Author Archives: ehandwerker29

Capstone Essay

Posted on by
Reply

After I completed my interview, and all of my research, I put all my research into an essay. The essay I wrote was too long to be a script to present so I had to take out a lot of less important information, and only put the most important things in my script. After I did this, my script was still too long so I tried taking out a few words that made my script longer. For example, I removed words such as “another” and “also.” This got my script to a good place. Overall, I did a good job writing my essay, and a good job completing my final script. This is my essay:

Have you ever wondered why the Holocaust happened, and why nobody stood up to the Nazis during the Holocaust? Even though so many people did not defend the Jews, there were some very brave people who did. I soon found out that there were reasons that the Holocaust happened and there were people who helped. This turned into why did the Holocaust happen and how did people help? In this presentation you are going to learn why the Holocaust even happened, who helped the Jews and how, how the Bielski brigade played a big role in helping the Jews, and how Propaganda led to what we know as the terrible time: the Holocaust.

One reason for the Holocaust was that Adolf Hitler was a dictator, and in order to know why the Holocaust happened, you have to know what a dictatorship is. A dictatorship is a type of government where one person, or one opinion has complete control over the whole nation. There are five types of dictators: a single party (where one political party dominates the government), a military (military controls the country), monarchy (power passed through family), personalistic (power supported by friends), and hybrid (a combination of four others). Adolf Hitler was a hybrid between a single party and military dictatorship. The reason he was a hybrid is because the Nazi’s SS police force enforced the laws, and if you broke them you’d be killed, arrested, or sent to a concentration camp. This is a military dictatorship. The reason why the dictatorship is also a single party is because the Nazis dominated the government. Usually a dictatorship happens when a nation has a lot of social problems, and after WWI, Germany suffered a big defeat, and the great depression made a lot of Germans desperate and wanting to blame someone for all the problems. 

Hitler blamed Jews for this. Adolf Hitler believed there was one master race and all other people were not good enough, so in 1935 he and the Nazis passed the Nuremberg laws. These laws said that only people that had German blood could be citizens of Germany, Germans and Jews could not get married or have a baby together, and Jews were deprived of freedom of speech, press, and protest. The laws also said that Germans and Jews were different races. One other part of the law was that Jews could not fly the German flag in their homes. But, all of this wasn’t that sudden, antisemitism has had a long history in Europe, even in the medieval times Jews were mistreated for following their religion and Hitler brought up old ideas. One reason there were so few people who helped the Jews is the Nazis arrested, intimidated, or even killed anyone who tried to help.

During the war, Hitler used propaganda to make him look like a good leader. Hitler also used propaganda to make Jews look bad. For example, posters saying Jews were rats, or stole all of Germany’s money, even cartoons where Jews were the villain. The Nazis told everyone to boycott Jewish owned businesses, and spread a lot of antisemitic ideas. Other posters worked against the Nazis and urged citizens to go against the antisemitic ideas and help the Jews that escaped from the Nazis.

In 1939 Europe’s Jewish population was 16.7 million, by 1945 the population had dropped to 11 million. That is almost six million people, but still less than half of Europe’s Jewish population, and that is all because of the people who helped. These are a few people that helped, and risked their lives to save people from the Holocaust. One person is Janusz Korczak. He was born into a non-religious Jewish family in Warsaw, Poland in 1878. Before WWII he was a doctor for kids in Poland, and very well-known. When World War II started he owned a Jewish orphanage. The orphanage was moved into the Warsaw ghetto. Even when there was very little food and clothes he fed them and gave them good clothes. On August 5th or 6th, 1942 (no one knows) the Nazis came to empty out the ghetto and take everyone to concentration camps. Korczak was offered multiple times to leave the concentration camps but stayed with the kids. This is important because even though he died, he helped so many people through the war, before they were sent to concentration camps, and comforted them. He sacrificed his own life to help others. 

