My Feelings About the Trayvon Martin Case

          I just read the article "The Curious Case of Trayvon Martin" by Charles M. Blow. The article was about the Trayvon Martin case and how a lot of it was based on race. I think the whole case was very unfair because an innocent boy got shot for no reason, and the killer got off scot-free when all the evidence was against him.
          According to the article, Trayvon Martin was just walking to 7-Eleven to get Skittles and an iced-tea, when he caught George Zimmerman's eye. They got into a fight and Zimmerman shot Trayvon. Trayvon wasn't doing anything wrong and didn't deserve to get killed. The article states that "Zimmerman called the police because the boy looked 'real suspicious' (Blow)," but he was just walking home from 7-Eleven, causing no one harm. Zimmerman killed an innocent boy for no reason at all. This is really unfair because Trayvon didn't deserve to be killed.

           The killer, Zimmerman, didn't get punished for killing Trayvon. There was yelling, and three witnesses said they heard "the desperate wail of a child, a gunshot, and then silence  (Blow)." According to the article, "Zimmerman said he was the one yelling for help. He said that he acted in self-defense (Blow)," when other people said that Trayvon was the one yelling. Many people believe that Zimmerman is guilty, but he got off the hook with no punishment, which is very unfair. I think that even if Zimmerman was acting on self-defense, that gives you no reason to shoot the kid, because you could probably hold him down without killing him. Those are my reasons for why the case was unfair.

          Before I read this article, I knew about the Trayvon Martin case but didn't know all the details. After reading this article, I realized why everyone was talking about it and I realized how unfair it was, which is why I chose to write about that unfairness. Trayvon was innocent and the person who murdered him was not punished in any way,  which is not right.

Response to Ms. Galang's Post on Plagiarism

*What did the student do wrong? What could he/she have done to include the source correctly?

The student copied the text without paraphrasing or putting anything in quotations. He/she could have taken excerpts out of the text and put them in quotations or paraphrased it. The student also should have actually written most of it and should only use a few quotations instead of whole piece of text that someone else wrote.

*Write a sentence using the original source correctly; use a quotation or paraphrase. Also, make sure to cite correctly. Consult my post on citing sources.

The author of  "A Brief Understanding of the Starry night Paintings" stated about the painting: "There is the night sky filled with swirling clouds, stars ablaze with their own luminescence, and a bright crescent moon (Unknown Author)."

* What are at least 3 ways to avoid plagiarizing?

To make sure you don't accidentally plagiarize, if you're reading a text, instead of reading part of it and then paraphrasing that part and continuing to read, you can read the whole thing and then write what you remember to make sure you don't write almost the same thing. You can also remember to put things in quotes and to remember to paraphrase as best as you can.

Joyce's and Gabby's Reading Responses

          In Joyce's blog post "Gale vs. Peeta," Joyce compared Gale and Peeta in the Hunger Games. I really liked the structure of her post. The first paragraph was an introduction to the post, and after that were too paragraphs, the first one explaining Peeta and the second one explaining Gale. I thought this was a really good structure because the point was very clear this way. I also liked how she was very consice and stayed on topic throughout the whole post and explained the good things and bad things about each of them without getting off topic.

          In Gabby's post "The Glass Shatters" she writes about Kristina's drug addiction in Glass. I really liked how she had a lot of text evidence to support her main idea. Also, she put quotes in to support her point further. She elaborated a lot on her point and the text evidence. I also liked how she mentioned the message of the book in the conclusion. I thought that was really interesting.

          I will improve my blog posts by trying to stay on topic more. I noticed that sometimes I get off topic in my blog posts, but after reading Joyce's reading response, I will try to stay more on topic. Also, I almost never add quotes in my posts, but now I will try to add at least one quote in each of my entries. After reading Gabby's post, I realized how a quote can support the main idea of a post a lot.