Tech Post #8 – Final Post

This is my last blog post for tech. I really loved tech, Mr.Calvert was a great teacher and I had a lot of fun! I got to make jewelry, made light switches with aluminum foil and cardboard, flashlights, and used a laser cutter! All of these were super fun and I am so happy that I had this class. I made lots of friends and had lots of fun. I would always look forward to tech everyday and watch the clock every second. Overall I had a lot of fun and I am going to miss this class.

Tech Post #5 – Drawing Flashlights

This week we are starting to make our waterproof flashlight! We used pipes and we have started sketching our design. Mr. Calvert gave us a sheet and each little box was 0.25 inches and we had to draw it to scale. Right now we are working drawing the details of the sketch. Adding the switch wires light etc. to my sketch!

Here is my sketch!

Tech Post #3 – Jewelry and Light Switch

This week I finished my jewelry piece and had to soldered my piece and had to put flux before that. Today I will put my chain on and finish my piece! While I was waiting to put my chain on I was making light switches with aluminum foil and cardboard. I had to use the scroll saw to cut my cardboard and hot glue it. I will have to make 3 light switches to play a game! As of right now (before tech) I have 2 light switches and I will start my 3rd one today!

Here is My final Jewelry piece and my all my light switches:

Tech Post #1:Atoms (and Jewelry)

In class for like last week we have been learning about atoms! An atom consists of a central nucleus that is usually surrounded by one or more electrons. Each electron is negatively charged. The nucleus is positively charged, and contains one or more relatively heavy particles known as protons and neutrons. A proton is positively charged. We also did a experiment with a spiral wire, aluminum foil a glass and cloth and a tube. We rubbed the cloth and tube and put it near the spiral wire and it was supposed to move the foil. But it didn’t because it was humid that day. But we realized that if you rub the cloth and tube together and put it above your head it makes your hair stick up!

Today in Tech we are making wired jewelry for someone else. I am doing for my mom and I am making a wave! Today we will make the shape of what we want this wire and get to use tool to perfect it another day!

Blog Post #3

As you may know my Capstone is about DNA, and I have finally finished! During this process I have learned so much about DNA that I don’t even know how brain can fit it all! I have learned a lot about myself during this process. I have learned how to overcome challenges, new websites and new ways to research!

When I think about my final product and its strength there are lot actually. When I was thinking about my strength I noticed that I talk to the audience and really let the watchers think.

Also, while I was working on my capstone, I had many challenges, which are memorizing my slide about the double helix and finding high quality images and free to use ones. Even though all of these challenges got in the way, my favorite part was actually making my Ted Talk. This might sound weird because my challenges were all about the slideshow, but I loved making it my own and actually had fun doing it.  I love going up and talking to the audience! The hardest part was probably making my script. The amount of times I had to edit and change my script was insane.  I can’t even count how many times I had to change each section.

If I were to conduct my research differently, I would probably print out multiple articles so I could highlight the articles and pick out the pieces I ‘d want to add or that seemed important. I would start my research a little sooner so that I would have more time to think about what I learned instead of going right into the script.

Some advice I would like to give future 5th graders is to figure out what you want to do before you start and write it down in a notebook that you use everyday. I used my language arts notebook. You should do this because you can already have a idea of where you can get your research and feel prepared before you even start! Lastly you should have fun and be yourself!!

Capstone Interview (Blog Post #2)

For my Capstone as you may know I’m doing DNA and my main question is, “What exactly is DNA?” and my sub questions are, “How do we get our genes?” and “What is DNA made of?”

For my interview I interviewed my Papa about DNA. I had a really good time doing it and learned a lot. Some stuff I learned is that there is a DNA language, it consists of 4 letters only, A, T, C and G. These 4 letters stand for ,

A- Adenine

T- Thymine

C- Cytosine

G- Guanine

I also learned that there are 10,000,000,000,000 cells in a human body! 13 zeros! I also learned that DNA stands for DeoxyriboNucleic Acid. Also genetic codes are based on groups of three letters together  which are called Codons. They could look like AAA CGC TTA GGA and so on. Groups of codons establish a message that is sent out. This group of codons is called a genes. I also learned much more but that’s all i’m going to say for now and you just have to wait until my final project is done!

 

Reading The Weather Reading The World – Project Reflection

This project was really fun and took a long time and took a lot of work! First Mrs. Rago told us our groups. My group was Me, Elizabeth and Madeline, we were the tornado group. Then Mrs. Rago gave me books about my topic and we started researching about tornadoes.  That part took about a week. After that we got to choose what we wanted to study about for our topic. I choose Causes. Elizabeth choose Effects and Madeline choose Important events, First hand experiences and safety and finally Prevention. Then we went to computer lab and we made a google docs and I wrote a paragraph (Narrative) about Causes of Tornadoes. Writing the narrative took 2 days. Some people called the Paragraph a Brain Pump. Once we finished that we took the important parts of the narrative and put them in our script. I had 2 slides to talk which were each 15 seconds. Then me and my group timed our slides to make sure our slides were 15 seconds. Mrs. Rago told us that we also had to make an Introduction and Conclusion. I did the Intro and Elizabeth did the conclusion and Madeline didn’t do that because she is doing 4 slides and me and Elizabeth had 2 slides until we each got the extra slide.

Here is my brain dump and Script:

Brain dump

Causes: For a tornado to form it needs warm moist air from a warm climate, like the Gulf of Mexico, and cold dry air from somewhere like Canada. When they meet they make the atmosphere unstable. Then when the wind changes direction and gets faster and higher it creates spinning that is invisible, when that air rises makes the spinning go up and down.

Tornadoes often start by an unusually thunderstorm. The most common thunderstorm to make a tornado is a supercell thunderstorm. (That is the highest thunderstorm there is.)  Did you know that some tornadoes are so complex that scientists still don’t understand tornadoes,but even though they might not know a lot about them the more they study them, the more we will be safe. You know what scientists also don’t know? How tornadoes die out. The only continent that doesn’t get tornadoes is Antarctica. Some places besides North America get a lot of tornadoes like Northern Europe, Western Asia, Bangladesh, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. In the middle of the United States there are really strong tornadoes so they call it tornado alley. Tornadoes often happen in the summer because of all the warm air. 

Script

 

1 Intro (Allie) Education of Tornadoes is very important in understanding strong weather storms. They’re giant spiraling wind funnels; Also known as Twisters. Learning about creation process, destructive effects as well as safety measures will increase your chance of survival.
2 Causes (Allie) For a tornado to form it needs warm moist air from a warm climate, like the Gulf of Mexico, and cold dry air from somewhere like Canada. When they meet they make the atmosphere unstable. Then when the wind changes direction and gets faster and higher it creates spinning that is invisible, when that air rises it makes

 the spinning go up and down. 

3 Causes (Allie) The most common thunderstorm to make a tornado is a supercell thunderstorm.  A supercell thunderstorm is the strongest and most dangerous type of thunderstorm. Supercells cause damaging winds, large hail, and strong and violent tornadoes.

When a supercell forms a tornado it is very dangerous and very scary. 

After we made a Google Slide and started making our Ignite side show. I have the first 3 slides and after that Elizabeth had 2 slides then Madeline had her 4 slides and then Elizabeth had the last side. IN each slide we were only allowed to put 1 picture or max of 6 words. Then we had to memorize our scripts and then we had a lot of practices. After we finished memorizing our scripts Mr.Casal made one big slide show of all the groups.

Here is My groups Presentation: