We are starting our first passion project! Yippy! We are doing it on issues that are happening in our life and the world. I chose poverty. Why? Because it is something happening in the world right now, and it is a super big problem. Poverty can happen when a person doesn’t have food, water, a house and a job. Once you are in, it is very hard to get out. People in poverty are mostly in Africa because (I think) there is so little water and so little food that more people drop into poverty than anywhere else. (This may be a false statement, it is probably true) That is why I want to do my passion project on this. It is a very interesting topic. People, like me say that poorer countries have more poverty than others. That has been shown correct. All this stuff is very interesting to me and that is why I chose this.
One you, one world, who’s who?
That’s my six word memoir for this book. Only One You has captured the meaning of when to conform and when to be a non-conformist. This book reminds me of the book Star because of the imaginative view on things. The fish hook page probably helped a lot of kindergartens understand the meaning of the book. Adri, the main character asked his dad what he was talking about one day. The dad gave a beautiful answer. He talked about lots of things, not just one, which was really nice.
Linda made the book really come to life with the illustrations. The stones on the letters, the 3D fish, all of it. But my favorite was the fish hook. Since she was using fish as people, she thought of a problem the might have. A fish hook was a great idea because it’s a real problem fish have! The fish hook might resemble a feeling, or a everyday problem. This book means a lot to me, because I am the one who does not like to follow the current in some things.
This book really makes me appreciate the world and the way it is. It kind of adds on to our fourth grade big topic, sustainability. Sustainability is when you make the world a better place for the next generation. I feel like Linda really tried to put it in the book and still go along with the other things she was talking about, and she did a great job with it. I hope you will read this book someday.
Our class has been working on researching. I learned something very important: NOTES! Yes, notes. Why? Okay, so we each had a partner and every partnership had an animal. My animal was the alligator. We got a bunch of books about alligators, and we read them! But we didn’t just read, we took notes, lots of notes. We came up with five subtopics, alligator communication, types of alligators, alligators are good parents, alligator meals and alligator hunting. We studied important vocabulary, not copying and much more. It was hard work researching, but I managed to get all the information down. Then I put it into a Google Slide presentation, in comic book form! Here it is…
Our animal book was just practice, because something bigger was coming. My country studies book. We had to choose a country to study. I chose Egypt. We took notes and more notes from some library databases and just facts that I already knew. We took note after note after note. Then I put my information in captions, my side information into speech bubbles (for my character to say), and visual information into pictures. I spent about two weeks to complete it. I worked hard for those weeks and I put a lot of effort into it. I hope you enjoy!
Our controlled quad is doing great. Since there’s no bees in the classroom, we have been taping the plants for pollination. We observed that the petals of the flowers are falling off. Mrs. Luciano told us that it was normal. “The flower petals are falling of so it can grow seed pods” She had said. Our plant is green, bright bright green. It has a few yellow leaves, but that’s okay. Our seed pods are turning brown and it is getting ready to fall. The plant is almost at the end of its life. We are going from seed to seed. Our manipulated plant has no flowers, is dying and looks like it got zapped by lightning. There’s buds, but I don’t think their going to be flowers any time soon.
Our experiment is over, we got our conclusion. We put our manipulated plant on a diet of regular water, not dyed. But the second round of flowers just came, and there’s flowers galore. I looked today and I saw something horrifying, our manipulated plant dyed! I am so sad. But it proved our experiment. I’d like to say a thank you to Mrs. Luciano, for teaching us and helping us along, the school district, for the seeds. Thank you for this wonderful opportunity!
Our class has been studying plants. We have been doing experiments. We got two quads and put soil and seed in each hole. A quad is a box with four holes in it. We have a controlled quad and a manipulated quad. The controlled quad has everything, water, light, dirt, etc. But our manipulated quad, we have dying the water red before giving it to the plant. Our hypothesis was, “If we dye the water instead of giving the plant regular water than the plant will cease to grow and will become unhealthy because the water has chemicals in it.”
We have been dying the water strongly but we kept giving it the same amount of water, three drops. Over the week I noticed that our manipulated plant was turning red and brown. Then, one day one of the manipulated plants became crunchy and red, and it died! But our controlled plant was fine and now has flowers. Our manipulated plant was about 5 ½ cm and grew to 7 cm. But our controlled plant was 4 ½ cm and it grew to 10 ½ cm. Our manipulated plant is reddish greenish brownish and our controlled one is green and has yellow flowers.
Yesterday’s goal was to carry as many beads as possible on the train without falling off or the train ceasing to levitate. We put more magnet on the track. We did this because we learned from a previous experiment that two magnets can hold one higher. We put two ring magnets on a pencil and it levitated. Than we added a ring magnet on the bottom. The magnet on the top floated higher. Therefore two magnets are stronger than one.
Our final track was two strip magnets on each side, doubling the magnetic field. Our train had two tiny strip magnets on each side. This makes the train levitate across the track with weights on it. I think the train was successful because the weight on it was even and the poles were alike on either side.
This was our final drawing for our train.
We used the EDP (engineering design process) to help us. The first stage “Ask” is a stage where we ask questions that relate to our problem. The next stage, the “Imagine” stage, we brainstorm some ideas and chose the idea the we think is right. The next stage, the “Plan” stage, we draw our final idea out and get some things we need. The next stage, the “Create” stage is when we, well, create it! The last stage, the “Improve” stage is when we look at our design and say, “Did it work?” and “How can I make this better?” My experience with my group was great. Thank you to Mrs. Luciano for teaching us about this and helping us along, and thank you to the school district for the magnets! I had a wonderful time. Thank you.
Today we went all the way back to the imagine stage. Then we drew our plan out. We put two strip magnets on the track and two strip magnets on the train. We took a long time placing and making the magnets face the right way. We had to make sure the magnetic poles on the train were facing the same poles on the track. I never realized how important tape was for mini maglev trains. Then we talked about it and moved the magnets a little… AND IT FLOATED ACROSS THE BOX!
Sadly, we failed to get it right away, but after a long time it finally worked. Yay! We learned that sometimes it takes one little millimeter push to change everything. We had to put tape in certain places because if we did not, the magnets will fall! The north and south poles were very important to us.
Next time we are going to carry “people” across the box on the train. We are going to modify our train to carry as many as possible. I look forward to working with my group and I already have a big fat idea to crush Monday’s goal!
In class we have been working on “Maglev trains”. You might wonder: “ What is a maglev train?” A maglev train uses magnets to levitate on the tracks instead of rolling on the track. On the bottom of the train, there are magnets that are facing north or south. On the top of the track, there are magnets facing the SAME way that the magnets on the train are facing. The magnets will repel and the train will levitate. With a push, the train could go up to a speed of 3500 k/h. We are creating mini ones inside our classroom. My group used the “ Engineering Design Process” to create it. We put three strip magnets on the track and five disk magnets on the train.
This is our train now
But, it did not work. We took it apart, took stuff away, planned more things, put stuff together and cut some foam. Now we have one side up but the other side is down. We failed on getting the train to float but got our main design. Now we have to flip some magnets and add more tape. Now we need to go back to the planning stage. I saw that we needed to work on how to find our poles and put them the right way. Next time we are going to level our train out.
My experience with my group was awesome. I think we work great together. We had some disagreements but we kept going and now we are going to plan our design again. My group is wondering if our original idea was correct and our magnets were not placed the right way. I look forward to work on our maglev train again.
