Q3 week 4 post - reading response to ATDPTI

At this point in the novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, I am on page 207. This book is about an Indian named Junior who lives on the rez and decides that he wants to go to an all white school called Reardan. Junior experiences many things since he is transitioning from a poor school that only Indians attend to a white school called Reardan where it is unheard of for an Indian to attend an all white school. Junior has some trouble the first few days. The other students at Reardan are not very accepting to the fact that an Indian living on the rez has just suddenly showed up at their all white school. People make fun of Junior and he is not liked the first few weeks of the new school.

At Juniors new school, he meets a white girl who he thinks is the most beautiful girl he has ever seen. He is in love with her, but doesn't know what to do about it because he is a poor Indian and she is a rich white girl. Junior starts to hangout with the white girl, Penelope, and he becomes more "popular" because of this. Junior joins the Reardan basketball team and is liked by the coach and most of the players. I like this book so far and it has many important lessons that readers can learn from.

Q3 week 4 - research post

I have learned many things from our research work in English class. One of the many things I learned that I feel like is one of the most important is how to correctly include an in-text citation in a research paper. At first, I had no idea what I was doing but the more I started doing it, the more I understood it. Knowing how to include in-text citations in a research paper, or any paper that uses another source, is very important and I feel like since I know how to do this now, I will be able to use this skill for the rest of my writing days in high school and college. In-text citations are used to prevent plagiarism and give credit to the source you are using. Another important skill that I learned during the process of completing the research paper is how to properly include a list of MLA citations at the end of my paper and how to properly format them. All research papers should include a works cited page that is properly formatted, includes all the sources used in the paper, and is in alphabetical order. I can use this information that I know about creating and adding a works cited page to a paper in the future to help prevent plagiarism by giving credit where credit is due. Knowing how to use in-text citations properly and knowing how to properly include a works cited page are two very important skills that I learned during the process of writing my research paper.

One thing that we have learned about that I don't feel very comfortable with is connecting each paragraph to the thesis with a strong transition from one paragraph to the next while still connecting it to the thesis statement. I did do that in my paper, but I feel like it is a skill that I could improve on to make future papers stronger and better. I would like to learn more about strong transitions from paragraph to paragraph.