Category Archives: Social Studies

Capstone Blog Post #3 – Creating Final Project

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Capstone Blog Post #3

This year in class we have been working on a project called Capstone. This blog post is about making the project.

For the project, we had to choose the format from the following: Video, Screencast, TED Talk, and Ignite. In the end, I chose Spark Video because I felt that it would be the most convenient thing to do while at home. I also chose it because I really enjoyed using the platform the last time I used it, during our immigration unit. 

There was a lot of fun parts to creating my final project, one of these things was doing the voiceover for my project. I liked this because it was fun to share the information that I had spent so long researching. Another fun part was writing my script. I liked writing it because it was fun to craft my information into a digestible presentation.

During my process of creating the final project, a challenge was that it was hard to find images that could really help my project get to the next level, but after a lot of searching, I found the right photos.

For the final share, I am extremely excited. If I was doing a presentation, I may feel nervous, but since a did a video, I got to show it to my class first to get feedback and see what someone would think after seeing my video. I am excited because I love to show my work to others.

In conclusion, Capstone has been a great experience, and it was really fun for me to learn about a topic I am passionate about. Here is my final project:

Capstone Blog Post 2 – Interview

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As I have mentioned in an earlier post, in class we are working on a project called Capstone, this post will be about my interview for the project.

 

To start the interview process I had a zoom meeting with my teacher about who I would like to interview. This process was easy for me because my mom works in the medical field so she has a lot of connections with people who are well informed on my topic: Vaccines. In the end, I decided to interview Holly Gilbert, an infectious disease specialist. I interviewed Holly because I figured that she would know a lot about the immune system, and vaccines, because of her profession.

 

After securing the interview, my interviewee requested that I send her the questions before we do the zoom call. This allowed us to have a smoother and more informative interview because she could think about how she would answer, before the interview.

 

For the actual interview, I had a document open with my questions and an area to write the questions. I also had two devices recording the audio for the interview, because, for another project that I did an interview, the recording crashed on a device. At the end of the interview, I looked at my notes and refined them, because I had to type fast, so it was sloppy. 

 

One of the most interesting things I learned as a result of my interview is that the administration of a vaccine matters a lot. Some vaccines go through the buttocks, most go through the muscles. A lot of vaccines work best on the area below your muscle.

 

One challenge that I faced during the interview process was coming up with questions. It seems simple right? Wrong. My goal for creating my questions was to find out information that I could not find on the web, which is hard to do but I managed.

 

Overall my interview process went very well, I gained a lot of information and I would classify it as a success!

Capstone Blog Post 1 – Task Definition

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In class, we are working on a year-end project called Capstone. Capstone is a research project where we have to choose a topic and learn all about it, eventually, we will put it into a presentation and present it to an audience. This is blog post one, this blog post will be about the task definition of the research process. For my Capstone, after a lot of thinking and comparing I chose Vaccines as my topic. For this topic, we were assigned to make the main inquiry question which will guide us through research, and ultimately is our goal to answer. My main inquiry question is, what is involved in vaccines’ development and testing, how do they affect the human body’s immune system, and what are the primary challenges for administering vaccines?

 

During the experience of deciding my main inquiry question, one thing that was very helpful for me is that my teachers, my parents, and everyone around me were helping me. They were helping me the word and helping me come up with and develop my main inquiry question. Another thing that would help her for me while developing my question was that I had a private lesson with my teacher, where I could talk about my main inquiry question, and make changes to it. Another thing that was helpful was I had an organizer doc, which helped me organize my ideas and communicate with my teacher. To summarize, mostly what helped me was communication with people around me.

 

One thing that was challenging during my Capstone main inquiry question brainstorming process was zeroing in on one area of vaccines because vaccines are a very broad topic. I was helped with this by getting advice from my peers, my teachers, and my parents. Another challenge I had faced was wording my question to be equivalent to a level 4 question, this was because I have to include some level of opinion in the questions’ speculated answer to get it to that level, which was hard but in the end, I got it done.

 

During this process what I have learned of myself as a learner is that I learn better if I have some kind of background to that topic. I mean this in the terms that, to make a  main inquiry question I had to do some background research to create a better question. I have also discovered that I think better when my ideas are organized. I know this because the organizer doc that was provided really helped me organize my ideas, which helped me think. In future projects, I will definitely be utilizing the information I have found out about myself as a learner. 

 

Overall this project has been awesome thanks to the help of my teachers, my parents, and my peers. I look forward to the rest of this project and what I am going to learn in the days to come.

MLK. JR

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Monday is MLK day so today I have put together a summary of his life. Michel Luther King Jr was born on January 15, 1929 (he later changed his name to martin). Martin was a very religious man and become a pastor on February 25, 1948. He also got married to Correa Scott on June 18, 1953. Also related to religion he got his doctorate in systematic theology in June of 1955. On December 5, 1955 he became president of the Montgomery Improvement Society (MIA) after the Rosa Parks incident. Because he was a civil rights leader in the south, he received a lot of hate, so his house got bombed and received a threatening phone call at the end of January 1956. After a long hard battle the United States Supreme Court declared bus segregation unconstitutional on November 13, 1956. In 1957 he delivered his first national address and in 1958 he and other civil rights leaders met with president Dwight. D Eisenhower. On September 20, 1958 he was at a book signing in Harlem and got stabbed, but survived the accident. During this time it was very common for police officers to get involved in demonstrations, and Martin was arrested but was released soon after. On August 28, 1963 he delivered his famous “I Have A Dream” speech and, soon after segregation was outlawed. In 1964 he was named the Time man of the year, and won the Nobel peace prize. His life came to a tragic end on April 4, 1968 when he was shot and killed on his balcony.

Building our Colony pt – 3

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Life in the colony is good, our colony is thriving and crops are growing well. We are coming to the end of building our colony and cooperation is at its finest, we have finally finished building all of the houses and buildings. We chose interesting colors of wood to build our structures because we wanted our colony to be colorful. We had one indecent were we dropped a log on one of the houses, but we quickly repaired it before the roof collapsed. We had a meeting at the meeting house were we talked about the completion of the colony, and we celebrated.

Colonial America – pt2 – Persona

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My name Sir Ved Response III, I am 14 years old. I am the youngest of three children, so when my father died my brothers took all the riches, that’s why I came to the new world (To start New Foursten) using my last savings I had. I decided to come to the Middle Colonies because I heard that in the south they had a lot of slaves, and I figured that in the Middle Colonies it would be easier to take away slavery. I like the job trader because my dad was a trader back at home, and I always wanted to be as successful as him.

Colonial America – Pt 1 – Overveiw

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In class we are doing a group project on colonial America where we are becoming colonist’s and we have jobs and we have a charter because we are making a colony! My job is a trader that represents New Foursten (our colony) in trading with other colony. For this project we don’t have very many rules set by our teacher we are doing every bit of this project, and there are no rules that we have to follow when making our charter and maps. I also think it is nice to be able to make our own decisions about our learning and study what interests us without too many directions. 

Research Projects

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In reading, we have been studying how to research using the research process. My animal study group researched coyotes. Our subtopics were Pups, What is a Coyote, Hunting and howling/communication. We organized our books from easiest to hardest, then we found the topics that appeared in most of the books and those became our subtopics. The most important thing that I learned about the research process was how to put facts you found into your own words.

 

After this project, we took everything we learned about research and used that in our country research project. I chose to study China with my partner. We used the Heathcote databases, our own knowledge and a book called “China” by Ted Park to study the different cultural universals of China. The cultural universals are: Politics, Social Aspects, Economics, Beliefs, and Cultural Arts. Once we finished researching and putting it in whichever category it fit into. We put all of our research in a Comic Tour Guide Book titled “The Cultural Universals of China.” My favorite part of the project was coming up with lines that my character would say. The most challenging part of the project was finding the right images to fit my project.