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CSEC English A School-Based Assessment Portfolio

Theme: Marijuana

Name of Center: Ladyville Technical High School

Center Code: 040045
Year of Exam: 2020
Name of Candidate: Latisha Anthony
Candidate Registration No.: 0400450046
Name of Teacher: GILLETT, Luisa
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Table of Contents

Table of Contents………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….2

Plan of Investigation……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..3

Reflection Entries………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….4
Entry 1………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………4
Entry 2………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………4
Entry 3………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………4

Personal Pieces…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….………………..5
Poem: Say No to Drugs …………………………………………………………………………………. ……………..…5
Video: Mylie reveals her reason for quitting weed……………………………………………………………6
Article: Cannabis can be worse for a teen’s brain than alcohol……………………………….…………7
Written Report…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…8

Plan for Oral Presentation……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..9

Scoring Rubric for Individual Participation……………………………………………………………………………………10

References……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………11
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Plan of Investigation
I have often observed young people smoking marijuana and talk about how it makes them feel
without any thoughts about how this will affect them. I have many reasons why I choose this topic,
but the main three reasons why I chose it was because one I found it very interesting, and I already
have some knowledge about it. Lastly, I chose this topic because I wanted to do further research on
the effects that marijuana has on people’s lives.

By doing this research I will learn what the outcome of smoking marijuana. It will improve my critical
thinking skills to identify main ideas and supporting details, vocabulary and reading skills. I will
search for an article, a poem and a video from Google, Bing and YouTube. I will use this information
to educate my classmates and myself about the negative effects of marijuana abuse. By carrying out
this research, I will get to figure out what are the good effects that marijuana can have on a human
being life. This specific research will also let me have a variety of new knowledge and information.
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Reflection Entries

Reflection 1
Like many people today, I am shocked every time I see human beings consuming
marijuana; moreover, I believed that youths consume marijuana for a lot of different purposes such
as getting high because it makes them feel good or it releases stress, but sometimes they simply do
it for fun. However, after reviewing my three artefacts, I observed that the purposes are much more
complex. In the poem “Say no to drugs” by Slogans Hub, the person asked for strength, courage, but
instead it took everything away and made the persons heart full of anger and stress. In Mylie Cyrus’s
video she reveals her reasons for quitting weed. She states that she quit smoking weed because she
was passionate about the record that she was making and because she was constantly have
nightmare about dying from that specific herb. Also, in my article” cannabis can be worse for teen
brains than alcohol” by Brian Mastroianni states that teenagers that consume cannabis at an early
age in their life will face more greater consequences as they may grow older. The study result also
states that the person who regularly consumes cannabis has a long-lasting effect on their brain.
While carrying out my research I learned that consuming a high percentage of marijuana regularly
can damage you permanently.

Reflection 2
In the video, the protagonist uses repetitive language to highlight how drugs
destroyed her life. She also uses repetition to emphasize the expectations she had that drugs
would improve her life when she says, “I asked for courage...strength...wisdom...to be sane”.
However, the drugs had an opposite effect when she makes a contrasting statement as she
says, “instead you took from me all I had left...you made my soul angry and stressed”. In that
contrasting statement, the protagonist reveals how she was deceived and betrayed by drugs.
The use of emotive language is seen when she says, “You took it all!” and expresses the
anger and shock she feels at how the drug has destroyed her life. In the article “Cannabis”,
the writer uses informative language to highlight how marijuana can have a long-lasting
effect on a teen’s life. He also uses imagery to demonstrate an illustration on a teen that
smokes the herb. In the video, the writer uses informative languages to deliver an important
message to all human beings. Another instance in which the author uses imagery is to
describe an example of how a human being looks when he or she smokes.

Reflection 3
After completing this research, I got to understand different reasons human beings
consume marijuana. At first I thought marijuana consumption would not have any effect on the
human brain, but I found out that it can affect brain development if it is overused. Before doing my
research, I thought that many people used marijuana just for fun, but from my research I learned
that some people used it only for medical purposes. I now think that marijuana can be used for a
variety of reasons, such as releasing stress or as medicine for certain medical conditions. Overall,
doing this SBA has made me a better critical thinker by looking at different sides of an issue, such as
marijuana use.
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Personal Pieces

A new study looked at how cannabis, alcohol, and other substances affect the brains of teens.
Getty Images

A new study in the American Journal of Psychiatry suggests that cannabis may actually have
a more negative impact on teens’ cognitive development than alcohol.

