repeats the words "Never shall I forget '' seven times. Using this repetition technique made it get into your head and have a much bigger effect on you than it would've if it just said "Never shall I forget" only once. His writing made me feel terrible, being treated like you are worthless and your life means nothing, just being thrown into a fire without a second thought about you. Throwing the children into the fire and then carrying on with life as if nothing happened, I don't comprehend how people could do that. 

The selection overwhelmed me with glumness. For the selection, they had to run a certain distance while the selectors were watching. Not being up to the health and look standards meant you would get your number written down and be sent to the crematorium to die, "Those whose numbers had been noted down were standing apart, abandoned by the whole world." This quote is said once the selection had just happened. This incident made me feel sick. Devastating, they'd just been chosen to die and couldn't do anything. Not a single person was fighting to keep them alive, it was like they were already dead once they'd been chosen. Metaphor and hyperbole are the techniques in this quote. "Abandoned by the whole world" metaphorically the whole world abandoned them in the sense they knew what was happening but did nothing to stop it. But literally, they were only being abandoned by the people that weren't selected.

The death marches deeply impacted me. It was almost at the end of the story and war when this incident happened. Everyone was tired and had zero energy left. People had been jogging for days. Being starved. Horrible, constantly moving and not being able to stop, being trampled or shot if you did stop. Being treated like you weren't human and your life didn't matter. The fact that people wanted to die to get out of that misery is awful and shows how bad it truly was. "We were stronger than cold and hunger, stronger than the guns and the desire to die, doomed and rootless, nothing but numbers, we were the only men on earth". This is the quote that really bothered me in that part of the story. It made me feel terrible. Disgusted at the people who could do that to another human being. A technique in this quote is first-person narration, using the first person plural pronoun "we" showed that they were all in this together and together they would survive.

Reading this memoir 'Night' made me realise how truly heart-breaking the Holocaust was. People should never go through that and we need to make sure that history never repeats itself. I have learnt how much a technique can affect your writing and that certain techniques can add so much emotion. When Elie used first-person narration it helped the readers understand that all the people walking were struggling together and they were not alone. Reading this book really emotionally impacted me. I feel now that I will never take anything for granted. And I'm extremely grateful for all the things I have in my life and how lucky I am to have been born into my family.

Elie Wiesel's life after the war

 

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Studying 'Night' by Elie Wiesel

We completed a second Empathy Map looking at what Elie was like at the end of the war. Elie was a lot skinnier now, he was like a corpse of himself, he had lost all of his family. He will never forget all the things he went through and it will scar him forever. Elie was angry at God for letting that happen, and he could hear memories of the screams of the people being thrown into flames or going in the crematourioum.

This is my empathy map

Elie had changed so much from the 12 year old boy in Sighet to the 16 year old that was liberated from a concentration camp at the end of the war. He had lost all his family and was very unhealthy and extremely skinny. At the end of the war Elie got a bad illness and had to go to hospital for two weeks, those two weeks he was fighting between life and death everyday.

Reading Elie account of what had happened to him during the holocaust made me feel terrible. I hated the thought of the fact that so many people went through that and most of them didn't come out alive, it makes me feel sick to the bone.

One of the hardest and most upsetting parts of the story was when the children and infants were being thrown into the fire pit alive. And when almost at the end of war all the people that were still alive in the camps had to go on the death run and if they stopped they got shot or did anything along the lines of taking a break they would get shot. It would have been freezing cold and extremely hard.

Some parts of Elie story that gave me hope was when there was that nice guy that would try to give them extra rations of food and give them extra care, but when that became wider knowledge he got taken away to get killed which made me lose my hope in that.

Elie's story has made me lose hope in some human beings and I just can't believe humans would do that to other humans. I was happy at the end when they got liberated though.

I have realised that it is important to check up on if others are ok and to be nice to everyone as you don't have any idea what they've been through.

Elie Wiesel, Author of Night, Aged 12

 

Our English class is studying the memoir Night, by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. I worked in a group with Olivia, Lee and Kyra to create an empathy map for Elie at this age. 

This is my group's empathy map:

This is my paragraph that I wrote about him at age 12 before the Holocaust started:

At the start of the book, Elie is living in Sighet Transylvania. He was 12 years old and had a pretty good/normal life. He was very observant and would go to the synagogue to pray and weep everyday. He was happy and lived a nice life. He had a Mum and a Dad. His father was a cultured man, rather unsentimental. He rarely showed his feeeling and was more involved with the welfare of others than his own family. Elie was the third child. He had two older sisters and one younger sister. His oldest sister was named Hilda, then Bea and the youngest was Tzipora.

This is Elie at age 12