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After finishing my main inquiry question and my sub-questions, I started to think about who I am going to interview. 

I wasn’t sure who I would interview. I went to my Mom for advice, and she suggested I interview an editor on Facebook. At first, I was skeptical, but then I decided it would be a good idea. She emailed them. I recieved great news, I could interview him!

I was really happy but first I needed to get my interview questions finished. Writing my interview question wasn’t too hard, but sometimes I was unsure of how to phrase something. Luckily my teacher helped me out and everything was fine.

On the day of my interview, I was pretty nervous, but I knew I would be fine. My interview was in person. When I got to the man’s house my nerves died down a little, the interview took about an hour, and it was really cool to hear from an expert. 

The next time I ever interview someone I know that I shouldn’t be nervous. I am really excited to start writing my essay.

About 2 months ago, my teacher told the class that we were going to do a regional project. This is when the class is divided up into groups, and that group picks a region. I was pretty excited at first because I thought it would be interesting.

The people in my group were me, Christian, Trevor, and Zach.  The region we chose was the northwest region. It had 5 states so we decided that we all do the last one. I chose Washington as my state because I think Washington is a really cool state. Montana was the only state that no one chose.

The first step of this project was research. We had to do research on our state with categories. They were landmarks, politics, general, and history. 

Then you have to choose what to present. All the other groups did a slide presentation, but my group decided to do a Google Website.

The research wasn’t too hard. The most challenging part was probably organizing all the information. I started the research for Montanna but then the rest of my group took over.

After all our information was done we started working on the website. Making the website wasn’t too complicated, I put in the information for general and history of Montana.

Our group was going to make a Kahoot at the end of the presentation, working on the Kahoot was very stressful because it kept not saving.

Our group practiced a lot, and the end result was worth it, this region’s project was super fun! I really enjoyed it!

A couple weeks ago my teacher Ms.Edwards assigned the class an immigration project. She told us that we would interview an immigrant who came to America, then we would either choose to do their story on Wevideo, or Adobe. But before all that we need to pick who to interview, and who did I interview?

I interviewed my Mom. At first, I was a little skeptical because my mom traveled to England first, and then America, but I was fine. 

Now that I knew who to interview, I needed to start writing questions so I could know more about my mom’s immigration process. Writing the questions was a bit challenging, but my friends Christian, Cayden, and Teddy helped a lot so I finished in no time. I wasn’t that stressed about questions though because I was interviewing my mom so it was ok if I messed up.

When I did the interview it went really quickly, all I had to do was ask some questions and I was done.

The start of the Immigration Project was pretty chill, but the wevideo might be more stressful, but I think I’ll be fine.

Dang, it! A Rube Goldberg can be hard to build. I know this because I built one. My Rube Goldberg isn’t that complicated, unfortunately, it took so long to build. 

Starting it wasn’t hard, my only issue was that a domino wouldn’t hit a ball to go forward. I need to think of a solution…AHA! I would build my Rube Goldberg on a book so then I could make a small inclined plane with a book the ball would roll down.

 Eventually, I wanted the ball to roll down, hit a huge magnitile that would catapult hamster food into the hamster bowl.

 Building the Rube Goldberg on books was tricky because I was using dominos and it was hard to get them to stand up on the surface. I managed anyway.

 I started to record my Rube Goldberg in action, I had about 7 tries until I got it right. My most common issue was that the hamster food didn’t catapult into the bowl. I tried out some solutions, I put more wait to fall down, and got a smaller bowl, I tested out only that section, and…it worked! I was so happy!

 I ran through the whole Rube Goldberg, I finally did it! I was ready to start my wevideo. My first step for the wevideo was two seconds of black, I put a transition, and added it to my media. The final product was amazing, it was just over 3 minutes long.

 The Rube Goldberg project was hard and stressful but luckily I managed. I think that I did a really good job and I am very proud of myself.

A couple weeks ago my teacher announced we were going to do our Rube Goldberg project. A Rube Goldberg is a machine that creates a chain reaction to do a simple task. When my teacher announced the project I already knew what a Rube Goldberg was, my sister had done the same project when she was in fifth grade. At first, I was a bit worried about the project, it takes a lot of time and effort to create a Rube Goldberg. I started doing my research with my friends, Cayden, and Luca. We wrote down some supplies, songs, and video format Ideas. After all the research I started working on my sketch. I made a lot of revisions along the way. The final result was this: Car goes down an inclined plane which hits mini skateboard, mini skateboard goes through lego house which hits dominos, dominos hit lego car wheel, lego car wheel goes through magnitle tube and hits lego car wheel which hits big magnitile, big magnitile hits catapult, hamster food gets launched into a bowl. The simple machines I used were an inclined plane, wheel and axle, and a lever. Dominos were really helpful because they could fall down well. But the big car was not helpful because I did not hit the mini skateboard. I think it will be hard to build this but I am up for the challenge.

About a month ago my teacher announced that we were going to start a new project. I was excited about what it was, she said we could pick our own, a civil rights movement, or something about the 1st amendment 15th amendment 19th amendment, or 26th.

 At first, I thought it was going to be boring, but it was the most thrilling project I have ever done. I picked the stonewall riots as my topic. My question was “What impact did the Stonewall Riots have on today’s LGBTQ community and their rights.”

 But it took some time to find that question when I was researching, my main source was Wikipedia. But I couldn’t find a good question. Then my teacher saved me, she told me to do “What impact did the Stonewall Riots have on today’s LGBTQ community and their rights.” I chose that question.

 When I found out I had to write an essay on my question I was frantic. At first, I couldn’t find any information to support my question. But in the end, I found my three supports: A month was dedicated to the LGBTQ community, you were allowed to marry a person of the same gender, also there are flags dedicated to the LGBTQ community.

 When I started to write my essay I felt confident, I was good at writing essays. I sped through my essay, after my work was done I was proud. I thought we finished with this topic, boy was I wrong. We needed to make presentations. I immediately started working on my script for the slideshow. 

 When I made my script each slide timing was pretty similar, a couple were 15 sec, others were 9 or 12 sec. I needed to make sure the pictures on the slideshow matched what I was saying, that step wasn’t that hard, and I flashed through it.

 When I recorded my presentation there was a lot of trial and error. My final recording was really good and I was very happy with my final result. After everyone finished recording their screencast, the whole class assembled and we all watched the presentations together.

 In conclusion, this project was very hard-working, but also fun at the same time.

Feature Article Reflection

By Anastasia

Go see my Feature Article:

 Writing my feature article was one of my favorite informational writing projects. I started researching my topic about a month ago, in early November. When my teacher asked the class to pick a topic to write an article about, D-Day immediately came to mind, so I chose D-Day. D-Day was a very important World War II battle. I have a really big passion for World War Two. Once I picked my topic, I started researching right away, thinking of possible headlines and titles.

 As I started researching deeper, I found that D-Day was more than just soldiers with guns trying to beat Germany. I found out that there was another force rebelling against the German soldiers, the French Resistance. As soon as I found out about the French Resistance, I was intrigued. I looked around my house for all my D-Day books and I found some books on the French Resistance. I was so excited to start writing my article, I thought it would be as easy as pie, but I was so wrong. I found it challenging to think of possible headlines, and couldn’t find all the information I needed, that I had to get really soon! But then I got a genius idea! I could look online! I felt pretty stupid I hadn’t thought of that before, but now that I realized I could go online, I was pretty confident. I found so much information and I knew I was ready to type.

 I started with the most important thing about the D-Day invasion, the five beaches. That’s going to be one of my headlines, I thought. I started blasting away with the keyboard, and after the school day, I was so proud of my work. I showed the paragraph I wrote to my Mom. She said she liked it, but I could fix some grammar. I went through my whole paragraph looking for incorrect grammar. Then I started to realize I was using the same words in the same sentence twice. Dang, it! I thought.

 After finishing up the first paragraph I started working on some other headline ideas. One of them was Resistance sacrifices, and I ended up picking that one for my next headline. Then again I went through my research process and started editing and revising the paragraph. Soon, I had figured out the rest of the headlines. This is what I had: my intro, “The Five Beaches,” “Resistance Sacrifices,” “The German Army During D-Day,” “Why D-Day Was So Important,” and my conclusion.

 After finishing up all these paragraphs I had to format my feature article. The plan was to format it on Google slides, then print it out. Formatting was pretty hard because I needed to fit the text into each box, then I had to make the box the same size as the other, so it would look good. It was a really frustrating thing to do, and a lot of trial and error, but I learned that if something isn’t good you can always fix it. When I finally finished formatting, I had a black and white camouflage background, many pictures, and a couple of graphs. I thought it looked really good.

 Finally, the day came where we could share our feature article. I looked around and saw that everyone else’s feature article was also really good. I got a lot of feedback on my feature article. The most common thing people complimented me on was my format, and I think I agree with them. I really loved this unit, and one thing I learned was to be patient and you will get it right.

I highly recommend the book Maze Runner by James Dashner. If you like books full of sadness, suspense, and action, then this book is just for you!! The story starts when a boy called Thomas is trapped in huge field surrounded by a massive maze with dangerous creatures, and 50 other boys who all lost their memories. My favorite part is when Thomas is imprisoned in the maze overnight filled with the creatures, and nobody has ever survived a night in the maze.Remember. Survive. Most important: RUN!

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