The study’s results put up a warning sign to teens that regular use of marijuana, for instance,
could have long-lasting effects on their brains.

“The study was originally designed to evaluate the impact of alcohol on adolescent cognitive
development,” Patricia Conrad, PhD, lead author and professor of psychiatry at the
University of Montreal, told Health line. “This was years back, it took a while to get funded
and set up. Ten years ago, we understood a lot about alcohol but very little about cannabis. In
the interim years, we have come to understand more about cannabis than we did.”

She said that she would have expected to see that alcohol had a negative impact on cognitive
development, but it was a surprise to see just how impactful cannabis was on young people’s
cognition.

What did the study find? 

Conrad said her team took a “big data” approach to the study. They looked at 3,826 teens
starting from seventh grade from 31 Montreal-area schools over the course of four years. The
students who participated sent back annual reports that documented their level of alcohol and
marijuana use. The researchers also gave the teens cognitive tests to gauge the teens’ working
memory, perceptual reasoning, recall memory, and inhibition.

To make sure they got the most honest responses from the students, these reports were
confidential. Parents and teachers, not allowed.

The study authors reported that teens who used cannabis more often than others had cognitive
function changes that appeared “to be more pronounced than those observed for alcohol.”
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Conrad said the results should be a cautionary tale to teens as they contemplate marijuana use
at a young age.

“Our findings suggest young people should do everything they can to delay the onset of their
cannabis use, if not avoid it entirely,” she added. “I do not recommend it; clearly there are
health risks associated with cannabis.”

It’s certainly not the first study to look at what cannabis could do to cognitive development.
In June, JAMA Psychiatry published a review Trusted Source that looked at 69 past studies
on cannabis use among young people. The authors found that some past studies might have
actually overstated “the magnitude and persistence of cognitive deficits” tied to cannabis use.
They found
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Written Report

Our group members decided to choose drugs. We chose that the

theme because it was interesting to us and wanted to know the real
meaning behind the use of drugs. Before choosing drugs as the
theme, we had a several options, like rape, child abuse, teenager
prey and crime rate, but our teacher guided us on How to choose a
topic that was really interested to most group members. AS we did
our theme, we decided on three subtropical such as legalization on
drugs “cannabis” classification of drugs and food and bad drugs.
Our SBA started with Our English teacher breaking down the SBA into
sections so we could have a better understanding .Once we grasped
the full understanding of the SBA, we then selected our subtopic and
group members .The three artefacts that we choose were very
descriptive and informative and also helped us with our vocabulary
and comprehension skills. The research was able to be carried out
with the constant use of internet. However ,during the compiling of
the of the information form the artifacts we noticed it was full with
an about of information but none the less was a little difficult but we
were able to carry it out .Our knowledge not the topic Marijuana
increased, which had us to having a better understanding on the use
of marijuana.
In the song “Legalize it” Tosh (2015) I learnt that you should legalize
it and don’t discriminate it .It impacted my opinion by letting me
know that it can be used medicinal. In the song “Smokey Joe”
Govana (2015) I learned that marijuana makes him stay calm and
keep trouble! .It impacted my opinion because in the song, I heard
him saying that smoking marijuana keeps him calm. In the poem”Say
no to drugs”, I learned the writer asked drugs to help her be a better
person instead it made her feel different .It impacted my opinion by
letting me realize that drugs can make you feel both ways.
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Plan for the oral presentation

The genre that I will uses for my oral presentation is prose (speech). To help me carry out
this task I will use three different sources, such as newspaper, Documentary, biographies.
The languages that will be used to conduct the speech is informative and descriptive. Based
on my research I came to understand that marijuana can have a long-lasting effect on a
human’s brain, also that it can cause health issues such as lung failure.
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Grading source
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References

Govan “Smokey joe” November 8th 2015

Retrieved date: January 12th 2020 https://www.youtube.com/results?
search_query=smokey+joe+govana

hub, Slogan “say no to drugs”

Retrieved date: May 14th 2019 https://www.google.com/search?
q=say+no+to+drugs+poem+slogan+hub

https://www.google.com/search?q

Tosh, Peter “Legalize it” October 25th 2008

Retrieved date: January 8th 2019 https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=legalize+it