Capstone Blog Post #3

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I am coming to the end of my capstone project and WOW has it been exhausting. Let’s look back from after the interview to now. By the time my interview was finished my script was already done, I just had to go back and do some slight editing. There was not much to change because I was proud of my script. After that, I had to start working on my actual slideshow. This was an easy step because I already had a lot of images saved in a folder so I just had to insert them into the presentation. I got so caught up with this step and I got so relaxed. Too relaxed. Because of this, I forgot that capstone was so soon and I had to memorize my script. I feel like I saved the memorizing for the last minute because I lost track of time. On the weekend before the capstone practice, I spent at least 2 hours ensuring everything was the best. After that weekend we had the capstone rehearsal, and even though I was nervous, I felt I did good.

Here is some additional information I learned about all the goals:

No poverty. Mentioned in TED talk.

Zero Hunger. Zero hunger is one of the goals that we are doing the best on especially in richer countries. This is because Zero hunger is one of the money based goals. Most of the money based goals we are doing good on because for years governments thought that GDP was the key to making their country stronger but just now people are realizing that there need to be more solutions to problems other than money. Even with hunger being one of the goals we are doing better on 690 million people still experience hunger.

Good Helth and Well Being. This goal we are also doing better on all over the world. (Pre-covid) Before the pandemic, the world was doing really well with this goal. People working in organizations all over the world were helping and deceased like malaria were seeing a colossal amount of decrease in deaths. Despite determined global progress, an increase of child deaths are in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia. Four out of every five deaths of children under age five occur in these regions.

Quality Education. Education is the key to escaping poverty because when you are educated you can help others and build a stronger community. Over the past decade, major progress has been made to bring quality education to all. Even with all that progress being made 260 million children were still out of school in 2018. By April 2020 1.6 billion children were out of school. This was a disaster because about 369 million children rely on school lunch as their nutrition.

Gender Equality. “Gender Equality is not just a fundamental right, but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world.” There has not been much progress on gender equality in the last decades. Gender equality is one of the hardest goals to achieve because it is not a money based goal. You have to meet real people and talk with them. When covid 19 hit it was devastating because women were the ones mostly working on the front lines. Most exposed to covid 19. Women were also harder hit by the economic crisis of covid 19. “Limited gains in gender equality and women’s rights made over the decades are in danger of being rolled back due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the UN Secretary-General said in April 2020, urging governments to put women and girls at the centre of their recovery efforts. Here are some sad and depressing facts. Globally, women are just 13 percent of agricultural landholders. In 46 countries, women now hold more than 30 percent of seats in national parliament in at least one chamber. In 2019 women held only 29% of managerial positions.

Clean Water and Sanitation. Mentioned in TED talk.

Clean and Affordable Energy. As I have been saying for a lot of these goals this is a money based problem so we are doing pretty well in this goal. Many governments all over the world have started to increase their budgets on solar energy. In many places hydro energy is also becoming popular. Even with all these improvements, some people are being left behind. 13 percent of the global population still lacks modern electricity.

Decent Work and Economic Growth. “Sustained and inclusive economic growth can drive progress, create decent jobs for all and improve living standards”.  Like all the other goals this one was getting closer to being accomplished because for years governments have been working on growing their GDP. When covid 19 hit many people were out of jobs even in richer countries. Because of this world economies were severely damaged. Here are some facts The global unemployment rate in 2017 was 5.6per cent, down from 6.4per cent in 2000. Globally, 61per cent of all workers were engaged in informal employment in 2016. Excluding the agricultural sector, 51per cent of all workers fell into this employment category. Men earn 12.5per cent more than women in 40 out of 45 countries with data. Sad and Depressing.

Industries, Innovation, and Infrastructure. I did not find much information about this goal but I can share some facts that I found interesting. 16 percent of the global population does not have access to mobile broadband networks. Developing countries continued to outpace developed economies in renewables investment. In 2019, they committed $152.2 billion, compared to $130 billion for developed countries.

