Archive of ‘5th Grade’ category

Debate Unit

A little while ago my fellow classmates and I started a unit in reading, it was debate. We were already in in reading groups soon our reading groups would become our debate groups. Every group decided on a topic my group decided to do, Should We Drink Tap or Bottled Water? After this everyone did research on the pros of water bottles and the con of them. We did the same thing with tap water. Once we did a little research we decided who would be on the tap water side of the argument and who would be on the bottled water side of the debate. My group consisted of Avery, Dani, Barbara and Hana. We where the only five person group which meant one side of the argument would have three people on it while the other side only had two people on it. Even after doing research everyone in my group wanted to do bottled water except Barbara. I decided that I would be on tap water with Barbara. We also wanted the teams to be fair. Once we were in our groups we did even more research, but this time only pros of the topic you are doing and con of the other topic.  We did a practice debate and it went well. We collected pictures to make our debate stronger. Barbara my debate partner went on vacation a week early, which meant I didn’t have a partner. So Hana was kind enough to switch over to my side of the debate. We had to regroup a little and I had to teach her a couple of things, but it wasn’t that hard. We did our formal debate yesterday. I think it went pretty well, but we could have done better. Why don’t check it out for yourself:

Coding – #3

Hello everyone, today I made another coding project! Once again I used Tynker this was the final project I can do on Tynker. It was super fun and interesting I learned a lot of things about coding from using Tynker. I told you guys that I would make a game, so just like I promised I made a game. I did not really follow the instructions what I did was I took the basic elements that  they gave me and reprogrammed it to make it so you can play another game. Part of the reason I did this was because I didn’t understand what the original point of the game was. The way you play the new game I made is: You hit the play button a ball will drop down and you need to try to keep it up using the platform. You can move the platform both ways using the arrow keys. To move the platform use the right arrow and left arrow on your keyboard. This game was a lot of fun to create although it was tricky and I faced many challenges it was all worth it because now I have a really cool game that I made myself! Why don’t you guys try mine out and then make your own:

Coding – #2

Today I made another code. I used Tynker again, Instead of a rock band I made a googly eyes game. I coded it so when the games starts the right eye follows you mouse when you are ready you click the up arrow on your computer and it moves the mouth back and fourth. The goal of the game is to have the eye try to keep up with the mouth. It was kind of hard to come up with this idea once I got the basic code down it was tricky to figure out how the elements work. From working on Tynker I have noticed that it is hard to make sure all the actors work together, like you can’t just fosuce on one actor and expect the other actors to not interfere. This was a fun code to work on because it is my first game. It really isn’t a game, but it is a start. I hope to work on more game codes. I like making game codes because you get to use a lot of creativity and you can customize it and make it unique. Here is the game I made, I hope you have fun playing it!

Coding – #1

Today my teacher told my peers and I that we would have to create at least fours pieces of code. I loved this idea. We have to use Scratch or Tynker to create the code, we have to use the two websites at lest once, so for example I can’t do all my code on Scratch, but I could do three on scratch and one on Tynker. I decided that I would be a good idea to start with Tynker because it gives you tutorials then lets you add other things into the basic elements that they helped you create. I made a rock band for my first project. When the actor is clicked it plays its song that I programmed it to play then it stops playing it and leaves the stage background so you can no longer see it or hear it. This was a fun code to start off with and I feel like I had a lot of freedoms, but a couple of guidelines to help me a long the way. This took some work and I had to tweak it several times, but in the end it all worked out. Why don’t you check it out and after watching what I created hopefully it will inspire you to make a code as well!

Overall Thoughts and Feelings – Rube Goldberg #7

Through out this project I have felt very different emotions. When we were designing I just wanted to start building and was very impatient. When it was time to build it was annoying because not everything that we wanted worked well with each other. When we were testing the Rube Goldberg I got frustrated because it didn’t work every time. The filming part wasn’t that hard although it was kind of hard t0 speak about the Rube Goldberg and how it works. Editing was super annoying because it took a long time to make everything look good and to make sure every thing was correct when it came to grammar.

In the end everything worked out and looked good. I was a little stressed during the time of the actual project but now that my work is completed I feel happy about what I have done and I know that now I can just enjoy watching the video. I personally thought that the project was kind of stressful, but it was also fun. During the project I was thinking when will we be done with this Rube Goldberg, but now I am happy to say that I really enjoyed this project and I would probably do something like this again. I am happy that I did it and I think that it was a great learning experienced for me! And here is our final iMovie video:

 

 

 

 

 

Overall Collaboration

During this project I think Dani and I worked very well together. Whenever we came to a spot where disagreed we compromised or tested both ideas out and used the one that worked better. We only argued once and the answer to the argument was found quickly. I have always know that Dani and I worked well together, but I never thought we would argue as little as we did.

