Osama Alsalem

Self-reflecting on Step Up Program  

8/1/2019

Osama Alsalem

Self-reflecting on Step Up Program  

8/1/2019

Self Reflection about my self

Dear audience, I would like to share with you my self reflection through Step up Program 2019.  But before I start, I want to do a few things. First, a special thanks to my family for giving me this opportunity to be in Step up Program in Lehigh University. Second, thanks to all my teachers for helping me to succeed in Step up Program, I will miss you all. And finally, I want to thank my classmates, (Glenda, Ozlem, Jennifer) I enjoyed being with you as a classmate, and I hope that we meet again later.

 

1- Writing and Reading Class (Mr. Antonio Ellison)

First, I had several goals that I wanted to achieve, the first one was that I will be able to write essays, articles, and novels. We didn’t focused on writing articles and novels, but on the other side I learned how to write a comparison essay, argumentative essay, and finally summary article about a story. I still want to write novels and articles, so I will start reading articles and novels to gain some experience, after that I will write mine. I will try as best as I can to do it.  Actually I’m now more comfortable with writing, because now I can write easily without any problems that I will face later. I feel that I’m a lot more developed in using many things such as citing, proper punctuation marks. But I still have some mistakes, small mistakes. 

The second goal was to read and summarize better than before, and I think that I accomplished this goal,  and much better than before because I learned how to identify thesis statement which help the reader to understand what this essay will talk about, and to identify the topic sentence for each paragraph. I need to focus on hard vocabs that I will face. 

I enjoyed Writing and Reading Class, it helped a lot to develop and improve my writing, and to cite very well. Honestly, it was hard for me to read the chapters that Mr. Antonio gave us 

(What to the Slaves Is the Fourth Of July), because it had a lot of hard vocabulary, and he uses also a nice metaphors that I really like. I loved writing the comparison essay, because it helped me a lot to cite very good, and to realize my mistakes, and correct it. I also enjoyed having a class with Mr. Antonio, because he treated me with a polite way, and he gave a lot of compliments that can help me in the future, such as writing an essay properly.

2-  Communicating on Campus Class (Mrs. Newbegin)

From this class, I learned a lot of things one of them is how to write a polite email, and how to schedule an interview with the people that I want to meet. Mrs. Newbegin is a wonderful teacher, I really enjoy her classes, because she has a different way of teaching, she teaches with high manners. My favorite class is Communicating on Campus, because I think that it’s a different class than others, and we both enjoy having a conversation together. The first project, was a tour in Lehigh’s Campus. I enjoyed this tour, because I saw a lot of famous structures that was a gift from Lehigh’s students. I also like when we visit Bethlehem Steel, when we visit the furnace, and I said “If you will enter there you will be A falafel in two minutes”. Thanks Mrs. Newbegin, you’re the best.

 3- Speaking and Listening Class (Mrs. Elena)

In this class, I really enjoyed this class because I developed my speaking skills, such as pronunciation, because I have a problem with pronunciation, so now it’s much better than before.

I really love speaking and listening class, because Mrs. Elena always provide different activities, such as TED talks, News articles, and panopto vlogs. Thanks Mrs. Elena, you’re the best.

 

4- Other Classes ( L.F.W., R.F.W., Portfolio W.)

 –  L.F.W.

 Throughout this program, I had this class as a sub-class. I love it actually, because I learned many things, such as writing notes,  time management, studying for tests. It was an interesting class, and I enjoyed it. Thanks Mrs. Kayla for helping me a lot, I hope that we meet again.

I was focusing on my goal that I wanted to accomplish, which was to improve my english language. Actually I improved it very well, in taking notes and developing my ideas that I had before. So I think that before I never had this strategy, but later this well help me to use it in the future, especially that I will be a freshman student soon. 

• R.F.W. 

When I was a kid, my main concern is to have a cool toy. My mother had a PHD in Arabic, so I was forced to read books in order to have a new toy. While I’m reading, I had imaginations that comes to my mind, and for the first time I felt what my mother feels. Harmony can help each child to draw his own path, and it connects his imagination with real life. Now, I’m 16 years old young man, but I think I’m different than others. I read different topics, history, math, chemistry, biology, and even car mechanics. That helped a lot in many things, first I had a very good communication language, as my teachers realized that I have a strong personality. I hate reading english books, because I do not have a great english language. Through Step up program, especially with Mrs. Cusumano, I had reading assignments, so I had to read. First, I thought that I will not understand anything, but while I’m reading, I was totally shocked. I thought that reading depends on the language itself, but I was totally wrong! I don’t mean that if you have %0 english, I mean %60 or higher. Reading does not depends on your language, it depends on your consideration and focus. I learned with Mrs. Cusumano how to learn the word that I’m unfamiliar with by rereading it or reading it aloud. I have achieved many things, first I had the ability to read very good and better than before, and realize the mistakes that I had before, such as: skipping paragraphs and pages sometimes, and the main important thing is that I don’t enjoy the story or the novel. I learned proofreading to get the better information and faster.  Throughout this program, I had this class as a sub-class. I really enjoy discussing about each story that I read, because it develop my speaking skills. I wrote a poem! I think it’s cool! I enjoyed it, and I love this class. Thanks Mrs. Terresa for helping me a lot, I hope that we meet again.

• Portfolio W.

 Throughout this program, I had this class as a sub-class. Portfolio have 50% of the final grade, so I was trying to fill up my portfolio using the rubric that I had. My WordPress site is amazing! I love working on it. Thanks Dr. Murphy for helping me, I hope that we meet again.

 My goal for this class is to finish up my e-portfolio properly! I had a lot of problems to accomplish this thing, first time managment, I never had enough time to work on it, because I was stressed from other classes. The second thing is that I had a lot of mistakes (grammar mistakes and few errors) but I improved it with Dr. Murphy.