Reducing Inequalities. “Reducing inequalities and ensuring no one is left behind are integral to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals”. Inequalities among countries in a persistent cause for concern. Here are some facts that I found interesting Evidence from developing countries shows that children in the poorest 20 percent of the populations are still up to three times more likely to die before their fifth birthday than children in the richest countries. 30 percent of income inequality is income inequality between men and women.

Sustainable Cities and Communities. Since 2007 half of the world’s population is living in cities. We are living in a heavily urbanized world for better or worse. Cities are the powerhouse of economic growth. Since so many people are moving to cities they are becoming crowded, unsafe, unsanitary, and unsustainable. Did you know that the world’s cities cover only 3 percent of the Earth’s land but are responsible for 60-80 percent of energy consumption and 75 percent of carbon emissions?

Responsible Consumption and Production. I did not learn anything at all about this goal! I guess it’s one of the lesser talked about goals. I don’t know why this is because I found some very interesting facts about this goal on the U.N website. Here are the facts! The global population could grow to 9.7 billion by 2050 and 3 planets’ worth of resources would be needed to sustain the number of people on earth. If people all over the world switched to energy-efficient lightbulbs 120 billion dollars would be saved per year.

Climate Action. (Preventing climate change). In my presentation, I was originally going to talk about 3 goals instead of 2  and the third one would have been climate change. Because of this, I have a lot, and I mean a LOT of information on climate change. Climate change is caused when fossil fuels are burned and create greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases trap light and heat from the sun in the atmosphere. Since the 1970s climate change has been getting worse and worse mostly because that was the time when supply and demand started to increase and many more products were being made. From 2013 to 2017 were the hottest years on record. Luckily, since that time, people have realized climate change is a serious matter and have been starting to take action on it. An organization that works for the U.N that is focused on preventing climate change is the Green Climate Fund. It is an organization based in South Korea. The organization believes that poorer countries are most affected by climate change and would benefit the most from preventing climate change. Some of the missions the U.N has to prevent climate change are ‘Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies, and planning. Raise awareness of climate change. Mobilize 100 billion dollars per year to help developing countries. There are a few more though. 

Life Below Water. I feel like for the last few goals I did not find much information. I don’t know why this is because they seem important enough. I can assume that the past goal, climate action, really relates to this goal because climate change is melting so many ice caps and making the sea level rise, which will impact lots of animals. This is not a very kind wy to thank the ocean for absorbing 30 percent of all carbon dioxide, slowing down global warming. I think that this goal exists because so many humans are causing life below water to die.

Life on Land. ” Human activity has altered almost 75 percent of the earth’s surface, squeezing wildlife and nature into an ever-smaller corner of the planet.” What an amazing way to thank the trees for giving us oxygen. I did not get much information on this goal so here are some facts I learned that I found interesting. About 1.6 billion people depend on forests to survive. Forests host 80 percent of all plants and animals.

Peace Justice and Strong Institutions. What!? It has never occurred to me that this goal exists. Just because I’m so amazing I’ll share a few cool facts I learned on the U.N website (I could only find 2 because some of them made no sense to me). 28.5 million elementary school children who are out of school live in conflicted areas. 50 percent of children around the world experience violence every year.

Partnership for the Goals. Ahh, what a nice way to conclude this, or, ahh what a nice conclusion because I’m too lazy to write one because I’ve been at this for HOURS. TEAMWORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK!!! Thank you for taking the time to read my blog post and see you next time!

Capstone Blog Post #2

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I am in the middle of working on my capstone project. I have just finished my interview. The interview might have been the most challenging part of my project so far because I was contacting people all over the world and I was contacting people that were complete strangers to me so I was all over the place. Here is how it went down.

The first thing I had to do was find someone to interview. This process was not so complicated because my mother has connections with the U.N. After 3 or 4 days we found someone that worked for the Green Climate Fund. I was a bit disappointed in this because I wanted someone who worked directly for the U.N. so I could ask them questions about any of the goals, not just one.  I wanted to just ask my mom to ask the person from the Green Climate Fund but then in class, I found out that we had to write a request to interview someone.

