Capstone Presentation

Finally, we have finished capstone. It was a long journey, but it taught me so so much. The first time I ever presented was  in front of my class. I was terrified and my legs were shaking while presenting. I didn’t know all of my script at the time so I had to keep looking down at it. The second time I presented was 10 times better. I did it in front of A 3rd grade class and it went very well. I pretty much new my script and I wasn’t nearly as nervous as before. This time was my last dress rehearsal. Finally, the night came to present to the parents. I surprisingly wasn’t  nervous at all. I think this was because I had enough experience with presenting and I had at least practiced my script 100 times. After finishing this project, I learned so much. Capstone taught me to manage my time. I also learned that speaking loud and clearly is VERY important because if you don’t, no one can you and therefore your not teaching anyone anything. This capstone could be life changing for me because now I might try to be a nutritionist when I’m older.

Graphic Novels

These past weeks, my class has been learning about graphic novels. From gutters to illustrations to complicated writing, we have created our own. I have faced many challenges and went through a long journey. For example one of my biggest challenges was finding a good story-line and making the story sound good in the graphic novel form-mat. I kept changing my story because I felt it was either to hard to express or it just wasn’t a good story.

Reading Graphic Novels changed my view on them because I realized that the story expresses a lot more than people would think because the story seems so short when reading. It has the same amount of action, feelings, and emotions than a novel. I realized also that graphic novels are pretty tricky to read because you have to consider the gutters, thinking bubbles, speech bubbles, captions and more.

Writing Graphic Novels is A LOT harder than it looks. Same as the reading, while writing I need to consider, gutter, thinking bubbles, captions and speech bubbles. I thought that it was going to be super easy but the drawings take FOREVER and in my experience, it’s hard to think up how your story is going to go.

Here is my slideshow and if you can’t see it click this link – http://blogs.scarsdaleschools.org/cboyer/graphic-novels/

Interviews for Capstone

Recently, I finished my interviews for Capstone. I had one on Saturday and one on Wednesday. The first interview I had was with a nutritionist. She was actually my aunt. The 2nd was with the lead editor of the Food Revolution Network. Her name is Lindsay Oberst. The reason I interviewed two people was because I wanted to hear what different people said. They mostly said similar things. They talked about food addiction and how we don’t even know what we are eating for the most part. I learned that so many bad chemicals that we don’t even know are in the food affect our health tremendously. I am now very inspired and might want to be a nutritionist when I am older.

Spanish Restaurant Field Trip

Today, my grade went to a Spanish restaurant. We have been learning and preparing for this field trip. For instance, we learned all the names of the dishes and what to say to the waiters.

When we first got to the restaurant we got seated. Surprisingly the dishes came right away! When the waiter brought us the food I told her, Muchas gracias. The first dish they served was, lomo saltado. It is a dish with patas fritas ( french fries) aros ( rice ) and steak. The next dish they served was pollo saltado which consisted of, patas fritas, pollo ( chicken ) and aros. They brought out two more plates one full of aros and the other had Pescado ( fish ) and aros. My favorite dish was the lomo saltado.

Social Issues Book, The Graduation of Jake Moon by Barbara Park

In the book, The Graduation of Jake Moon by Barbara Park, Jakes grandfather, Skelly, unfortunately, gets Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s disease is a disease where the person with the disease forgets most things. This causes Jake to change his actions and change his lifestyle.

A way that this challenge affects Jake’s interaction with the world is that he is very embarrassed to bring his friends over because he is afraid that Skelly will do something super embarrassing. He doesn’t even want them to call him because he is afraid that Skelly will pick the phone up. For example, the story states that when Jake was making a new friend, he invited him over to a sleepover. When the kid came they were having a good time but when Skelly was on his way to the shower he heard them talking and came in. The only thing is is that he wasn’t wearing pants! Not even underwear! This made Jake feel super uncomfortable and frustrated. I would feel the same way.

A way that Skelly getting Alzheimer’s disease affects Jake being alone is he just wants to think about his life without anyone disturbing him. As an example, when Jake goes to the restaurant with Skelly he sees two popular girls. Then he decides he doesn’t want to be seen with Skelly so he tries to walk home. On his way out he trips and the girl sees that Skelly is his grandpa. At that moment Jake wants to be alone so he runs home. On his way home he sees Skelly’s babysitter and she won’t leave Jake alone, Jake was just trying to think about what happened. I think if I was Jake I would be frustrated because if I just wanted to be alone and think about my situation I wouldn’t want anyone to be annoying me even more.

