There are hundreds, maybe thousands of screaming fans at the X-Games, a thrilling international competition. There are excited spectators observing every fascinating move he performs on his thrashed skateboard. He reminded himself of the first X-Games competition, it started in 1995, and it was great. It has carried on until today. Many people either show up, or watch it on television. The X-Games are a great place for skaters like Ryan to show off their talents.
Ryan Sheckler is well known all over the world as a gifted skateboarder with incredible skill. He always impresses the judges. Ryan wears a black helmet that is hidden under a pile of sponsors, and so are his unwashed clothes and shoes, which are starting to grow holes. His friends know him as the new Tony Hawk. As he flew off the rough metal rail onto the smooth ramp, every one could see that the bottom of his skateboard has his famous name printed on it. It is half hidden by prints of fire. The look in his eyes introduces a new phobia to the other skaters, the terror of Ryan Sheckler. His electrifying eyes are a loaded gun, determined, fearless, and aggressive. That terrifying look intimidates all the judges, except for judge Owen. The toughest of all the judges. It is difficult to get a high score when he is judging. He has a bald head and wears a tight, freshly ironed suit, no matter what the temperature is.
Normally he would easily make every person watching him clap in shock, but at the X-Games. It’s nearly impossible for even the greatest skateboarding legend of all time. In front of the thousands of fans, the millions observing on television, and worst of all, in front of the most famous judges of all time, Owen Neider, and the legend himself. Tony Hawk is watching closely and seems fascinated. Just thinking of the fact that Tony Hawk is watching made him think twice if he wanted to go up to the ramp and fly to the roof in attempt to break his neck. As he is rushing toward the ramp, he thought about how he could impress the harsh judges who always gave him low scores. As the worn out wheels escaped the ramp, the noisy crowd rose to their feet with amazement. Then came a hard fall. Silence. Next came a roar of claps that proved sportsmanship from the fans, and the professional, experienced skaters from all around the world. There is no way he’ll win the competition. Now he is more hurt on the inside than on the outside. However the judges did not notice or care, as they leave no room for mercy. He got astonishingly low scores. They were displayed on the board while he limped the walk of shame to his bench, his beaten skateboard trailing behind and his back slouched like a primary school child sitting in maths class.
Finally, the moment he is intensely waiting for came and he was now willing to give more than 100% to get a very high score. It is his second turn and another chance in attempt to impress the judges. In no time, he woke up to find himself on his knees again. He had already lost count of how many times he had fallen. His worn out elbow pads caused him severe damage and they make him extremely uncomfortable. He is so bruised that he feels like Mike Tyson’s punching bag. That’s the true meaning of skateboarding, never give up. If he won this competition, Ryan will buy new gear with the money. So he fought the pain and got up. He tried to get his head back in the game. This is hard since every person in the audience is laughing at him. He felt extremely humiliated but he knew that if he attempted to do it just one more time, he will succeed and shut them all up. Success means endless popularity, but failure means endless shame and depression. He wondered to himself, can I do it, what if I fail, what if I don’t, what if I get seriously hurt. This is a big choice that he would have to make.
He decided that he would do it. How hard could this be. He wouldn’t get seriously injured. As he pushed his way through the laughs as fast as he can, one leg on the skateboard pointing forward. His other leg meanwhile, pushing harder and harder, finally it got too fast for his leg to catch up, so he took it off the ground and placed it behind his other foot, now both of them are pointing to the side. As he started down the 4th slope in the X-Games. The wind began bullying him and pushing him back and forth. He was moving as fast as an eagle hunting for his prey, and blinked a couple of times to re-water his eyes after they were dehydrated by the wind. He caught a glimpse of the rail and lost some confidence but kept going and finally, the moment came. He placed his back foot on the worn out tail and one under the skateboard. When he got close enough, he flicked his board powerfully and jumped onto the rail. He felt the friction as he went down the rail side ways. Then he landed perfectly on the ground with his board shooting forward, meanwhile, he turned to his friends and held his hands high with pride. If that doesn’t impress the judges, what will.
2 features that he uses are using slides and putting text on the slides, this helped me understand better and made the talk more entertaining to watch. 1 bad feature is his repetition, this made me annoyed and less entertained.