The email requests did not have to be long so I finished that in a few minutes. When I got home that day my mom sent my email. We got the results a few days after. Waiting was very anxious because I felt I needed to complete everything fast.  I completed the interview efficiently and took notes on all the answers but when I ended the zoom I realized I had not been recording. I was disappointed because my notes had not been the best. After the interview, I read over my notes and edited them a bit to make more sense. Now I am waiting to start my script and hoping that my capstone project will turn out well.

Capstone Blog Post #1

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Close to the end of 5th grade, all 5th graders in the Scarsdale Schools District have to participate in a project called Capstone. This project is where you pick a topic to research and you research it and eventually present it in front of all the 5th grade parents. To start the project the first thing I had to do was pick my topic. This was very challenging because at first, I thought I had so many options in my head but I later realized that I really didn’t. The first topic I wanted to do was global warming. After looking at different aspects of the topic I realized I wanted to do something more original like The U.N. Sustainable Development Goals.

After I had my topic I looked at each goal and came up with some questions about each goal. This did not get me very far so what I did instead was come up with questions about the goals in general. What I came up with was How well are the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals being executed? Once I had this main question, coming up with the subquestions was pretty easy. I chose 3 goals for my subquestions. How is the U.N. helping solve poverty? How is the U.N. taking action on climate change? How is the U.N. bringing clean water to everywhere? These were very simple questions but they are effective questions.

So far, I feel I’m making great progress on my project and I am excited to see how it turns out.

 

Refugee Short Response

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While reading the book Refugee by Alan Gratz, my class and I came up with some amazing questions. Today I will be responding to some of the questions asked.

The first question I would like to respond to is. “Why don’t those dictators realize what they are doing? Why can’t they resolve this with some talking and compromising?” I think there are a few answers to this question but the main answer is that these evil dictators want more power and they will do anything to get it. I know this from real life right now. Currently the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin is invading Ukraine solely for power. This is not anything new, for thousands of years leaders have been going out of their way for more power. This is shown in Refugee when (in Mahmoud’s story) it is explained that the Syrian president is dropping bombs on his own towns and cities to prevent rebels from taking power from him.

The second question I would like to answer is, “I wonder how all of these kids get the confidence to do things, and how they get so brave?” I think the answer is that they find perseverance in hope and staying with their family. In all 3 kids’ stories, they are traveling with their families and they are persevering to keep their families together and to get a better life for all of them. This is proven in Isabel’s story when she persuades Leto to leave because she really wants her family to stay together. This is proven in Josef’s story when Josef slaps his father to keep his family together. This is proven in Mahmoud’s story in how Mahmoud is bearing terrible conditions and walking long miles to stay with his family.

Overall, throughout the story Refugee, there are many great questions to be asked.

Constitution Project Blog Post

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For the past few weeks in class, we have been working on a new project to do with the constitution. All of us had to choose a question about one of the amendments of the constitution. I think that this project really related and connected to the past project we had done on The Bill of Rights because they were both about amendments of The Bill of Rights. To do this project chose a question about I the 19th amendment because even before we started the constitution project I already knew a lot about the 19th amendment from researching for fun. I also chose this amendment because it is my favorite amendment, for it gave women the right to vote.

To do this project, what we first had to do was find a question and research it. What I mean by that is we had to think of a question about the amendment we chose and then try to find the answer to that question. My question was, Who were some women who made significant change for women’s suffrage. I spent about a week researching on ducksters, history.com, and even books from the library.

After we finished researching we went to creating the script. I think that this was one of the hardest parts because we had to write a lot and find a way for our writing to be timed perfectly. That meant that we had to either be able to expand or cut down our writing, which can be very hard sometimes, and in this project it was hard for me.

When we were done with our scripts what we did next was make our slideshows. I think that this was the easiest part because all we really had to do was find images. Some of the images were hard to find because most of the amendments people were doing their questions on were old amendments. We had to have an open flexible mind to look for other images that were somewhat similar to the ones we wanted.

