I am in fifth grade and it is the time of year that we will be starting Capstone. Capstone is the big project at the end of the year. You either have to make a TED Talk, a video presentation, or an ignite. A TED Talk is a presentation where you have a script that you have to try to memorize. A slide is in the background and you can move the slides. But with an ignite, it is basically the same but the slides move automatically. In my opinion, I think that ignites make me a little pressured. Last but not least, we have the video presentation. I personally think that this is the best option. You make a video and it will be presented on the big screen. The worst part in my opinion is hearing your voice on the big screen.

I had a bunch of ideas for my capstone project such as space, Covid, music, 911, and maybe the ocean. These were pretty good ideas but I decided to cut some of them. I cut space because I’ve done way too many things about it. Then I cut 911 because someone else was doing it. Now I was down to Covid, music, and the ocean. We did some work on questions but that was before I had cut it. I had just realized I did so much question work on Covid, Space, and 911. But I still decided not to do 2 of them. I then erased the idea of covid because I wasn’t too into it. Now I was down to music, and maybe the ocean. Since the ocean was maybe so I picked music. I mean I have a musical family and I’ve always liked it. So that’s when I decided to do music. Even though I could’ve done space and ocean pretty easily, I wanted to learn more about something. Not something that I already knew tons about. 

Even though I knew a ton about music because music is everything to my family. I wanted to do something different. Like how it evolved over time. But then I eventually thought of music used in different cultures. I wanted to do both but I probably could only do 1. But I decided to see if I could combine them together. My question was , “How has music evolved over time and how do people use it in different cultures?” This was my original question and I put it into the organizer that my teacher shared with my class and I. Soon I saw that she had asked an alternative question to mine. It was, “How is music used across cultures?” She called me over during class and I told her that maybe I wanted to do Asion cultures. So next I had to think of 5 cultures that I could do. I did Japan, China, Korea, Thailand, and the Philippines. Now this was my new question. “How is music used in religion across Asian cultures? (Japan, China, Korea, Thailand, and the Philippines.) \

Coming up with the sub questions was interesting. At first I had my other question, “How has music evolved over time and how do people use it in different cultures?” But I had a pretty hard time coming up with sub questions. I thought and thought, and thought. I mean I would’ve done something like, “How was music back in the 1800?” or, “How did people use music in European culture?” I then talked to my mom about it and she was right. It was very broad and I wasn’t able to think of any sub questions. So with the help of my teachers, Mrs. Furgatch, and Mrs Cooper, I now have a good question. Now the sub questions. I had an idea about the sub questions but I knew that they would be very similar. So I told Mrs. Cooper about it and she said that it was ok if they were similar because of my question. So here are two of them. “How does music relate to religion across Chinese Culture? How is music used in religion across Thai culture?”

Overall I think Capstone will be very exciting, especially when I will see the final result.  I’m hoping that it will turn out great like other examples in previous years. I hope you guys enjoyed my blog post.