Month: May 2022

Capstone- The Maldives Blog Post #2

nblachman29 on

I am working on a very important project called Capstone this year. I have wrote a blog stating it was also a very important project, but this is the most important. Before leaving 5th grade, every year the 5th graders do a Capstone project. It is the most important project done all year, and it is based on a passionate topic, putting the most effort into it. Capstone is researching on basically anything, I chose the Maldives. From notes and interviews I’ll make a presentaion on it, TED talk, or a video. Working on my Capstone has improved, and so far so well other than some small things. Maybe, one thing though is a problem. Anyway, research is done, I’m pretty confident, and I have many notes, but I am really worried about something.

My interview is what I’m a little worried about. It’s been weeks, and all my friends have done theirs. They did theirs many days ago and talks about how they loved their interviewee, how they got so much info, and how it was so fun, while even though I’m in a pretty good place other than that, and still haven’t done an interview which makes me worried. This is giving me a small setback, but I can’t help to do anything anyway. I can’t force the people I tried to get an interview with to respond. So, this is my only and probably biggest problem.

After I asked for help from my mom to find an interview, luckily in a day, my mom found a travel expert who actually was one of her best friends! This is really good because I can go from 0 interviews to 2 if I get a responce from a person Ms. Boyer emailed, or another person my mom found. This is great, and I am much more confident. After not having an interview for a while, I actually thought chosing the Maldives was maybe a bad idea, but I guess it worked out now that I kept trying. Atleast I am passionate about my topic because I had no trouble with researching on a new, but interesting topic.

I chose this topic because I am recenlty really interested in tropical places, especially the Maldives, and I think It is a good idea to do my topic on. I would actually love to be a travel expert now that I think about it when I’m older!

It was really easy thinking of interview questions, after I wrote a few, more came in my mind, and I had 17! I did have to change some though because I wrote them in the beginning and I changed my expert as my interviewee.

Hopefully, I’ll have an interview soon, and I’ll be back on track. I do love my topic, but maybe it isn’t the best topic for finding an expert about it. My main priorities are to schedule an interview, do an interview, start writing my script, and figure out what format I want to do for my presentation.

Capstone- The Maldives Blog Post #1

nblachman29 on

Every year the 5th graders pick a subject to research, and by the end of the year have a presentation on your project. This is called Capstone, and I chose the Maldives. At first, I felt really scared because Capstone is a major presentation that has to be better than the years before that, as it is done by the 5th graders every year. After realizing that I could make a movie and chose basically any topic though, I felt a lot more confident as I could go with something I’m more comfortable with, and work better with. Now I feel much better about it.

At first, I was really stuck on a topic. I wanted to do the Maldives, but everyone else was suggesting big topics like global warming and starvation. Then after a while of not reaching out, Ms. Boyer said it doesn’t need to be a big topic as most people in the past did random things, so I felt confident to say I wanted to do the Maldives, and most of the class probably felt the same because most people changed to a random topic. I felt a lot better and started my curriculum wheel. On my first try, I did the Maldives but realized it would probably be better to do tropical islands instead, so I ended up creating my curriculum wheel on tropical islands, but still thinking mainly about the Maldives. Finally, I came to the decision when I was stuck between the Maldives or Tropical Islands as a topic. It took a while, but I ended up choosing the Maldives, and I think that was a good choice.

After coming up with the Maldives as a topic, I needed a topic question. On the back of my curriculum wheel, I wrote down a few starter questions and called it a night. Then the next day, I asked Ms. Boyer if they were good and she agreed, it’s just I wanted to expand more on them so that day I wrote a bunch of questions down, and finally decided to do: “What makes the Maldives so special and unique?” after a lot of trial and error of the wording of my question, I actually had a base of a question but didn’t know how to word it for a while. I also know that the Maldives is very different and special from most tropical islands, and I mean different in a very good way.

I just recently made my sub-questions, and at first, I was definitely stuck and confused. I didn’t know if the sub-questions were random, connected to the main questions, or how to come up with them. I then asked Ms. Boyer and all I understood was that it connected to the main question and the curriculum wheel. I looked back at it and found my really basic questions on tropical islands, (That time I was stuck on tropical islands or the Maldives so I did tropical islands first, and ended up doing the Maldives but never did a curriculum wheel for it) which wasn’t helpful. So then I stared at my main question for a minute, and came up with an Idea for a sub-question that had to do with my main question: “What are the best activities to do in the Maldives?” This gave me a spark, and I ended up coming up with two more sub-questions that all had to do with my main question: “What is the Maldives famous for?” And, “Why is the Maldives so generally expensive?”

In the end, I now have my topic, question, and sub-questions, and I am contacting and writing to someone for an Interview. So far my research is going well, and I am glad I chose the Maldives because I am very interested to learn about it.