The final part of the project (other than doing the blog post) was making the Sceencastify. I think that this was the hardest part of the whole process because in the wing there was so much noise and it was almost impossible to get a clean recording with just your voice. I could not record at home because every time I tried there were background noises so this step became very frustrating.

What I enjoyed the most about this project was making my slideshow. I really enjoyed this part because it was almost like a break from all the hard writing we had to do for all the other steps. This part was also really enjoyable because it was fun finding images and making them fit into the area needed.

I learned some very interesting facts while researching. 1 of these facts was that there were organizations for women’s suffrage that were completely against colored women’s suffrage. I found this very surprising because from the outside the women’s suffrage movement seems very united but the truth is, that it was not. I also found this fact preposterous because colored men already had the right to vote and why would the colored women be the only ones left behind with no right to vote. Another fact that I found interesting was that there were complete organizations just against women’s suffrage. I think this is incredibly rude and so naive that people would just come together to hate or try to stop something.

In conclusion, I think that this was a very hard project but it was also a very fun project. Like all projects, it had its ups and downs but now, I’m glad I did it and I can’t wait for more projects like this.

This is the link to my screencastify.

Feature Article Reflection

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I recently finished writing my feature article. My article was about the cold war. This was a very fun and interesting topic to research. I got to research things like the arms race, KGB spies, important astronauts, and much more. Even before I started researching the Cold War for my feature article, I was already very interested in the topic. That was part of the reason because I chose the Cold War for my topic for my feature article. The other part of why I chose the Cold War is because I wanted a detailed, long article and the Cold War is a topic with many other topics to be researched inside of it.

For me, writing this article had its challenges but it also had its fun moments. The most fun part of writing this article was the research. I thought it was really enjoyable to hop from website to website just learning about all the different topics. The hardest thing for me to do was to find the images because the cold war began about 70 years ago so all the images are either in black and white, low quality or not able to be downloaded.

In this piece of writing, I think the most effective technique of writing I used is elaboration and detail. I think I did this very well because my article ended up taking up lots of pages because of all the writing I did on each subcategory. I also think this because I took lots of time going through articles and reading books making sure that I included almost every part of every subcategory. I did this very well in the paragraph Arms Race because I elaborated on all sorts of things like infantry weapons to missile weapons.

Writing this feature article compared to writing my personal narrative a lot because writing the feature article was harder than writing the personal narrative. I think it was harder because I had to do research and the feature article now has a lot more text to it than the personal narrative would have ever had.

In conclusion, writing the feature article was super fun, yet really challenging project and I think it helped me learn so much more about researching and the Cold War.

Comparison Between Fly Away Home and Smoky Night

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Smoky Night and Fly Away Home are both books by Eve Bunting and recently, in class we have been reading a lot of eve buntings books and have been discussing them and applying them to a parts and purposes board. Today, I will be comparing and contrasting two stories by Eve Bunting called Smoky Night and Fly Away Home.

One thing I want to compare between these two stories is the symbolism in them. The main symbolism in these two books is the animals. In Fly Away Home it is the dove that symbolizes or mirrors the life of Andrew and his dad living at the airport. They want to leave and be in their own home but they can’t. The bird kept trying to get out just as Andrew and his dad are trying. The bird tried for days but it finally managed to escape from the airport. Just as Andrew and his dad will one day.

In Smoky night Daniels cat was the animal. This also sort of mirrored daniels experience in the day of the Los Angles Riots. I think this because Daniel and his mom were not friends with Mrs.Kim because of their differences but when they at least tried to be friends they learned that they could and would be friends. The same thing happened for the cats of the 2 families. The two cats became friends while they were in the fire hiding under the stairs together.

Another thing I want to compare is the characters. In Fly Away Home the main character and the person telling the story is a boy named Andrew. He lives with his dad at an airport so we know that at a young age he is already facing so many problems. Andrew really wishes to please his dad. We can see that because he is saving up to help with getting an apartment and when he tells his dad that it seems like he is beaming with pride. At the beginning of Fly Away Home, Andrew really is not that hopeful he wants to help, yes, but every day he sees people say “Hi” “It’s so good that you’re home”. He feels jealous and upset that they have a home and he doesn’t. I feel like after he sees the bird and how it got out of the airport he felt new hope for his future and his dad’s future.

