Stephen Hawking was an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author who was director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge. In 1963, Hawking was diagnosed with an early-onset slow-progressing form of motor neurone disease (“MND” also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis “ALS” or Lou Gehrig’s disease) that gradually paralysed him over the decades.

Both Melody and Stephen can’t talk, walk, can’t get themselves out of bed or even feed themselves. They are both very intelligent people. I guess people always thought they had no smarts in them. But once they both got a talking device, their whole worlds changed. Like COMPLETELY.

So Melody went to the aquarium with her parents, her sister, and Ms. Lovelace. But the passes to go there was for 6 people. Melody really wanted her friend Rose to go with her…. While we were reading the book “Out of My Mind” Rose seemed like she only went so Melody could enjoy her time there. Later, they meet up with Claire and Molly. Melody doesn’t like them because They are mean to her. But then again Rose is also friends with Molly and Claire. When Molly and Claire asked Rose “Who are you here with” Rose responded with a low voice “Melody and her family”. So I don’t think Rose truly had a good time at the Aquarium.

So In 7th grade we were gonna do the Curl Up Test and someone thought I couldn’t get past 35 or so and the max you can get is 80. This made me feel bad and that they didn’t think I was capable of anything. So when I did the Curl Up Test I got 80 and they were so surprised. I proved them wrong like completely. When they saw me complete in they were shocked.

So today in class we did a Non-Verbal Conversation. We used our thumbs to converse with the communication board to have a conversation with our partner. So basically we were in Melodys shoes, like how would we talk to someone without actually talking. The purpose of this activity was to see if we could talk with the communication board. It worked but it took way longer to use the board instead of actually speaking.

I used words like “Yes” and “No” because if somebody asked you a question like, “Do you have your book for school”? You would answer Yes or No. I also have all my teachers names incase I want to go see one of them. As well as locations like the bathroom, library, office, nurse, and stuff like that, if I need to go to one of the locations. And last but not least I have some of my classmates name and People I can talk to.

The activity we did was a little easy but also hard at the same time. When our partner asked us a question it was very frustrating trying to find the right words to say, Especially if you don’t have the word to tell the other person. But then again we had the whole alphabet, Letter by letter, to spell out something if we needed to. I also starting laughing a little bit because I couldn’t figure what to say, well not say but spell out the word.

This changed my point of view for Melody very much. I thought it would be easy for Melody to use the communication board but when I did it, It was way harder than I actually thought. I still feel bad for her because she did it for the past 11 years. It must of been really hard when she used it for the first time. This will probably impact my point of view for the rest of the story so whenever she tries to tell somebody something with the communication board, i’ll understand that she has to deal with this for a very long time.

As I was reading Out Of My Mind the thing that stuck out to me the most was “I can’t talk. I can’t walk. I can’t feed myself or take myself to the bathroom. Big bummer.” and “When people look at me, I guess they see a girl with short, dark, curly hair strapped into a pink wheelchair.” That kinda states what the whole story will be about.

What I noticed threw chapter 1-3 is that Melody is a really intelligent girl, so maybe throughout the story she will prove people wrong. And that it doesn’t matter what you look like on the outside it matters what you look like on the inside!

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