We have been working on our fifth-grade project, called capstone for a while now. I have gone a long way since finding out what I was going to do originally. Today, I will be explaining how I answered my main inquiry question, making my script and slideshow, and finally, memorizing my final projects script.
First, let’s talk about answering my main inquiry question. This wasn’t as easy as you would think. We had to write a whole essay, get it approved, etc. And this took a long time. Let’s break it down. First I had to write a paragraph step by step. This part took me about four days to write five paragraphs. Though it wasn’t easy, it wasn’t that hard either because I already knew a lot about my topic with the notes I was taking. After writing my essay, I had to go to a partner and review their essay, make comments and for them to do the same for my essay. For this, I got paired with one of my classmates, Zachary. I had to help him, and he had to help me. It wasn’t that hard to help him, but he had some grammar and spelling mistakes. It was pretty easy overall. About a day later, I got paired with another one of my classmates, Jaba. His essay was good, but he had some mistakes he could fix too. And after getting paired with partners, I got my essay approved!
Next, let’s talk about making my script and my slideshow. It was pretty easy to make my slideshow, but the script was another story. The script was really hard to do because I didn’t know how to phrase what I was saying. In the end, I figured it out and it ended up being really good in my opinion. I thought it was pretty clear and easy to understand and it was pretty fun although I struggled a bit. The slideshow was probably the easiest part because before while I was waiting to get my essay approved, I found all the images I needed. I just had to put them into my slideshow! It was easy overall and hard at the same time because my slideshow was easy, and my script was pretty hard. This was probably the best experience in Capstone for me.
Lastly, let’s talk about memorizing. This, by far, was the hardest. It took me a long time, but it was worth it in the end because I memorized it really well. The process of memorizing was hard but fun too. I had a lot of help from my teacher, and friends and I probably couldn’t do it without them. For my Ted Talk I already knew a lot about my topic, so I knew that if I forgot anything, I would already know what the slide is about because I worked really hard on it and know a lot about it. Overall, memorizing my script was hard, but easy at the same time.
In conclusion, the final parts making my Capstone was really fun and pretty hard too. I enjoyed Capstone and I’m so excited to present it tomorrow!
If you want to read my essay and learn more about my topic, click this link to check it out!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GDofb_frwHUsPj2_hUbsyjzFwuWujgGPeNIZbMGxV-8/edit
A couple weeks ago, our class started a project called U.S Regions. For this project the whole class was assigned into groups. I got paired with Chloe K., Natalia, and Kate. I liked this partnership because they were easy to work with. Sometimes we argued about things, but eventually got over it. We were assigned to the Mid-Atlantic Region. The states in this region are Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia and Washington DC.
Our group wanted it to be that each person got assigned 2 regions and two people shared one. In the end, We ended up having two pairs of people share one. WE decided that Natalia was Pennsylvania and shared Delaware with Kate, Chloe K. was Maryland and she shared New Jersey with me, I was Virginia and West Virginia, (no one shared) and Kate was Washington DC (no one shared). We each presented and did research on each state we were assigned.
After we did our research, we started to make our slideshow. It was pretty easy to do our slideshow. Nothing other than a few problems but overall it was fun to make it.
Then we made Jeopardy which was fun, but Natalia made most of it because everyone else was still working on their slide for their state. At the beginning, we were going to do a wordle in between each slide, but then Ms. Edwards said that we couldn’t but we could have it so other people can do it on their own. So we did that.
The presentation was pretty easy, but we didn’t get to finish our Jeopardy.
All in all, the U.S Regions project was a fun and interesting project to do! I liked my group, and it was fun in all!
A few nights ago, I did my interview and it went pretty well! The research process was good. The aspect of it was good as well. It went amazing and I got a lot of research out of it!
The process of figuring out who to interview was hard, but eventually it worked out! At first, even before having to figure it out. But they didn’t respond soon enough, so I went on a ton of websites and emailed about five people. None of them responded. Until one night I was out to dinner with my sister, dad, and brothers and I was talking about capstone. My sister had a friend and he was the perfect person to interview! She texted him right away and the next day I had myself an interview! I was so happy after that and I did a lot of research on it! He specializes in dolphins, but he has done some research about sea turtles. He is a marine biologist and does research about all marine animals.
The process of figuring out who to interview was hard, but eventually it worked out! At first, even before having to figure it out. But they didn’t respond soon enough, so I went on a ton of websites and emailed about five people. None of them responded. Until one night I was out to dinner with my sister, dad, and brothers and I was talking about capstone. My sister had a friend and he was the perfect person to interview! She texted him right away and the next day I had myself an interview! I was so happy after that and I did a lot of research on it! He specializes in dolphins, but he has done some research about sea turtles. He is a marine biologist and does research about all marine animals.
Overall, I enjoyed the interview part of capstone. It was hard at times, but overall it was really fun.
About 2 weeks ago, I started a project, called capstone. If you’re wondering, Capstone is a project that fifth graders at my school do at the end of the year. It is a presentation about a topic of your choice. You can choose to do an ignite, a TED Talk, or a WeVideo. At the beginning, I thought that Capstone wasn’t going to be a good experience.. But later I found out that it was a lot better than I expected.
The process of coming up with my topic was pretty hard. At first, I wanted to do beluga whales, but that didn’t work out because there were barely any websites, no books that I could find, and no databases, so I tried doing sea turtles, that worked out, but I didn’t feel like I was passionate about them. So I tried again with sharks. Sharks had been my favorite animal for many years now, and I was really passionate about them. The only problem was that I have done about five projects with them in the past and I was kind of getting bored of them. I decided to go back to sea turtles but this time sea turtles and plastic pollution instead of plain sea turtles. And that worked out pretty well, so I decided to keep it.
My main inquiry question was hard, but fun to come up with. It took about ten tries, but I finally got a good one down, after talking with Ms. Edwards. She was very helpful and she helped me come up with it. My main inquiry question is: How has plastic pollution affected the lives of sea turtles? I really like this question and I decided to keep it after my many attempts to make a good one.
Making my sub-questions were pretty easy, other than when I got stuck on the last question. At first, I didn’t really understand how to make them, but then after about two minutes my friend explained it to me. My first sub-question is How do sea turtles make an impact on the ecosystem? I chose this because before I got straight to the plastic part, I wanted to talk about why sea turtles are important. My last sub-question is: How can we help save sea turtles? I chose this because I wanted to leave with a call to action and a sense of closure.
Overall, capstone so far is really fun so far and I really enjoy it.
As you know, we have been doing an immigration project for a while now. Now, I’m going to talk about my WeVideo.
The first step for my WeVideo was to make a script. It was pretty easy, but timing it was pretty tricky. It was fun either way. Now my WeVideo has a script. Selecting images was really hard because in some of them I didn’t know what would match the voiceover. Eventually, I figured it out and now my WeVideo has images. The voiceover was the hardest part of the whole thing because whenever I hear my voice, I would re take it because I don’t like hearing my voice. My solution to this was to not listen to my voice and put it in the video. I knew I had to do this because if I didn’t, I would have to keep doing it until the day the WeVideo was due. This is how my WeVideo came together.
I thought that my immigrant’s story was really interesting. I learned a lot about her and I thought she was easy and fun to interview. I learned that she loves to sing and came to America for this. I also learned where she is from. I already knew where she works, but she wanted to talk about it. She was easy to work with and she gave me enough information to do my WeVideo.
My project’s result was very pleasing and I’m really proud of myself for my WeVideo. I couldn’t get any pictures of my immigrant, but I still enjoyed making my WeVideo.
About a month ago, my class and I started an immigration unit. At first, I didn’t even know what immigration was! But then my teacher, Ms. Edwards explained it to the class. We had to interview someone who immigrated to America.
The first step was to make a list of 20 questions to ask the person we end up interviewing. It was hard for me at first, but later it ended up being fun to do. In the beginning, we just had to write 20 questions. The next day, we learned that they had to be in order.. Mine wasn’t. Well I fixed that by the end of the day and it was fine. After that there was a lot of editing and revision, but other than that, it was pretty easy.
The second step was to find someone to interview, and interview them. It took me a long time to find someone to interview, but I eventually found someone. First, I was going to do my cleaning lady, but she couldn’t. Then, I was going to do my sister’s aunt. That worked out well, but I found someone I knew to interview so I didn’t do my sister’s aunt. I ended up doing a woman named Besante Rye who is my family friend and she works with my mom. The interview went smoothly, although we had to redo it a couple times. Finding someone to interview was pretty hard, but the interview was fine.
The third step and the step I’m on is making a WeVideo or ADOBE. (And a script) I chose to do a WeVideo instantly because I had a lot of experience with it and I know how to do it well. We had an introduction to ADOBE and an assignment to do to get used to it. I was considering doing ADOBE, but I wanted to do WeVideo and I stuck with it. Right now I’m finished with the script and working on my video. The script was pretty easy, and the WeVideo is starting out fun and easy too.
Overall, the immigration unit so far is awesome and I can’t wait to see the end product.
About a month ago we started Rube Goldberg and I finally finished! Today, I will be talking about my list of resources, final sketch, and my WeVideo.
I came up with my ideas by researching and looking at other students WeVideo on Heathcote tech. I used a lot of the resources on the list of resources ms. Edwards let us use, but other than that, I basically just looked things up and looked onto websites. The resource that inspired me the most was the one ms. Edwards showed us in the beginning and it was Lilly’s Rube Goldberg and it helped me the most. My brother helped me come up with my ideas and he helped me build too.
My final sketch is different from my first one because I made many changes. I basically changed the whole thing (I kept some things though).
My experience making my WeVideo was kind of rough. I had to remake it many times but in the end I got something pretty good to use. My brothers Rube Goldberg helped me a lot. My little brother filmed my fails and my dad and my older brother helped me with my Rube Goldberg.
In conclusion, I think that this Rube Goldberg process was fun, but challenging. My friends helped me with mt WeVideo and building. (They gave me tips) Thanks for reading about my Final sketch, list of resources and WeVideo.
Here’s my WeVideo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D35gcTWyyE
A couple weeks ago, we started argument and advocacy. We worked with our bookclubs and prepared for our debate. I got assigned plastic bags which I think was hard to work with. In the beginning, we started studying argument and advocacy, and it looked fun. But when I found out we were having a debate, I thought that it was going to get really hard because my brother was struggling with it last year. Turns out, it actually didn’t end up being THAT hard… But… little did I know that it was going to take hard work for my book club to work as a team.
My book club is Me, Lior, Teddy and Evan and I knew from my past experiences that my book club was sometimes hard to work with. Sometimes we didn’t get along, but we got the work done, And that’s what mattered. But when we all agree on something, we seem to work better. It wasn’t much of a challenge in the beginning because we work better all four of us together. But as we moved on and split up into groups it got harder. In the beginning, we were mostly doing things on our own and sharing them to make it stronger. And because we didn’t know which side we were on, it made it easier to do. Towards the end, it got harder because even though what we were doing was a debate, we had little mini debates about for instance, who was going to make the bookclub folder, who was going to share the doc with us, who was going to make the slideshow, but we ended up using the strategy of whoever does it first. When we split up in groups, it was Lior and I, and Teddy and Evan. It was easier for me to work with Lior instead of the whole book club because I work better in smaller groups so that helped. Overall, my bookclub wasn’t the easiest to work with, but not the hardest either.
When we made the debate without counter arguments, to be honest, it was actually harder for me because I wanted to say that I disagree with something, but I couldn’t. It was fun though. Lior and I found it easier to work in the wing while Teddy and Evan were inside, or in separate places. I don’t know why. For our debate without counters, I noticed that it was a difference then it was for when we had counter arguments. This is because I noticed that most of us sounded like we were bored and we didn’t want to be there, which I didn’t want the audience to think so I tried to sound more cheerful and enthusiastic and tried to encourage the rest of my book club to do the same. For half of the time we were struggling practicing because we found distractions. The rest of us helped the other(s) to focus and we got it done. Overall, the debate with non-counter arguments was harder for me and the one with counter arguments was easier.
In conclusion, I found the argument and advocacy unit really fun, but challenging. I think my side of the debate won if there were any winners but both sides did great! I also loved watching everyone else’s debate because it gave me ideas. I found this unit very interesting!
Here’s a link to my debate video so you can see what it’s about:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/18tDXT8jz9LdMJScBV2MMq4CMYth4oRPf/view?ts=620e59de
In the beginning of January, we started a project about Rube Goldbergs. If you don’t know what that is, it’s a contraption that does a simple task. My brother did the Rube Goldberg, and he got stressed out so I got nervous because of my brother’s experience. But, I actually am really enjoying it so far! The whole class was doing this, but there was one difference: there was not going to be any partners this year because of covid. When I found this out, I got REALLY stressed out because for me it’s easier with partners. But I was excited anyway because my brother did it and he could help me. But there was one problem… I had no idea what to do! After a lot of research and hard work, at the very last minute, I decided to feed my dog! Before this, I was thinking of these ideas: Putting whipped cream on a strawberry, pouring water in a glass, shutting a door, popping a balloon and feeding my CATS. But I just settled on feeding my dog because it was simple and fun. But a lot of people in the class were doing that exact same thing. I was thinking about changing it, but I figured I can make it different from everyone elses. I started with researching, then I made my sketch, then I started building. But.. I realized it was going to take a lot of work.
Through the whole researching process, it wasn’t just about Rube Goldberg. It was about simple machines too. I researched just about everything to do with Rube Goldberg. I looked things up, and then looked on websites and if the websites recommended other websites, I would look at those too. The process would continue and continue and continue until the research part was over. One of the websites I specifically found the most helpful was “Goldberg to go” because it recommended many more research sources. Another one of the websites I found super helpful is “Josef’s Machines” . It’s a YouTube channel about a guy named Josef who makes machines. I liked this because I can see what he does to think about what I was going to do. But mostly all the websites I looked on we’re really helpful. Overall, the researching part was fun and kind of easy!
After researching we began to start our project. At first I had an idea, but it didn’t look the same as my sketch. I thought that it was fine though. I had this thing in my living room that was perfect for building my Rube Goldberg on, but I don’t know how to describe it. After about 3 days I had the first 5 steps. It was really challenging for me because I didn’t have a lot of materials. At the end I tweaked it and added more and I ended up with 12 steps. I was really surprised and proud of myself for having 12 steps. When I was starting to build it, I tried using books to make walls so the marble doesn’t roll too far. When the books didn’t work, I was looking around for materials to use instead of the books. I was trying to think of ideas when I couldn’t find anything, and I finally had the idea of using a board game box because I thought that they were big enough and strong enough, and I was right. It worked! I set it up and I thought that I could add one more step because at the time I didn’t have enough. I didn’t have any dominos, and I had a lot of lego characters that my brothers use, so instead of dominos, I used lego characters. And for the simple machines, I included a lever, two wheel and axles, and an inclined plane. For the lever I tried using a seesaw because I thought it was a really good idea. I found this coconut bowl and I flipped it upside-down and I put half a board that I chopped in half. For the inclined plane, I found a platform and laid it down. For the wheel and axles, I found two toy cars. Overall, the building part was hard, but fun.
In conclusion, my Rube Goldberg project so far is a success! I think I need to tweak it though. I haven’t tested it yet but if it fails, I can tweak it based on that. I think that the Rube Goldberg project is fun and challenging at the same time. I really enjoyed it so far!
Afew months ago we started a unit about the Bill of Rights. It was a lot of hard work, but in the end it paid off because we started a super fun constitution project that has to do with the Bill of Rights. We each choose a topic to research on and we even had a whole planner document for due dates. When Ms. Edwards introduced it to the class, I knew what I was going to do because I had a lot of interest in the topic. It was the 19th amendment! I really wanted to study it because it was something new to try out and because I’m a girl, and I want to learn more about how women became able to vote. As I was thinking about what I would do, Ms. Edwards said that we would have to choose a smaller topic that has to do with the big thing. I had no idea what I was going to do, but then my teacher shared a doc with all the topics we could choose from and some of the websites we could get something from. At Technology Mr. Casal taught us more about it and we had some time to work. I was looking through ideas and I saw women’s activists. Some of my friends were interested in the 19th amendment too, so I asked them if they wanted to choose a person to do. They said they wanted to see what I meant and I showed them a list of people to choose from and I wanted to choose the person at the top of the list because I knew who she was. My friends chose Lucy Stone and the other chose Alice Paul. They both really helped me through the whole process and I helped them. Later I wanted to learn more about my topic, Susan B. Anthony, one of the most famous women’s activists and I looked her up.
When the class first started our research, I had a page of notes and I was really proud of myself because I spent a long time on it. The research part was easy for me. I enjoyed finding websites to research on and it was fun to do it in general. Sometimes writing it down was hard because I was trying to put it in my own words but sometimes it was hard to find a different sentence instead of the one from the website I found it on.
Next, was my essay. That was the hardest part. I was still doing my notes and right when we finished our essay due date, I was in the middle of my essay and everyone else was starting their script. I managed to finish my essay by the end of the day though. My essay was really hard because I was rushing through it because I had a couple days to do it and on the last day, I managed to finish it. And when I finished my introduction I was confused about the first body paragraph but my friends helped me understand what I was supposed to do.
For the script, I was super confused because I started it a bit too late. My friends were busy so I asked ms. Edwards to help me. She said I can get inspiration from my essay and that I needed to include facts about my topic. I was kind of confused about the essay part, but then I figured out what she meant. It was super easy and I caught up to most of the people in the class in a day. But, I finished it a little late because some people already started their slideshow.
I made my slideshow all in one night the day I finished my script. I stayed up kind of late but it was worth it because I was happy with my slideshow. It was pretty easy to find images to match my words. The next day in class I wanted to change one of my slides to something, but I don’t know the name of it. It was something where 2 platforms were the same height. But, I wanted it to be one of them is higher and the other is lower but I couldn’t find another image. My friend helped me edit the image to make it what I wanted. I put a man icon at the top and a woman icon at the bottom to show that women weren’t treated like men were. All in all, the slideshow was pretty easy.
It took me about 20 or 25 takes to get the one that I wanted because either my brothers were in the area I was doing it in and they were making noise, or it was because I wanted to change my script or my slideshow a little bit. I tried and tried to get a good recording and then I FINALLY got a decent one but it wasn’t perfect. I tried some more to get a better one but none of them were better than the decent one so I stuck with it. Overall it was really hard for me to get a good recording.
All in all, I really enjoyed my constitution project and it was super fun. I loved my topic because it was something I haven’t done before and it was new for me to try. I am really proud of myself. But I’m mostly proud of my slideshow because I worked on it all in one night but it was better than I expected. And I’m proud of my essay because it took me a long time to do but it turned out really good in my opinion. I’m also proud of my essay because it was hard to do and I was really surprised at how it turned out because in the beginning it wasn’t as good as it was now after I edited it to make it better. I really loved this unit and you can look at my screencastify if you’re interested in my topic! Thanks for reading my summary for the constitution project!
https://watch.screencastify.com/v/ocnxDExPyPy6JTSyhHF1