As we read Maniac Magee, we will use this blog to discuss different topics with our classmates. Use your creativity and have fun responding to these questions! Remember to write your comment in a word document first. Use academic writing and show respect to fellow bloggers. :) Happy reading, maniacs!

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Your Own Legend

Maniac Magee tackles Cobble's Knot. Many thought it was an impossible feat, but with patience and determination, he did it. What was the toughest challenge or obstacle you had to overcome? What made you able to succeed even when it seemed impossible? Use as much detail to describe YOUR amazing feat.

14 comments:

  1. My toughest challenge was when I went on the Hulk at universal for the very first time. When we got to the ride my heart was pounding so hard. I was really excited. I looked up and saw the right and was thinking how much fun that would be. When we got in line it wasn’t very long so we got on pretty quickly. Right before I got on my excitement started to drop and I was starting to get nervous. I was only 8 when this happened so I got really scared at that point. Soon enough I got on, pulled down my harness, buckled the buckle, and was ready to go. We started to go up the first hill and after about 15 seconds of going up we zoomed from zero to forty miles per hour in two seconds and the ride began. The coaster went up and down and up and down until we went into this tunnel under a bridge! Then more loops came around and soon enough it was over. I am so glad I faced my fear and rode HULK!

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  2. My most amazing (and kind of scary) feat was not successful at first. But it was relatively scary. Back in North Dakota, there was this empty lot, sort of like a pit, next door. Our snow brick maker fell way down in there, during winter! We waited until the pit was muddy, though, to retrieve it. Evie and I got in our boots, and went down there. Mom watched very carefully. We began to panic as walking became harder, and harder…. Until, Stuck! We cried and cried for help, but mom was about to head to a meeting, so she couldn’t help us! Finally, our across-the-street neighbor ventured into the lot and plucked us out of the mud. We were very glad, because, honestly, at the age of 6, you will think that you will sink. Luckily, we finally got our brick maker back! But when it was dry… Evie and I never went back in the pit, either way.

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  3. My amazing feat came this summer. I was at basketball camp when coach called us to mid court. He told us he had a special guest for us. It was Bo Outlaw. He was a former player for the Magic. He asked us if we knew things about basketball. The first thing he asked about was BEEF. BEEF is a way to remember how to shoot a basketball. B stands for balance. You have to keep your legs and feet balanced while you shoot it. The first E stands for eyes. You have to keep your eyes on the basket so you know where to shoot. The second E stands for elbows. If you shoot it with your elbows in the wrong place you will most likely miss it. Finally F stands for follow through. You how players hold their arms after they shoot the ball? That’s called a follow through. I raised my hand when he talked about BEEF. He picked me and I came up and told him about BEEF. He then told me to shoot a free throw in front of everybody. When I got the ball I did everything right, balance, eyes, elbows, follow through. And of course, swish! It went in the hoop. Later at the award ceremony I won the award for the best shooter in the entire camp and I won a J.J Redick autographed picture.

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  4. One of the toughest things I had to overcome was when I had an audition and I am nervous to sing in front of everyone. When I go up and sing at auditions, I just close my eyes and pretend I’m alone in my room. And it felt amazing to show people my talent, and even more amazing when they actually clapped for me! I have never been sure about being a great singer, but now I know that people might actually enjoy it! It was really hard in 4th grade at first, because I really had wanted the part of Dori, because I loved all the songs she got to sing, and I’m kind of like her. But when I didn’t get it, I was just thinking that I had another chance for Annie this year. And because people clapped, I think I have a really good chance of getting a part like Duffy or Annie! Wish me luck!

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  5. The hardest obstacle I ever had to overcome is singing in front of a crowd. I was so nervous I thought I was going to faint. I was auditioning for the role of Molly for the school play I was second. When I got up there my heart was pounding, but when I started singing I felt better the thing was that as soon as it was over I felt like I was going to die. I was so embarrassed. I still don’t know if I got it but I hope I did.

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  6. The toughest challenge I have faced is jumping off the high dive at Lake Brantley Middle School. If you have ever been the highest diving board it 10 feet up and the rest are only 5. I was at a birthday party and all I went on were the small 5 foot boards. Soon everyone at the party was yelling “Do it! Do it!” I did it and as I was falling I thought “Yeah! I did it!” It felt really good.