Another person who helped the Jews was Oskar Schindler. He was born in 1908 in Svitavy, Czechia. Schindler grew up to be a businessman, he owned a factory to make weapons and supplies for the Nazis. Schindler was a spy for the Nazis so he knew when they were going to send more Jews to concentration camps. Almost every time the Nazis would try to send the Jews to the camps, he would claim that he needed them for work. During the war, Amon Goth was in charge of a concentration camp. He wanted to move Schindler’s factory into the camp. Schindler convinced him not to, risking his life. Inside the factory, the Jews were well-fed, housed, and free to practice religion. Even though Oskar Schindler was arrested multiple times he kept going. This shows, during the war, people had to make very hard decisions. They could either risk their life to save others, or stay safe but watch others die. Schindler chose to help.

One other person who helped the Jews was Irena Sendler. She smuggled kids out of the Warsaw ghetto. She got inside the ghetto by pretending to be a doctor in the ghetto. Some examples of how she smuggled them was by putting kids in body bags, potato sacks, and coffins. According to one of my sources, “‘can you guarantee they will live?’ Irena later recalled the distraught parents asking. But she could only guarantee they would die if they stayed.” By helping the kids she gave them a chance to live.

One organization that helped the Jews was the Bielski brigade. The Bielski brigade was an organization that helped more than one thousand Jews escape from war. The person I interviewed was Hy Ryback, the son of two members of this organization: Solomon and Chana. Before the Holocaust Solomon and Chana had a baby (Hy’s older brother). During the time before WWII, Solomon was an educator/bookkeeper and Chana was a nurse in Belarus. When the war started Solomon and Chana were moved into the Novogrudok ghetto. When the Nazis were emptying the ghetto, and sending everyone to concentration camps, Hy’s older brother was sent to one of the concentration camps, and died there. Solomon and Chana were spared, because of their jobs and sent to a working ghetto for two years, until they heard the plan of the Nazis that they would get killed. They escaped by digging an underground tunnel to the forest. The tunnel was a half a mile long, with only five to ten minutes to cross otherwise the Nazis would catch them. Of 360 people who tried to escape, only about 150 of them survived. In the forest they built their own hospital, kitchens, military and supplies for the military, and a small theater that also worked as a synagogue. While in the forest Solomon worked to smuggle people out of ghettos to the Bielski brigade, and Chana worked as a nurse in the makeshift hospital. Other Brigades nearby worked together to survive. By the end of the war, the Brigade had more than one thousand people living together. After two years of being in the forest, they were liberated in 1945, and immigrated to Italy to a displaced persons camp, then eventually made their way to Canada. Hy believes that if everyone keeps learning about the terrible event known as the Holocaust, we can prevent it from ever happening again. Hy also believes that very few people knew what was actually happening in the concentration camps, and with social media it would be very hard to keep such a big thing a secret.

In conclusion, I learned that the Holocaust happened because Hitler was a dictator who blamed the Jews for all of Germany’s problems. Also, people were afraid to stand up to the Nazis. I learned about many people who did help the Jews, even risking their own lives to help others. The lesson I learned is that when something bad is happening to either you or others, you need to stand up for what is right. We can prevent the Holocaust or anything like it from happening again by not falling for propaganda, being aware of global conflicts, and by helping others.

Capstone Interview

Posted on by
1

Part of my research was my interview. The interviewee is supposed to be a person who can help you even more than a book, or the internet. I think the interview helped me with my research, and I got a lot of my research from my interview.

When I was figuring out who I should interview, I thought of a person who works at a museum related to the Holocaust, or my Grandma’s friend. I started looking at different museums but I realized I was running out of time for me to complete my interview and I did not think that any of the museums would respond in time. Instead of a museum, I decided that I should ask my Grandma if she knew anyone that survived the Holocaust, or friends that had parents who survived the Holocaust. I asked, and one of my Grandma’s friends, Hy, had parents that survived the Holocaust. Writing the questions was not that challenging, I ended up with 15 questions. 

My interview didn’t go as expected because it ended up being much longer than I thought. When I was conducting my interview I noticed that every time I asked a question I got a lot of information. I think the reason my interview was so long is because I got a lot of details. I learned that in the Novogrudok ghetto 360 people tried to escape, but only about 150 survived. They tried to escape by digging a tunnel to the forest. I also learned that Hy believes that the only way to survive during the Holocaust was to work and help each other. He also believes that very few people survived without help from others.

Overall, I think that I learned a lot from my interview, and it really helped me with my research. Thank you for reading!

Capstone Main Inquiry and Sub-Questions

Aside

Reply

About two weeks ago, my teacher told my class that we would be doing a project called Capstone. Capstone is a project that all the fifth graders in the district do. The final result will be a presentation on a topic we get to choose.  We have a few options for the presentation format: a video format, a TED talk format, or an Ignite format. Leading up to the presentation we have three weeks of research. This Capstone project is a big project to do in a short time.

When I was coming up with my topic, I tried a few different topics. For example, the Holocaust, the Vietnam war, and climate change. I originally chose the Holocaust, but then decided that the Holocaust, and the concentration camps are very, very sad so I chose to change my topic to the Vietnam war. When I was doing pre-research for my topic, I couldn’t find a lot about my question. I decided, again, to change my topic back to the Holocaust but with a different question.

First, when I was coming up with my main inquiry question I thought about my topic, and what I didn’t want to do. Next, I thought about why I didn’t want to do those questions. I thought about this because once I knew I what I didn’t want to do, I had more of an idea of what my main inquiry question about the Holocaust was going to be. One challenge was I knew that I wanted to do something about the people in hiding but when I thought of that, I thought of Anne Frank and that was too small of a subject. I ended up doing for my main inquiry question, What ways did others help Jewish families hide during the Holocaust and what factors contributed to people turning against them?

When I was coming up with my sub-questions, I first thought about breaking up my main inquiry question into two, since it has two parts of it. The two questions were what ways did others help Jewish families hide during the Holocaust? And what factors contributed to people turning against them? I still had to add three more sub-questions, so I thought about famous people/events that helped the Jews, and that is when I thought of my third and fourth sub-question. Lastly, I wanted to see if these kinds of disasters are still going on today. One challenge while coming up with my sub-questions was wording the questions. Another challenge was splitting up my main inquiry question into two.

Overall, I think that coming up with my questions was a little hard, but I can’t wait to see my final Capstone project! Thank you for reading!

 

Immigration Interview Video

Posted on by
Reply

After I interviewed my Grandma, I made a video on her immigration story, and how she and my Grandpa came to the U.S.

While making the video about my Grandma’s immigration story, I first had to get the personal pictures from my Grandma. After that, I found pictures to match what I was talking about. For example, if I was talking about where my Grandma lived, I would put a picture of a similar place or find a picture of the real place where my Grandma actually lived. Once I put all the pictures in my video, I started to narrate my video, this took a few tries because of background noise. Lastly, I put the music in. When I was writing my script I remembered that I had to tell the story and not make the video in a question/answer format. It was hard to select images that had both a creative commons license and were good quality. A lot of the images I found were not good quality or they didn’t have a creative commons license.

I learned that interviewing someone and then making a video about it is much harder than I thought. I learned that when you interview someone, you have to listen very carefully because you might miss something. I missed a few things and I had to ask my Grandma more questions after the interview because I did not listen carefully. I also learned that when you interview someone you have to ask a lot of questions or ask for a lot of details because when you don’t, you don’t have enough details, and it is very hard to tell the story of that person. By learning these lessons, I found out that my Grandma immigrated to the U.S. because of my Grandpa’s job, and the government at that time.

Overall, I think this project was a good experience and that I learned a lot about my Grandma from this interview project.

Immigrant Interview

Posted on by
Reply

A few weeks ago my teacher told my class that we would be interviewing an adult who immigrated to the U.S. I chose my Grandma to interview, who immigrated to the U.S. from Canada. The final project is to make a video on their immigration story.

When I was making the questions, I first considered the information I already knew about my Grandma. For example, where and when she was born, and where she lived now. I also thought about how my Grandma got to where she is now, and how there were hard and easy parts of the immigration experience. After that I narrowed down my questions from 20 to 14 questions by combining questions and taking out the questions that weren’t as important as all the other questions. One resource that was helpful was a list of questions that my teacher gave my class as sample questions to give some ideas. Another resource that was helpful was a slideshow of interviews with young immigrants from all different countries that came to the U.S. for all different reasons. This was helpful because it showed me some questions that young immigrants were asked and their responses. This resource was also helpful because it showed me some questions, for example, what is your favorite food in the U.S.? is not as important of a question and won’t get as much information as, for example, why did you leave your country?              

