All posts by khubell26

Capstone #3

5th Grade, Capstone, ,

My Capstone is going well. I have gathered lots of research and am looking forward to gathering more. Meanwhile, I am working on setting up my interview. On Thursday, I talked to my mom about my interview and site visit (see Capstone # 4 when published). I am going to interview Dr. Herbert A. Newman, MD. I knew right away that he would be the best person possible (plus, I already know him). I am going to visit him in his office on Tuesday, May 21. My interview questions are:

Why did you become a pediatrician?

What advice would you give to a new parent about their decision to vaccinate their child?

What is your opinion on vaccines? Why?

Why do some people view vaccines as dangerous?

Have there been certain years where more people refuse to vaccinate their children? If so, what were some of those years and reasons?

Are you ever concerned about a certain vaccine? Why or why not?

Where are vaccines made? Are they all made in the same place?

What are the laws surrounding vaccines? Do you support these laws? Why or why not?

Is there anything else I should know, concerning my topic, that I don’t already?

I am so excited to conduct the interview!

 

I did my interview! What happened was: I went into my interviewee’s office. I asked him if it was okay for me to record the interview. He said yes, and I asked him my interview questions (see above). Everything went pretty smoothly except the phone rang in the middle of the interview, so we had to stop. It was a really good interview!

Overall I learned so much that I don’t already know about my topic and added on to things I do know. I also learned a lot about being an interviewer such as speaking clearly and slowly and to make sure that your interviewee understands the question. Overall I learned a lot from my interview and am now super excited for my site visit! (see Capstone #4 when published)

Refugee

5th Grade, Reading,

In class we are reading a the book Refugee by Alan Gratz. This week, we talked a lot about the theme of power.

In the beginning of Josef’s story, Hitler and the Nazis had the power. They could arrest Josef’s family or kill them at any time, place or setting. When Josef’s father jumps of the boat to escape being sent back to the concentration camps in Germany, Josef has the power within his family. His father is stuck in Cuba because of mental issues and his mother is starting to go a bit crazy. They are not fit to take care of the family. So, like it or not Josef is the one in power. Another time when Josef is in power is when he and some men on the ship take the crew hostage to try to get them to turn away from Germany. When the group captures the captain and then chicken out when the captain says he will send them back to the CC camps, Josef is the one who speaks up and acts like the one in power.

In the beginning of Isabel’s story, Fidel Castro had the power. He could arrest Isabel’s father anytime he wanted to. When Isabel’s mother is very sick, and the Bahamas police tell them that if they step foot on Bahamian soil the would be sent back, Isabel is the one to speak up and say “Does anyone have aspirin for my mother?”. When Isabel’s and her family escaped the Coast Guard they felt powerful. When Castro broadcasts that any family who wants to leave Cuba by boat can, Isabel and her family feel like they have the power.

In the beginning of Mahmoud’s story, the war has the power. It can kill anyone, at anytime, in any place. Mahmoud and his family feel powerful when they cross over the border to Turkey. They feel powerful when they finally get to Greece, when they crossed the Macedonian border, when they passed the Serbian border. The felt powerful when they deceived the guards at the borders. When they reached the Hungarian border they felt like they had power.

Overall, the theme of power is common throughout all the character’s stories.

Capstone #1 and #2

5th Grade, Capstone, ,

My grade has started a project called Capstone. First we had to pick our topic. I chose medicine. I chose medicine because I am really passionate about it and really want to become a doctor when I grow up. Medicine is a really big topic and I had to narrow it down to make it a bit more reasonable.

The next step was to come up with a main inquiry question. My teacher told us to do a wheel to narrow our topics down. Then we had to choose one of the different parts of our topic to focus on, based on our questions for each category. For example, I decided to focus on the study of medicine. Then we chose the question that was the best in that category and used it as a base for our main inquiry question.

My first iteration of a main inquiry question was “How has the study of medicine advanced over the years, but then I realized that that question was going to stress me out. So, I narrowed it further.

My 2nd iteration of a main inquiry question was: “How is advancing medicine affecting children’s medical care”. Then I realized that that question would still drive me crazy. So, this time I really narrowed it down. I thought that maybe I could narrow it down to something like vaccines. And I did just that.

My 3rd iteration question was: “Why are vaccines considered dangerous?”. But that sounded too much like I already had an opinion. So, I tweaked my question a bit. In the end, my main inquiry question was this: “Vaccines: Are they safe or dangerous?” See the difference?

Then I had to come up with 5 sub-questions. My sub questions are: “What are the pros of vaccines?”, “What are the cons of vaccines?”, “How is mis-info affecting people’s decisions over vaccines?”, “What are the laws relating to vaccines?” and “What is the process the FDA goes through to say that a certain drug is safe?”

Overall, I am so excited to continue working on my Capstone and am excited to begin the actual research!