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  7. The hardest thing I went through was trying to climb up a sledding hill covered in ice. I was all bundled up in layers and layers of coats, and I had a green sled in hand. I trudged across my huge backyard and took a step up the hill. It was slippery! My foot slid down and I tried crawling up. That wasn’t successful either. I found a less steep way to climb up, but it was slippery! I made my way up, inch by inch, and I finally got about halfway there. I looked at the little sledding ramp that formed on my hill each year and I thought how much fun that would be to sled on! I slipped and slid my way all the way to the top. I was proud of myself for getting that far. I looked at my house from the hill, it looked smaller! I got ready to sled down, but right then my sled slid out of my reach…

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  8. The toughest challenge I had to overcome was moving from New Jersey to Florida. All though it has been very fun here, I still miss a lot about New Jersey. Such as not playing with my friends every weekend like I used to do, not seeing my family for any help, and not going to many parties anymore. I can't hang out with my old friends because we live about a thousand miles away. I can't always see my family for help anymore because they also live a thousand miles away. Also, I miss important parts of their lives. Like how on Christmas Eve, my aunt got engaged to a man named Nick. Everyone saw it happen but me. I also don't get to go to many parties anymore because my parents don't know a lot of people anymore. In New Jersey, I would go to a party like every weekend. Sometimes in New York, sometimes with all of my family, and sometimes with all our friends from the entire state! I kind of miss all of that. When my parents said we were moving, I had always refused. But, they won. I eventually succeeded with this task by making my parents promise we would visit New Jersey as much as we can. It was very hard at first but, I am liking it here a lot.

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  9. One of the toughest things I've had to overcome was when I was on my winter break in vacation in Colorado a few years ago when I had to ski down the biggest mountain with my cousins. My nerves told me I could do it, but I couldn’t my stomach started to hurt. My cousins dared me to go down. It was my first time skiing and it looked like the tallest and biggest mountain I’ve ever seen before. My cousins started to go down. That’s how they got me to go down. I wasn’t going to stay up there by myself, which would have been weird. While I was going down I realized that it wasn’t bad after all. After a little bit of practice that night I kept going down the mountain. Ever since it has been my favorite.

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  10. The toughest challenge I had to overcome is when I had my national cheer competition it might have been one of the scariest things I had to do. You might think cheerleading is one of the simplest things to do all you do is say go team go but when you compete at a national level you have to lift people and do certain tumbling so basically if you drop someone or mess up on your tumbling you could ruin it for your team and you feel like all of the pressure is on you. What helped me succeed was the support of everyone there and knowing everyone else was going through the same amount of pressure. As result we succeeded that’s my feat I’ve accomplished.

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  11. The obstacle I had to overcome was FCAT. I was in 3rd Grade, and it was apparently the first time I ever took it. I studied and studied, but it felt like I could never feel ready. The day of the test, my stomach was doing gymnastics. (The day before, rumors were going around that one kid did so bad, he had to be held back for two years!) While the teacher was saying the instructions, a battle took place in my mind. Good VS Bad. My thoughts made my whole body flip! But Good took over. “You can do this!” I thought. “You’ll get a 5!” And sure enough, I did.

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  12. My toughest challenge I had to overcome was definitely my football championship game! The thing that made me overcome this challenge was my mom and dad. Since the day I was born, they wanted me to become number one in something and this game was my chance to prove to them that I can become number one in something. Also, another thing that made me overcome this challenge was my jealousy over my brother because he had won like one million trophies and I myself had zero! At the end of the game my team had won it fourteen to ten and one of those touchdowns was mine. I felt so happy I had succeeded my challenge and overcame it.

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  13. One Of the many amazing things that I have done is Beat my older cousin and all of his high school friends in football. You might be wondering why this is so amazing so let me tell you, It was me versus Him and all of his friends, yep that is right I was by myself. Even though no one would pass the ball to me I would try to intercept it and that usually turned out well. We played hard and rough and I scored about 15 touchdowns. When it was time for dinner and my cousins friends had to go home everyone was talking trash about me but I did not care because in the end I was the one that won. So.......that was the interesting thing that happened to me, what happened to you!

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  14. My toughest challenge was the Leap of Faith in Atlantis. The Leap of Faith is a 3 story high water slide that goes straight down into a tunnel of sharks and drops you out at a pool. I wanted to go down the Leap of Faith since I was little, but I never had the courage as I got older. When I was little, I was reckless and free-minded. The Leap of Faith was no more than a slide at a playground in my little head. Then, as I got older and watched more and more movies, I realized how scary it was. Soon, the only motivation I had was my mom and dad cheering me on. The annoying thing was when I waited in line was the large amount of people in line. My plan was to get it over, quick and easy. However, I waited an hour in line, which was an hour I thought about the possibly dangerous results. Last time when I went to Atlantis I went on something called the Surge. It shoots you down from an extremely high height, and shoots you back up. When I was in the tube, my back hit the speeding slide, hurting me. I thought about this when I was waiting in line. When I finally went down the slide, I realized how silly my thoughts were, and how fun it was. I wanted to go down it again! This was my greatest accomplishment.

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