My experience doing the interview was good. The interview was in person and went as expected. I learned that you had to be nice and patient because if you scream at them then they won’t want to talk to you. I also learned that you should do your interview in a quiet space so the person you are interviewing feels comfortable. One of the most interesting things I learned about the person that I interviewed was that one of the reasons the person that I interviewed left was not because she had a bad life in Canada but that her husband’s job was in New York City. Another interesting thing I learned was that my Grandma had visited New York before so she was familiar with it.

Overall, in this interview I learned a lot more things, and I will learn more when I make a video on the person who I interviewed. Thank you for reading my blog post!

Rube Goldberg Post #2

Posted on by
Reply

In this blog post, I will be writing about the final process of this project, including changes to my final sketch, building, testing and making the final video. Since this project started I’ve learned a lot about the Rube Goldberg machine.

When I was coming up with ideas for my Rube Goldberg, I looked at videos of students’ projects from past years. This helped me by showing me some ways to build all the simple machines. When I was building and testing my machine I had to make changes to make it work. One of the changes I made was when I had to make the pulley work by attaching the string to a book to pull the pulley, instead of having a ball knock down a book which would pull the pulley. Another change I made was the task. I had to make this change because I realized that I didn’t have enough force to close a door, so I ended up pouring milk into cereal. When I was changing this, I also realized that I had to use gravity to get enough force to flip the cup, so I ended up building up the wall. One of the most challenging parts of this process was when I was trying to get the lever to work, I had to figure out what amount of weight would be enough but not too much so it would work. Getting the cup to pour was easier than I thought, it only took two tries. It took me 36 tries to get a successful run.

My final sketch was different from my first sketch because in my first sketch I had eight steps, but I repeated two steps when a small ball hit a big ball that closed the door. In my second sketch I ended my Rube Goldberg machine with the pulley flipping the cup so the milk poured into the cereal. I also added three steps to the machine to make it work. Another one of the steps that I added was I added a bouncy ball to get pushed by another bouncy ball to push the car down the inclined plane. I changed the pulley to the final step was because it worked better when I flipped it with the pulley, not something else. Throughout my project I had to make a lot of changes to make it work better.

In making my WeVideo, I first found clips of successes and failures. First, I showed a picture of my sketch so the people watching understood my plan. Next, I showed the failures to show how difficult the project was. I added music to make the video more interesting to watch, but not distract the people watching. Then, I showed a successful run that showed all eight steps. I included credits at the end to show resources I used while doing this project. 

Overall, throughout this project I think I did a good job in both building the machine, and making a video about it. The project was really hard, but I think I learned a lot about simple machines, and the Rube Goldberg machine. Thank you for reading my second Rube Goldberg blog post!

Rube Goldberg Post #1

Posted on by
Reply

A few weeks ago, my teacher told us that we would be doing a project called Rube Goldberg where we build eight steps leading up to one simple task. Each step counted as a change of energy, an example of a step is a lever that knocks down books. For my simple task, I chose pouring milk into cereal. But there were a few guidelines, first of all, we had to choose four out of six simple machines. Simple machines include, inclined plane, pulley, lever, wheel and axle, screw, and wedge. 

In my project I did research by watching videos and seeing what other students in other years did as their project. One of the videos really helped me because it gave me the idea to use a lever as a slingshot. I also watched someone on America’s Got Talent do a Rube Goldberg machine, which gave me the idea to use dominoes in some way. I think both of these resources were useful because they helped me get ideas and understand what a Rube Goldberg machine was. Overall, I think that my research really helped me, and will help me with my overall project.

First when I was designing I had to think of a task and what four different simple machines I would use. I ended up using the inclined plane, pulley, lever, wheel and axle. Secondly I thought of eighth different steps that would lead up to, and complete my simple task. I sketched and had to label all the steps and machines. Lastly, I started building my Rube Goldberg machine. 

