I chose my topic, which was the stock market. Now I had to come up with a main inquiry question. Before I settled on my topic, I already kind of knew what my main inquiry question was. At first I wanted to do, “factors that affect the stock market” Then I realized that that was too broad, so I narrowed it down to, “The top factors that affect the stock market” That would be easier to answer because my sub questions could be the top factors, in the form of a question.
To clarify that my work was correct so far, I FaceTimed my two god mothers. One of them works at CNBC, and does a show called Power Lunch. My other god mother works in the bank business. When we discussed my project, they gave me many ideas and a LOT of information. Almost too much for me to handle. They made me rethink my inquiry question too. I then changed to my final question, “What top factors impact the stock market?”
After are discussion, I had to write down everything I learned on a document. I wrote down my main inquiry question and some sub questions. First, I made a list of examples of things that impact the stock market. Then I made them into questions. For example, new products impact a company’s stock price, so I made into the question, “How do new products impact a company’s stock price?”
Right now, my five sub questions are, “How do natural disasters impact the market,” “What is meant by the ‘market’,” “How do product launches impact different stocks in different ways,” “How do company announcements impact their stock price,” and “How do elections impact the market?”
I already have a lot of information and I did some research. Now I need to schedule my site visit and interview. Even though it’s pretty early in the project, I also need to start at least thinking about my final presentation.
Since April is National Poetry Month, we always make many poems in class. This year, everyone in the grade is doing a “Where I’m From” poem. A “Where I’m From” poem is a poem about where you’re from, but not in a literal way. For example, you wouldn’t say you address, you would say an object or memory from your past. To make the poem more interesting, you could personify some of the things in your poem. For example, instead of saying “the window near the street,” you could say “the window looking out on the street.” That is personification, because you made the window sound like a person. When we think of things looking out, we think of people.
This is my “Where I’m From” poem:
Along with my poem, I made a short movie to go along with it. Included are pictures and a voiceover of me reciting the poem. This is it:
Before I started fifth grade, I already knew that we would be doing a Capstone project because I have an older brother. Since I already knew that I was going to do this project, I started to think about it ahead of time. I wanted to get a jump start. As of now my topic is the stock market.
I didn’t just randomly come up with my topic. My mom kind of led me toward it. Since my godmother works at CNBC, we thought that it would be a good idea to do a topic that had to do with journalism. I thought that would be a cool project. Since I had my topic ready, I just ignored the project.
Later, I realized that what my godmother does, is a show called Power Lunch. She writes shows about the stock market. To see what it was like, I turned on the TV to check it out. I realized that it wasn’t exactly my original topic, but once I watched some more, I became fascinated by the stock market.
Ever since, I’ve been more aware of the stock market. My mom, dad, and brother have some stocks. I always look at the stock app to see how my family’s stocks are doing. I like to pretend to be a stock picker and see which stocks are doing well. My grandfather was a very good stock picker.
When I started the capstone unit, I realized that my topic can’t be so broad. It can’t just be the stock market, it has to be a question and not broad. At school, I took some notes about the possible questions. Right now, my inquiry question is “What top factors affect the stock market?” We are also supposed to come up with five sub questions. I only came up with one so far, which is “How do different things affect different stocks in different ways?”
At school, I had to do an Ignite Presentation. An Ignite Presentation is a presentation that is ninety seconds. There are seven slides, an intro, five picture slides, and a conclusion. The first and last slides are called burn slides because the in the beginning and the end, you don’t have the audience’s full attention. The main rule in an Ignite Presentation, is that it has to tell a story.
I decided to do my Ignite on the most recent storm. I chose this because it was the only thing that was fresh in my mind, and since I lost power, I thought that it would be an interesting story.
The assignment was to make a presentation with pictures and a script in a week. You had to memorize your script for the final presentation. I thought that it would be really hard. On the day of the presentation, I was really nervous, but I thought that I did well.
The last game that I made is called Car Ride. This one is pretty hard and it’s my favorite. You are supposed to get the balls on the car ride without running into any of the buildings.
The third game that I made is called Save the Snowman! It is a pong game where you have to bounce something in the air without letting it hit the ground. In this case, I used a drum to bounce a snowman in the air. The red at the bottom is the global warming. You’re supposed bounce the snowman back in the air and not let it fall into the global warming.
The second game that I made is called Sneaky Dinosaurs. It is a harder game than my first one. The object of the game is to find the dinosaurs and click them before they disappear. There are a couple of objects that the dinosaurs hide behind to make hard to find them. You can see your score of how many times you clicked the dinosaurs.
The first game that I made was a simple game. It is a catch game called Winter Fun. You try to catch the ball in the scarf. You can see your score, how many times you caught the ball.
My debate group and I were debating whether we should protect humans from sharks or sharks from humans. The kids in my group were William, Will, and Eli. Will and Eli were partners and William and I were partners.
The first thing we did was read articles about either topic. Later we decided who was supporting what topic. Will and Eli were supporting protecting humans from sharks, and William and I were supporting protecting sharks from humans. Even though some of us had different topics, we all thought that we should protect sharks from humans.
Each partnership took lots of notes and annotated articles. Then, later we wrote an essay about our topic to help us with our oral debate. We practiced and practiced. Even though we were against each other, we knew all the evidence of both sides so we could come up with a good rebuttal.
On the day of our oral debate we were very nervous. We weren’t sure if we were ready or not. I think that we did well and here it is:
When I started to video, I was super excited. Each time that I failed, I thought about it, and came up with a solution. I ended up failing only 3 times until I had my success.
When I was filming, I wanted to get different camera angles so I could always get the best shot.
When I was making the movie, I edited the film a little bit, so there weren’t any pauses. I also added music and titles. When I looked at the videos, I noticed that it was too quick to understand what was happening, so I put it in slow-mo.