Passion Project #7

5th Grade, Free Write, ,

I finally finished my passion project! Last Wednesday, I started my final video, and since then I have been working about 2 hours on my video for 2 nights. Then on Sunday, I went all out and got the whole thing (almost) done in 8 hours. I had a lot of struggles during these 12 hours. One was that whenever I left Wevideo and then came back to it later, the page became “unresponsive”. This was really annoying because if I deleted the tab, I could be waiting for an hour for the website to become responsive again. Another thing was the edits. On Wednesday, I thought that I finished the video. Then I realized my video needed to be a lot more than what it was. By the time I was done editing, my video was transformed into something much stronger than what I had started with. Overall, I really enjoyed working on my passion project and am really proud of my final product!

 

 

Passion Project #6

5th Grade, Free Write, ,

Today I did my biggest experiment, does color affect taste? In the experiment, I poured apple juice into six cups. One third of the apple juice I dyed blue, one third I dyed green and one third I dyed red. I had two volunteers. They were each given three cups, one of each color. The cups were labeled A, B or C. A for blue, B for green and C for red. The volunteers were told to taste each cup with a sip of water in between each sip. They could taste each cup as many times as they liked in the time span of two minutes. Both volunteers liked A the best, and C the least. One of the volunteers said that she thought C was the strongest and B was the mildest. They both thought the the cups tasted very similar. Overall, this experiment was so fun for me and I learned so much from it!

Passion Project #5

5th Grade, Free Write, ,

I got all of my materials! I also did three of my experiments. I did gummy bear omosis, observing xylem in celery and observing homgenization. In gummy bear omosis, I left a gummy bear in saltwater, a gummy bear in freshwater, a gummy bear in no water, overnight. The saltwater gummy bear was bigger than the no water gummy bear, but smaller than the freshwater gummy bear. The gummy bears in the water are fizzy on top. The freshwater gummy bear is slimier than the saltwater gummy bear (saltwater gummy bear is stiffer that the freshwater gummy bear). I learned a lot from this experiment, and it was super fun! In my 2nd experiment, observing xylem in celery, I left celery in red water overnight to see the path the water took up into the celery stalk. I noticed that the bottom started to get red, but I did not see anything else until I opened the celery. When I opened the celery there was a thin red line running through it. I really enjoyed this experiment! In observing homogenization, I put a drop of food coloring in milk and touched dish soap adjacent to that. I noticed that the dish soap exploded when I touched the dish soap to it. Overall, I really enjoyed these experiments and learned a lot from them!

Passion Project #4

5th Grade, Free Write, ,

Since the last post I have done quite a bit. In my latest research session (earlier today), I made a vocabulary section in my notebook, instead of researching biology. In total, I have the biology definitions of 15 words. These include: omosis, solute, XYLEM, homogenization, solvent, permeable, membrane, emulsify, lipids, organelles, soluble, insoluble, globules, derivatives and steriods. These have helped me understand the experiments better. Meanwhile, I am almost ready to start the experiments. All I need to do is get the stuff I need and I can get started. Some of the experiments involve volunteers, so I have to recruit volunteers, but that shouldn’t be to hard. During the experiments, I will make charts and record my observations in my notebook for each experiment. I will include my observations in my final project. I am extremely excited to start the experiments and will update you continuously over the next week or so!

Passion Project #3

5th Grade, Free Write, ,

My Passion Project is still running smoothly. Yesterday I listed all the materials I needed and checked off the ones I already have. On the weekend I need to shop for these things… gummy bears, celery, full fat milk, corn syrup, red cinnamon candies, white sprinkles, apple juice and clear disposable cups. These ingredients are going to be used for different experiments. On the other hand, I have finished researching experiments. I am going to perform 7 experiments. Since I have finished this and am awaiting some ingredients, I am going to do some research on biology itself, and maybe include some facts I learned into my final project. I can’t wait to continue with my project and am excited keep on learning!

 

Passion Project #2

5th Grade, Free Write, ,

My Passion Project is going really well. So far, I have found five or six different experiments to perform, have found four helpful websites, and have sorted out which materials I have and which materials I don’t have. From that I have made a shopping list. I am planning to get the materials sometime this weekend. After that I am pretty much ready to start doing the experiments. One of the things I struggled with was finding the different websites. That halted my research for a bit, but I eventually found some really cool websites to browse. Another thing that was challenging was that the experiments had to be with available materials. Other than those challenges my Passion project has been going smoothly and I can’t wait to try out the experiments!

Passion Project #1

5th Grade, Free Write, , ,

For my Passion Project I wanted to learn biology. I chose this topic because I want to be a doctor, and as a doctor you have to know biology. My final project will be and video of me doing cool biology experiments. In the process of writing down the different experiments, I am also writing down a sentence or two explaining the science behind the experiment. I am trying to do simple experiments that require household objects only. This was not my original plan. At first, I was going to do a tutorial on becoming a doctor, but then decided that that didn’t have enough “hands on” stuff. So, I picked biology. So far I have 3 different experiments written down, instructions and all. I am looking forward to gathering more information and doing the experiments!