In Smoky Night, the main character, Daniel is also the one who is telling the story.  At first glance, Daniel looks like he has a pretty normal life except that he is living in a community that seems like people are separated by race. I know this because Daniel explains that his mom says that they should shop at places owned by their own. Daniel explains this after both he and his mom see people in the LA riot looting and destroying Mrs. Kim’s shop. Throughout the story, people can obviously see that Daniel cares very much about his pet cat because on many occasions he is frantically asking people if they have seen his cat anywhere. One example of this is when he is talking to a firefighter and he asks “Did you see a cat, she’s yellow, maybe she’s still in there?” The firefighter answers, “Probably not, son, cats are plenty smart, she’ll be long gone.”

We The People Bill Of Rights by Adam Lambert

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Today in class we watched a video on the Bill Of Rights and we had to answer some questions about it. These are the answers to the questions.

In a free country, to me, the most important right for a citizen to have is the right to have a voice and the right to speak freely. I think this because when you have a voice you can influence the government and try to make the country a better place using your voice. Nobody should be able to silence your voice or take your right to speech away. I think that the most important right for a student to have is the right to know as much knowledge as any one of a different religion, country, culture. This is very important because then all the students have the same amount of potential for their future and they face no discrimination based on those things. In general, nobody should face any discrimination especially if it affects how much knowledge they have.

I strongly think that all citizens should have the same rights because having different rights for different people is what started the Revolutionary War at first. King George was not taxing the people of Britain while he was taxing the American Citizens very much. Throughout history, this continued but it also continued to be fixed. For example in 1920 when women FINALLY got the right to vote. Before that, women did not have the right to vote due to old fashioned beliefs.  Legally, today all citizens have the same rights and the only way for them not to is due to age, crime, etc.

Sometimes our rights can be limited and these rights can be limited for better or worse. For example, the right that says that only people over 18 can vote. This is a good reason for the law to be limited because (most) people under 18 are not mature enough to comprehend the complicated politics of voting. (I still wish I could vote)

I think there are a lot of laws that people believe that there should be. I also think that the USA has a government that could easily adapt to new laws and has been for almost two centuries. One law repeal debate that has been going on for a while is the debate to repeal the second amendment about the right to bear arms.

We The People Stronger- Janelle Monáe

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To me, this song means that every time the people get knocked down, they come back stronger and more unified. They get stronger together and they get stronger in times of darkness. This song really relates to our study of government because it’s talking about liberty, flaws in the government, and the people being united

In conclusion, this song makes me feel inspired to help the community and it makes me realize how just one voice can have so much power and make so much good change. The artist might be saying that community helps each other so much that when they get knocked down with challenges they come back up, together, and stronger. This song leaves me with questions about the housing movements in the video and if they are happening in real life.

Personal Narrative and Reflection

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I think that some writing techniques I used in well this narrative were dialogue and expanding on detail. I added a lot of conversational dialogue like when my aunt and the instructor were discussing whether we were going or not. I used a lot of internal dialogue when I counted down for my death at the end.

In this story, I really expanded on details, especially when I described the day and where we were at the beginning of the story. I also really expanded on detail when I explained my body language when my uncle was talking.

Some areas in my writing I think I want to improve more is describing people. In this story, I noticed that I barely provided a description for people like my cousins, my uncle, my aunt, and the instructor. Looking forward to the next story I’m writing I will keep in mind to take some time describing the characters.

Something that I am really proud of that I did in this writing piece is use new writing elements that I’ve learned such as sensory language and matching action with dialogue. In Sky High when I was on the zipline I used lots of sensory language as shown in this line when I wrote: “I could hear the choppy wind echoing within my ears”. One example of when I made my actions match my word is when I wrote “Open the door already”, I whined impatiently while tugging on the door handle.”

In conclusion, I am very proud of what I wrote and happy that I am learning from my mistakes and have room to improve.