2 skills that he used were his use of jokes, stories, and quotes and the way he talks to the crowd and asks them questions. These skills made me want to keep listening and made me think. To improve those skills, I would say he needs to talk slower.
In my opinion, the audience he’s aiming for is other teacher or principals like him. Some of the good points he made were:
1) Students should be taught not trained.
2) Parents need to change so that their kids change.
3) Students should have a voice.
4) Students should love school.
5) School isn’t preparation for real life, school is real life.
Air blowing through my short black hair, staring at the hundreds of people coming out while my brother was throwing up due to the thickness of the air, we were coming out of the plane, it was our first time into India. People walking by by me, shoving me to the side, and pushing me away from my little brother, I felt lost, I felt like an outsider.
After finding my family, we somehow managed to reach the exit. The outside of the airport, was filled with even more people screaming at the top of their voices. A man walked up to us and started speaking in his language and we had no idea what he was saying. Then after explaining to him that we speak english, he said, “Hello, my name is Rakish and I’m your driver.” We went with him and he drove us to our house. We had to go to our new school the next day!
A huge whit building stood before me, kids walked by me, and adults greeted me, then I realized that this was my school. I went in and kids were giving me weird looks, giggling, and calling me white boy, that was my name for the first week. Over the three years I lived there, I had the whole school as my friends, I joined the school football and basketball team every year, and I had a wonderful experience.
First, we defined voice individually and as a class and came up with a definition that helped us understand voice better. Then, in class we learnt how to add in our voice by looking at pieces of writing with voice in them and ones withought voice in them, we decided onj a scale of one being the weakest and five being strongest how much voice is in the writing.
In word choice we did activities where we had to find better synonyms for a word that we are given using a thesaurus. Then we added better words in our writing and added in many adjective. We also learnt how to make our sentences sound better, for example, instead of saying “the car” you can say “the cherry red brand new Italian Ferrari”.
In history class we are working on 20th century warfare and I chose the group, Aerial warfare. This video shows the damage caused by aerial bombs and it shows you how hard it is to look at the damage that you cause if you are the pilot.
First, we put our three main ideas on the facts sheet. It has three columns for the main ideas and six boxes under each main idea. We divided each 2 of the six boxes into groups. What I Know,My Opinion, and Questions. Then we created google documents and put our topic sentences on them. Then we extended the topic sentences and made them into paragraphs that explain the main ideas. Some of us also created surveys to collect information, I made a survey to find out how often people use skateboards and to find out more competitions and more tricks. Next, we learnt about transition words and mr. Raisdana gave us a list of transition words that we can use in our piece of writing. I added in many tansition words, and mr. Raisdana pointed out many mistakes to me and I corrected them all, although, I couldn’t find many facts to add in.
First we chose a broad topic that could be described in hundreds of pages, then we narrowed it down to a topic that we could write a two page article for a magazine. I chose skateboarding as my topic. Next, we wrote 10 things about our topic, we only chose the first 10 things that came to our minds.
Then we divided the 10 things into three groups that had a title each. My three groups were:
1- Fun/Tricks
2- International competition
3- Equipement
Out of those three, I chose two of them:
Fun/Tricks and International competition. After that we had to write a topic sentence that was descriptive and that made the writer get an image, my image was a skater jumping off a ramp and doing a trick. Then we had to write two paragraphs about our topic. I wrote about an international competiton and two different skaters skating in the competion.
These were the four questions that I based my Powerpoint Presentation on:
1. Develop and adapt active reading skills and strategies
2. Understand and respond to ideas, viewpoints, themes and purposes in texts
3. Relate texts to the social, historical and cultural contexts in which they were written
4. Analyze how writers’ use of linguistic and literary features shapes and influences meaning
This book started out really boring, and to tell the truth, I slept on the first three pages. But now that the description of the island and most objects and characters has finished, I’m starting to enjoy the book, and even though I’m a slow reader and sometimes it takes me over an hour to read a chapter that has been set, i wish I could keep reading this book, because I want to know what is going to happen.
I’m starting to understand the language they’re using now and I can relate myself to Ralph, even though I hate taking charge or being a leader, I would think of ways to get out of the island rather than ways to survive on it. Also, I don’t like to take sides with any one, but I just go with what or who I think is right.
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