Overall, I think that even though Jake went through hard times he learned to push through the challenge and at the end of the story Jake realizes that Skelly should be important in his life and should see the big things that Jake goes through even if Skelly forgets them.

 

Finding my Main questions and Sub questions – Capstone

Since changing my topic I was thinking about what my main question would be. I thought that my best thing to research on fast food would be the health effects of it. My first question that I came up with was, What is it in fast food that makes so many people avoid it, and how does it effect peoples health? My teacher told me that not everybody avoids it and that I should change it to, What is it in fast food that makes so many people avoid and consume it, and how does that effect peoples health? I was very comfortable with this question and it also could expand my research. Next, it was time to find sub – questions. These weren’t to hard to make but the only problem I had was I only thought about one side of people. For instance, I wrote, What makes people choose healthy food over fast food? The problem with this question is that not everybody chooses healthy food over fast food so I had to change it to, What makes some people choose healthy food over fast food? Everything else was pretty easy and I didn’t get bored very easily.

Changing My Topic – Capstone

Originally, I was set on doing Marvel and DC for my capstone. I had a great main question and I felt I was going to really like that topic. Then one day we were told to make sub-questions. At that moment,  I was excited to make sub-questions because I really wanted to grow on my topic. When I got home that night, the first thing I did for homework was to find sub-questions for capstone. I got out a pen and notebook and started to brainstorm questions. All of a sudden I felt like my sub-questions weren’t good ones to grow on. I thought to myself, that’s what helps for, right? The questions that I ended up with were good ones but they bored me. That’s when I finally realized, this topic is not for me, I have to change it. The next night I started to brainstorm all new topics that interested me. I wrote Social Media, Starbucks, and Fast Food. After that, I started to come up with possible main questions. When I got to school the next day, I told my teacher that I wanted to change my topic. I felt like researching fast food because I felt like I could really grow on that topic and be comfortable with it. My teacher told me that she was fine with me changing my topic and after that, I finally felt like a could “chill out”.

Choosing a Question for CAPSTONE #1

A few days ago, my class (and the whole grade) started something called, Capstone. Capstone is basically a topic that we have to research and have to love for about 2 months. You might be thinking, wow  some 5th grader researching only one thing for 2 months…. how is that going to play out. Well actually it’s a lot more complicated than you think. 

For my capstone I am going to be researching Marvel and DC. More specifically superheroes. When I first thought of Marvel and DC I really wanted to focus on film making and the process in how they make the movies but when my teacher saw my question she thought it was great but it would take years and years to answer. I took this into consideration and realized how hard it was to answer. Then she started to talk about how a lot of the superheroes in the movies and comics are mirrored off of popular history. I was immediately interested. She then told me to write down anything I needed and make a great question out of it. I made a question that I ended up being really happy with which is, “How do superheroes reflect popular culture and history“. One thing I really liked about this question was that I could talk about both the movies and the comics which I couldn’t do with my first question. My next step is to find sub questions and resources.

Spring Break 2018

Spring break starts next Friday but for me, it starts after school on Wednesday. I leave for California at around evening time. We usually go to San Clemente but my grandparents moved and I’m a little sad about that because I loved their old house and I loved the close by beach. Since they moved to a senior center they get to swim at the pool there I am excited about that because last year I always wanted to go to a pool but there were none nearby. The new house they live in is a lot smaller than the old house, but I still think I’m going to like their new house because they renovated it to make it look really nice and modern. Another con of them moving is it takes really long to get to the CLOSEST beach.  The beach is also really rocky and the tide is always super high so it’s kind of hard to swim and to find a good place to sit. Something really good about the beach is that it has SO MUCH sea glass. Me and my love to collect sea glass! The beach also has a lot of caves and tide pools. The tide pools are super cool because there are so many cool sea creatures. I also love the cave because it is a great place to take pictures. Overall the whole beach area is so beautiful! I am overall super excited to see how different it is living there compared to living in San Clemente.