When I was gathering materials, it was very hard to find a fulcrum and when I built it didn’t work well. Since I couldn’t find a fulcrum, I built one out of cardboard. The cardboard wasn’t sturdy enough so the lever could not work without a sturdy fulcrum. My next step will be to find a sturdier fulcrum. My ramp worked well, and I was able to find a car heavy enough to create enough force to continue with the next step. I also found books and a ball heavy enough to knock down books, but light enough to be used with the lever. I think with my next step to make the lever work better I need to use a piece of cardboard to stop the car and make the machine work.

In conclusion, I learned that it is harder than I thought to make the machines work, and I need to improve my machines so that they work. Thank you for reading!

Feature Article Reflection

Posted on by
Reply

About a month ago, my teacher told us that we were going to write feature articles about a topic we already knew a lot about. It took me a long time to come up with a topic, but eventually I decided to do my feature article on art. At first I had a hard time thinking of a message because there was so much I could do, anyone can do art, or art is very unique, but I decided for my message I would do: there is so much more to art than you might think. I did this because I feel like when some people think of art they just think it is really boring but when you actually think about it, it can be fun. That is why I chose my message. 

I think the most effective thing I did was using examples and comparisons in my writing. For example, I described what it feels like to use watercolors. After I edited and revised my feature article, it was time to come up with my titles and subtitles, for me this was a more challenging part of the process to do. I chose to use alliteration because all the other titles and strategies didn’t work out for me. They didn’t work out for me because all of my other titles I created included my subtitle in them, so I decided to make my title Amazing Art, and I originally made my subtitle There is so much more to art than you may think, but then I realized that my subtitle was my message so I changed it to A hobby that so many people overlook.

I am most proud of how long I got it to be, because when I was writing my feature article I had a hard time coming up with how I was going to format it, and how it was going to look. Writing a feature article was a very different experience than writing a personal narrative because when I wrote my personal narrative I wrote a draft, edited, revised it, and I was done. But for the feature article I wrote my draft, and then I still had to make the format and make it a feature article, not an all about. 

When I was doing the format of the feature article, I first thought about how much text I had. I realized that I had so much text and had to have more text on a page than pictures and text features, so I settled on one to two pictures on a page. After that I had to figure out how to fit all my text, I finished it up and edited all my spelling and grammar. Overall this Feature article unit was a very different experience than personal narratives, and I think I did a good job writing my feature article!

 

Reading Timeline Reflection

Posted on by
Reply

A few weeks ago my teacher told us we had to make reading timelines of our reading life from when we started to read, to fifth grade. When we were told to make our timelines I first started on the most memorable books from when I was little/preschool, after I did that I had to try a little harder when I needed books for second grade and third grade. After I thought of all the books I was going to use for the timeline, I started to write small summaries on why I like the book and why I chose it for the timeline. Next, I made the book covers and glued them to the timeline. My least favorite part of the process is when I had to think of the covers, because after I thought of the covers that came to me right away, it took me a long time to think of the books a really long time ago. One book that impacted me the most is The Little Engine That Could. It impacted me because it taught me never to give no matter what, and to keep trying. Overall I really enjoyed doing the reading timeline and I think it helped me look at my reading life from when I was 3 to now, fifth grade! I hope you enjoyed my reading timeline reflection! Thank you for reading it! 

Choosing a Topic for my Feature Article

Posted on by
Reply

Our class is starting a new writing unit where we will be writing feature articles. At first when we were brainstorming ideas, I had a hard time coming up with them but at the end I came up with two topics, art, and Scarsdale. 

When I was brainstorming categories for my feature article I came across a few problems, my first problem was that I couldn’t come up with enough categories! Even though I came up with three, it wasn’t enough, and I couldn’t write enough of the categories because I didn’t know enough about each one. 

After I did that I tried to do Scarsdale and to my surprise, I had a lot more categories on that because I knew a lot more. The categories I came up with were: Restaurants, popular places to go, shopping centers, sports programs, schools, and neighborhoods with these new categories came more to elaborate on. After the whole process I think for my topic for my feature article I’m going to go with Scarsdale.