Favorite Classes Of Sophomore Year

My list of sophomore classes

8. Painting with Mr. Justice: We have painting coming in at number eight. The reason for this low placement is because the class is about learning to paint not just painting what you want. This class is not a class where you just get to paint what you want. You learn lots of different painting techniques and practice them in limited factors. You work with Mr. Justice to try and master these techniques but by no means must you. In addition, quite a bit of this class is taken up by sketching which if you just want to paint can be frustrating. In the end, what I wanted to do was just paint random things that I wanted and this class though does not support that well.

7. German 2 with Frau. Farrell At seven we have German two. I had a lot fewer friends in my German class this year then my freshman year which is the main reason for its lower placement. German two is very similar to one in that we have many projects and do lots of activities. These things are very interactive and are in general quite a good thing to have, but as I had so many fewer people I knew in my class, my enjoyment in these did go down too. Overall a very similar class to last year, but because of the decrease in people I knew, it did go down some.

6. Detective Fiction with Mrs. Kramer Coming in at number six is detective fiction. Detective fiction is very self-explanatory in that we read mystery stories. We then generally watched a movie version of the book and wrote a short prompt or essay about the story. My biggest dislike of this class was just how predictable each day was, in that we did the same thing each day. Mrs. Kramer did bring in some really good insight especially when she would show us modern-day mysteries, like the Tylenol Killer.

5. Early American Lit with Ms. Burke Early American Literature comes in fifth. One of my favorite parts of this class was how I took it at the same time as US history. This was very interesting because as I learned about what was going on in early America I would also see what type of literature was written. We read many books with quite a few of them pertaining to the early social pioneers of the time. As in most American literature classes, we read works like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn which showcase the history of slavery from an antebellum writer. This class was fairly interesting but it did not always keep my attention and I did not know very many people in it which did hinder how much I enjoyed it.

4. Ceramics with Mrs. Peterson This is the favorite elective class I have taken at LS. We got to use clay. That's the short description of it, but the class was effectively a clay class. Mrs. Peterson would set up a project, and in general, these projects allowed for a lot of free thinking. While painting was very structured in ceramics it was okay if you went a little off script. I very much enjoyed making my pots and cups that I did, and as we got farther into the year we were taught harder skills. We learned how to glaze our works, different patterns that we could make, how to use the machines in the workshop like the wheel. This was a relaxing class that allowed for quite a bit of creative choice.

3. AP United States History with Mr. Gilman More commonly known as APUSH this class was quite interesting in many ways. The time period the class looked at was all the way from pre-colonization to the modern day. This amount of time did create quite a lot of material. Despite how large the time period we looked at was we still were able to go amazingly in depth with this class. By far the majority of the work one does in this class is at home with there being lots of textbook reading. In class, we actually went over fairly little, in general, causing the there to be a strong need to be an independent student. The class generally was a limited lecture about certain parts of our readings. In addition, we watched quite a few videos and had a few class activities like singing old songs. The tests and essays definitely were tough, and could be very frustrating. The only turned in homework was a certain set of questions one had to turn in before each test and these generally did take a while to do but were also good for studying. In general why this class is not at a higher spot, especially for how much I like history, is that the class periods I felt could have been better used. I would have liked to do more lectures in class that covered a larger amount of things, instead of doing very focused lectures and having the general stuff be in the readings. The readings could then have supplemented our general class knowledge with in-depth areas that the teacher wanted to look into.

2. Biology with Ms. Digenis

Biology comes in at the two spot. I enjoyed this class quite a bit overall, but this was also a class of stark contrasts in that there were somethings I strongly disliked. Ms. Digenis is a wonderful person who will always help out and gives you opportunities to succeed. She is methodical and can get off topic at times but she makes sure you get the information for what you are learning about. There were times where the class was boring, but it was also a very relaxed class. For my entire fourth quarter, I was allowed to sit on a bench during lectures and this alone helped me concentrate quite a bit. The biggest thing that makes this class be at number two, while a class like earth science was number one for me in freshman year was the labs. I did an exponentially larger amount of labs in earth science compared to biology and the labs in both classes were some of the most interesting and fun parts of the curriculum. Along with this the labs in biology are less based on finding new things doing them, and more as a way to showcase something we just learned. In essence, the best way I can put it is that in earth science we would do labs which would teach us, but here we would do labs that showed what we learned was right. Overall this class was still quite enjoyable and my teacher Ms. Digenis I have really gotten to know and like, but without the labs of freshman year, it comes in second unlike first.

1. Algebra II with Mrs. Palma

And at number one we have algebra II with Mrs. Palma. This class was a complete blast. I had many friends in it, Mrs. Palma is a great teacher, and even people who I knew less were wonderful classmates. This was a very cooperative class and we worked well together. We were even able to do some group projects which are so rare in math classes. There is no one particular reason for why this is my favorite sophomore class, but it just all came together so that I very much looked forward to math class. It was a fun time, where we went in-depth on many interesting subjects, and ideas coupled with a great group of people.

Thanks for reading, I hope you have a great day!