I am happy we didn’t argue that much because if we did we wouldn’t get that much work done. Since we worked so well together we finished the project quickly and it still looked good and worked well. When we argued it happened during the building and designing part of the project. I expected that we would argue the most during this time because I knew with the ideas and we wouldn’t agree with every thing the other person thought should be in the machine.

Something that helped us was videos and articles. We got inspired by them and that helped us to come up with steps. We think that this caused us to barley argue because when we saw or read about something that worked well we got excited and tried to recreate their idea to make it our own.

Like I said in the begining we worked super well together and that helped us have a great Rube Goldberg and to have an amazing project overall!

 

 

Editing – Rube Goldberg #5

When Dani and I first started to edit we were nervous because we didn’t know how it would turn out. We didn’t really know where to start so, we discussed what we needed like: An intro, the fails, the sucsess, the slo mo and the credits. We started by putting that in an iMovie and then added thing along the way. My brother Kyle showed us where to get things we wanted to put in the movie and we weren’t sure where it was like if we wanted a curtain background, but didn’t know where to find it he would help. We wanted our movie to be very creative and entertaining so we added in some special things to make it unique. When we put the video in slow-motion it was kind of blurry so we chose to re film it. Personally I thought that the most annoying part of editing was the credits because we needed to make sure that they rolled at just the right speed so someone could read them, but not so slow that people get bored watching them. Once we got the basics on the iMovie I thought it was pretty easy because we could add our own special things in.

I loved editing although it got annoying at times. I really like how it turned out and I also think that is kind of cool to think about how Dani and I had footage and turned it into an amazing short filming. Even though I don’t really like to edit for some reason this really apealed to me. Maybe it was because I love the project so much?!

Testing and Filming – Rube Goldberg #4

When Dani and I first started testing things they didn’t always work so we had to fix a few things before we video taped it . So we didn’t have to test the whole thing a bunch of times, we made sure each individual step or two was working well we had a few fails like:

Of course we tested everything at least 3 times before shooting the first video. Every time we had a new step that worked well we combined it with the previous step. This helped the testing process for our machine go faster or at least I think it did. The day we filmed (Which was yesterday January 22) we were excited, but nervous. I kept thinking about if it would fail so many times that it was just break. After three or four fails it finally worked. We had to review the footage we got of the machine working so we would know which part really needed work. I was overwhelmed with happiness when i saw that it worked I wanted to scream. You might be wondering, why were you so happy? Well it feels great when I get something done so when this was done (part of it) I was overjoyed.

I am happy that it all worked out in the end and now we can move forward it this project. It took a lot of effort,time,handwork and creativity to make the machine that we did. Personally I think it is all worth it because it is super cool to watch what you have created. I think that a worry I had for the filming part of this project is that it wouldn’t be clear enough to see. I am super excited to get to work and start editing even though I have already done a little.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Building – Rube Goldberg 3

Dani and I started to  build around the time we started to sketch which was the end of our first meeting and beginning of our second. We started building by making a few different pieces we could use. We made these pieces out of Tinker Toys. The first thing we built was the very last step because that was the step we were 100% sure that would be in the Rube Goldberg. After the last step was built we built the first step because Dani and I figured once we get the first and the last things done then it would be easier. We figured it could be easier because then we could fill in the middle with other cool things  and use the first and last steps as guidelines. We did most the building the second and third day. Since we already had the last and first steps built is was pretty easy because we just built on. All we need to do to finish building is, connect one more thing and figure out what levels things should be on. We think that we work well together and we have gotten pretty far in a short amount of time so we don’t think that it will be much harder to build the rest.  We are excited to learn many other cool things about Rube Goldberg machines.

Sketching – Rube Goldberg 2

When Dani and I met for the first time we didn’t really know where to start or what we were going to do. The only thing we knew was our task. We started to kind of piece together the last step and how it would work because it was the only thing we were sure we were going to do. This is all we really got done the first time we met. The second time we met we were determined to finish the last part of the sketch. We started to discuss ideas for the first part of the machine. By the third time we met we had already gotten part of the sketch done and we even started building part of the Rube Goldberg machine. We finished the rest of the sketch the third time we met. Overall I thought the sketching part of the project was pretty hard because to me it is hard to sketch something if I don’t have anything to sketch which is part of the reason we started to build the machine. We are happy with our sketch and think we will be able to follow it because it is practical and clear. We think we might need to revise it a little so, The sketch looks something like the machine.

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