Personal Goal - The progress and effects

Artistic Reading Goals

Introduction: This course I had set out on a journey to improve my reading skills in regards to artistic reading, to measure my progress I set goals, bellow I will talk about the goals I set, why, and the progress and effects they have had on my reading skills.

Goal 1: I want to read one non fiction book and enjoy it.

Progress:

I have definitely achieved this goal, since the start of the semester I have read over 3 non fiction books, 2 of which I have genuinely enjoyed. These books include, Rescue Road, Arduino Work Shop and Happy Cactus. I very much enjoyed happy cactus and rescue road, although I had to persist through Arduino workshop, although I turned out to really like it at the end. I finished all of these books within a time period less than 2 months, which isn't fast but allowed me to truly understand and remember the contents and meaning. This goal has allowed me to reach a genre I haven't explored before and has shown me that I enjoy reading computer related and animal related books and has led me to learn about the poor living conditions for dogs in the southern parts of the USA; this has given me a different perspective of animal living conditions.

Goal 2: - I want to read 2 books from genres I haven't tried before

Progress:

At the start of the semester I determined the genres I have already read from and the ones I have not; I identified that I have read mystery non-fiction books, sports non fiction books, and other types of fictional fantasy books. This semester, not only have I read two new genres but I have read from 5 new genres with each book averaging over 150 pages. Until now I have explored: non-fiction crime, historical fiction, drama fiction, science/computer non-fiction, historical non-fiction. The books I have read in and out of school are, Happy Cactus, Arduino Workshop, Rescue road, The stranger beside me, The four winds, Little fires everywhere and killers of the flower moon. Although I didn't enjoy some of these books, I read them to the end and this gave me a bit of an idea of what types of genres I enjoy, even if one book isn't an accurate representation of an entire genre, it nevertheless provided valuable insights into new writing styles that I can use for my own writing.

Goal 3: - Active reading - I want to be able to fully understand and remember what happens in the books I'm reading.

Progress:

This was one of the goals I was having some trouble with at the start of the semester. In past years I could only tell you the main idea of a book I was reading and maybe a couple of really obvious or big details in the books, at the start of this semester I tried reading slower to try and understand more of the details and small messages the author left in the writing, but as soon as I stopped thinking about what I was doing and more about the book, I defaulted back to my old habits. When something was for an assignment I would somehow be able to catch all of the details and make connections to other parts of the book or my own life, but I wanted to replicate this with my own personal reading time. During this semester I tried various different techniques to stay in a more focused state that allowed to understand the text, its context and its meaning in a deeper way. What I found was when I was really immersed in a book and was enjoying it, I automatically started to understand the meaning in a deeper way, for example in rescue road in chapter 3 when the author said "It was a journey meant more than only the dogs.", and that is when I started to realize how saving the dogs from their poor living conditions didn't only help them but also brought purpose and happiness to the adopters. This proved to me that I didn't have to try a plethora of different techniques or reading methods to try to understand the book, but instead I had to choose books that I enjoyed, something I hadn't considered in the past.

Conclusion:

Throughout this semester I have seen an exponential increase in the amount of time I spend reading on a daily basis, as well as the love I have developed for reading. Going from a book hater to someone that reads books in their free time really introduced me to the feeling of being encapsulated in a book and not being able to let go of it until its done, for the 2nd half of resuce road, I downloaded it on my tablet, and when I got home I picked it up and didnt get out of my seat until I had to charge my tablet at which point I switched locations and continued reading until I was done the book, this was definitly a book I didnt think I would like, but it's safe to say that I definitly changed my mind very quickly. This love for reading really made fufilling my goals very effortless and enjoyable.

Goal 2:

Conclusion:

Goal 3:

Goal 1:

Artistic Writing Goals

Goal 1: - I want to expand my vocabulary with 200 new words, more descriptive words.

Progress:

Throughout this semester I have been writing down words that I have learned, whether it be through the books I'm reading, from the words we learn at debate club, or any new words I hear people using. Look bellow to see the complete list of over 220 words a swell as their meaning . This goal has been able to positively contribute to the writing that I do, by allowing me to convey my feelings or thoughts in a more meaningful way with a new vocabulary.

Goal 2: - I want to write 1000 words (formally), outside of school.

Progress:

This semester I took the learning from our class outside of just schoolwork, I used it when communicating with others, I feel that 1000 words was too little, and that for next term, I will be aiming for around 10000 words in meaningful literature.

Goal 3: - I want to write in 5 different genres.

Progress:

This goal was one that I really struggled with, learning to change my thought process was quite time consuming but I eventually was able to do so. I explored: classical writing, persuasive writing , opinion writing, descriptive writing, narrative writing. Writing in different styles allowed me to learn more about different tools and components of writing, for example, I learned about that the components of an opinion paragraph are position and proof as-well as a topic sentence. Exploring different styles has given me a bigger colour palette to make my art more appealing and in-depth in regards to meaning. Refer to the gallery to view my different writing styles.

Conclusion:

Overall I believe that once again my goals were achieved and was able to reflect apon the growth that these goals has allowed me to have. This goal set has helped me to explore different writing styles which has helped me to choose more appropriate colours in my art works which creates more meaning.

Goal 2:

Conclusion:

Goal 3:

Goal 1:

Artistic Learning Goals

Goal 1: - I want to answer at least 2 questions in class every day.

Progress:

This was another goal that I had some trouble with, I feel that the reason I want able to answer questions in the class wasnt because I hadn't the answers but instead because I felt slightly intimidated by getting the answer wrong or having the wrong idea, but as the semester went on I become more comfortable and started to answer some questions, for example on the 3rd of April I answered a question on whether a phrase was a metaphor or a simile and I got the question wrong but I answered another question and got it right. I feel that as the semester goes on this is definitely a goal I would like to continue with.

Goal 2: - I want to be organized in this class for the entire semester, with minimal fault.

Progress:

This is one of the goals I believe I did really well with, every time I heard something important or something that I believed could improve my writing or reading skills I wrote it down and added it online to a big list, I scanned every document we received as well as gathering all of the slides I deemed beneficial and added it to a big pdf, that had sections and was labeled, I this allowed me to quickly reference anything I wanted to remember during an assignment, for each assignment we received I added the due date, how far I was done it and what it was called as well as additional details to a big table that I constantly updated.

Conclusion:

I believe that although I did not have much success with one of my goals, I have been able to show a lot of improvement in terms of learning, which is something that has supplemented the growth and quality of my assignments and my knowledge of best practices as well as process.

Goal 2:

Conclusion:

Goal 1:

Assignment Tracker:

Artistic Communication Goals

Goal 1: - I want to talk to 5 different people in our class every week.

Progress:

This was one of the goals that some trouble with as in most classes we didn't really interact with any other tables, this meant that this one was one of the goals that I didn't have a lot of progress with and will be changing for the next term. Although I wasn't able to talk to 5 different people in class I have been able to meet a lot of new people this semester that have been able to teach me things I didn't know before and increase the view I had on what happens and what types of people go to our school.

Goal 2: - I want to try and talk 1.5x slower when communicating with others.

Progress:

This was a goal that I also feel needs to be changed for next term as I soon learned that my talking speed wasnt always constant and changed based on who I was talking to and what I was talking about.

Conclusion:

Overall I believe that this was an area that I really struggled with in terms of the progess I had with my goals. Although I believe that I did improve my communication skills in general, I am now able to talk to new people comfortably whilst also speaking clearly, I believe that is happened because during the second semester I was able to meet a lot of new people and learn about them.

Goal 2:

Conclusion:

Goal 1: