Capstone: Working On My Final Product

It was iteration after iteration. That was my process for my script. I wrote one thing then changed it and added more on to it. I made one script then changed it and did that process a couple more times, till my fourth redo of the script came around and once I read it I knew that that script was the one. I am still a little worried that it isn’t long enough but I know that it will be fine. I am so excited to do my script with my flash cards, slide show, and in front of an audience. 

The slide show was the easiest part of capstone. I just did it based on my script. So for every different thing that I talked about, I did a different background. I searched for images like cocoa beans, the tree the cocoa bean grows on, and chocolate bars and pieces. I didn’t label them, except for one, because I will pretty much be talking about those images in my script. So that was an easy step in the process.

The business cards weren’t that hard either, when I knew how to do them. I had a design in mind since the beginning. I knew that I wanted to have a chocolate bar on it and I knew what I have to have on my business cards, so it was easy for me. The only annoying part of the process was when it was printed would it be readable, and was the card stock thick enough. Now I have them all done and I am so proud of them.

Finishing the project was both stressful and awesome. My favorite part was seeing all of my hard work done. I am super proud of myself and I can’t believe that I did all of this work.

I would like to give a big thanks to my mom, Ms. Boyer (my teacher), Bruce (the high school intern), and all of my friends for helping me with this project.

Capstone: Answering My Main Inquiry Question

So, we had to research answers to our main inquiry question as well as our sub questions. Since my sub questions were pretty much my main inquiry question, it was easy to answer. I had a lot of resources as well as search terms. I searched the web for many websites. I went into some and went into others until I found one that was worthy to read. There were many helpful sources and some were just rubbish. Some sources that I used were Cadbury, The Washington Post, and my interview and site visit.

Some of things that I was looking online for were cocoa beans, the taste of chocolate, and the health benefits of chocolate. That is pretty much my main inquiry question. For my search terms, I just searched the part of my question that I was searching for. There were some search terms that weren’t even helpful and some that had several websites on it. But websites weren’t the only helpful resources, I got two books from the library. One book was more helpful than the other. Our librarian was very helpful. She helped me find the two books, which were also pretty helpful.

Overall, researching my main inquiry question was both cool, interesting, and (to be honest) a little bit boring.

Capstone: Interview

My interview was with a chocolate maker named Livingston. He is the production manager and he answered all of my questions. The interview was in Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York at a chocolate place called Raaka Chocolate. He was really nice and he gave me a bonus, he gave me a private tour of their work place. Normally they just have group tours but since I had an interview with him he gave me a tour after I was done asking all of my questions.

For my interview he answered all of my question, plus more. He gave me some extra fun facts. I went through all of my questions and he answered all of them thoroughly. Livingston gave deep explanations that were really helpful. My way of remembering the interview was by writing the answers down. I didn’t audio record it. I thought it would be easier to just write the answers down, because that is all that we talked about. And since my mom was there, she picked up anything that he said that I didn’t write down.

After the talk, he showed me their whole chocolate factory. It was awesome! I got to see their machines, and I got to taste the chocolate that they were making right then. I got to taste the chocolate as a liquid, straight from the grinder! What I saw was from their bean room (where they crack the bean to the nibs) to the end of the process, where they put the liquid form of the chocolate into the molds to turn into a solid.

Overall, Livingston was really nice and he gave me a lot of information. I really enjoyed going there and I took a bunch of pictures of their work space. And I suggest getting their chocolate because it is DELICIOUS!

 

Capstone: Site Visit

For my site visit I went to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In Williamsburg there is Mast Brothers, a chocolate company. There I went on a tour of their retail factory. On the tour we saw how they make their chocolate, from the bean to the bar.

 

The Process: They begin with two machines. One that takes off the shell of the bean. The other grinds the nib (the inside of the bean) into tiny pieces. Then they put all of the ingredients into one grinder to mixes/grinds all of the ingredients together. Then they take it out and let it sit for one to four months in a container. Then, they move onto another machine that makes the chocolate the right temperature. When it is the right temperature it comes out of the machine into a chocolate mold. Then it goes into the fridge and when it is done you have your chocolate!

 

I asked the person who did the tour a couple questions after. She said that they get their cacao beans from Madagascar, Tanzania, and Peru during the tour. I asked why from those places. She said that the farms that they get their cacao beans from have organic cacao beans and the farms don’t do child labor. After that I asked why they don’t farm their own cacao beans and she said that they don’t need to own their own farms and they don’t have staff who farm cacao beans. And that the brothers know people and they buy the beans from the people that they know.

Capstone: Choosing a Main Question and Sub Questions

After choosing to topic I had to choose my main inquiry question and six sub questions.

First I had to choose my main inquiry question. That was a big process. I had two questions in mind then I choose my favorite one. That was all at home. Then at school we got two sheets of paper. Both papers were for the main inquiry question. So I did one so I started my sub questions. But while I was working on my sub questions, that was when I knew what my main inquiry question was supposed to be. It is “how are cocoa beans produced, how does the production affect the taste of chocolate, and what are the health benefits of chocolate?” That is my main inquiry question and I am so proud of it.

After that I had to do my sub questions. The sub questions were the hardest because there are so many of them. Like I said I did my sub questions while I did my main inquiry question. For the sub questions, I knew I wanted to do, where do cocoa beans grow. Then I wanted to do one more about cocoa beans. I needed to think over it a few times and then I chose, how are cocoa beans harvested. Then I wanted to do two health benefit questions. These questions weren’t hard for me to think about. I chose, does the cocoa bean itself have any health benefits, then I chose for my second one about health benefits, what are the health benefits of milk and dark chocolate individually. Then finally, since I also mentioned taste in my main inquiry question, I did my last two about taste. Those were the hardest ones. They were hard because I needed to think about what I didn’t know. I finally chose, what impact does chocolate percentage have on the flavor, then for my final one I chose after a long process of hard thinking and many, many iterations I decided to go with, what affects on the flavor of chocolate does the production of chocolate have.

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I am really proud of myself, and all of my questions. I feel confident in them and I am sure that this will be a great project, with great questions.

 

Capstone: Choosing A Topic

So we just started our big capstone project! Capstone is a big end of the year project which each person chooses their own topic to study about for six weeks. During those six weeks we will do a lot of research. We will do an interview and a site visit. When the whole project is done and we have our presentation all set up we set up somewhere in our school and all classes come around and look at our hard work.

For a good amount of the year I knew I was gonna do something chocolate. It seemed like a great topic (for me). My teacher, Ms. Boyer, had us do some different sheets and packets to work on finding our narrow topic. We did a whole packet on what we would do if… we also did a sheet putting our general topic in the middle and expanding out on different areas of the topic. For example, chocolate in the middle and economics, geography, culture, art, etc. on the outside. On those examples we would write questions and pick something like that.

After I did that I saw the science area of chocolate. That really interested me. But I wasn’t sure if that was too big. Then I talked to Ms. Boyer and I realized that if I do smaller sub-questions then I could do that whole topic. And that is what I chose.

That was my whole process of choosing a topic. Even though I thought I wanted to do chocolate in general I found a cooler and narrower topic, the science of chocolate. And that is how I chose the science of chocolate.

I am so excited and stay posted for more posts about capstone. There will be many different posts. Yay!