3rd Quarter Reflections

In 3rd quarter, I had the chance to read Night by Elie Wiesel. It was a really good book to read, I learned a lot from it. I would say this is my favorite book that I read this quarter because I feel like I had the chance to learn more about a very serious topic that happened. The Holocaust is something I knew nothing about, but after reading it I really learned a lot about what was going on during the time of the Holocaust. It was really interesting to learn about it but it was very sad because of all the tragic events that happened.

    In English Language Arts, I think I made my biggest improvements on just staying on task more. At the start of the year I would get distracted easily and wouldn’t care because I didn't really want to do anything. Thanks to my teacher Mrs.Larson I was actually able to get back on track. If it wasn’t  for her caring about how I did in school/ her class, I wouldn’t have got this far.

    This quarter, I have accomplished my knowledge on the Holocaust. Before this quarter, I knew nothing about the Holocaust or what it was, but having the chance to go to the Holocaust museum, create a butterfly about the topic, read the book Night, and study this topic, I was able to understand what happened during this time in history. We spent a lot of time in class learning about this, and I enjoyed it because I love learning about the past and what happened. I'm just so glad I got the experience to see how lives were during this time.

    The most challenging part of 3rd quarter for me was the vocabulary tests. In the beginning of the year, I got excellent grades, but I think I’ve been slacking on my tests and haven't been studying as much as I should be. To improve my test scores, I can find more time to study for a while maybe every day or every other day to get better grades.

Life is beautiful vs. Night

While reading Night, and watching Life is Beautiful, I was able to find many similarities and differences between the two and was able to get a better understanding of what the prisoners went through while being in concentration camps.

    One of the main similarities that I found between this film and the novel, was a father and son relationship. In both, you were able to see how much care and love is between the father and son. I also noticed in both the film and the novel, the prisoners had a number assigned to them, which would be their new identification, it was like a tattoo in their arm, which was basically their identification. They showed that in the movie they had the numbers put into their arms, and in Night, Elie even told the number he was assigned while being a prisoner in the concentration camp. I also saw a difference within the similarity itself. The difference was that in the book Night, it was Elie taking care of his father, and feeding him incase he needed help, but in the movie Life is beautiful it's the father taking care of the son and feeding him incase he didn’t have enough to eat.

    In Life is Beautiful, Mussolini was the leader, while in Night, Hitler was the leader. One difference I noticed was that in the movie, you can definitely tell they tried staying positive. The father tried making the concentration camp seem fun for his son because he didn't want his child to be scared or worried because he was too little to be worrying about things like that. He wanted to have positivity. Also, in the beginning of the movie, it was a love story, everybody was happy, until they finally got taken away to go to the concentration camp. Even while being in the concentration camp, the father tried looking on the bright side of things to still try to have a positive life for him, and his son even though they were suffering and going through very bad and harsh times. While in the novel, they had to accept the fact that they were part of the Holocaust and had to live with these bad conditions no matter what. No matter if they tried to imagine the place as something else or making the best of it, they couldn’t because 1) Things were too hard, 2) The kids were old enough to understand what was going on.

    Sense of humor paragraph - While watching the movie, there was so much positivity and humor being spread. As stated in previous the paragraph, in the movie, the family stayed positive even while knowing they were going through terrible times. They tried making the place seem as friendly as possible. Life was shown as beautiful in this movie, I noticed lots of colors to show happiness, and they took care of their family. What I mean by took care of their family is that the father made sure his wife and son were taken care of and that he always looked on the bright side of their life to make his family happy. Even in the concentration camp he made his son, and wife happy. He’d play the song him and his wife heard in the play, and he went on  the loudspeaker with his son so his wife could hear. He did all this to reach out to his wife to show her that he still thought about her and that he will do anything possible to make sure she was happy.