Capstone Blog #3

Posted on June 14, 2022 by Chloe Jin

Capstone is the biggest project of the year, it was a fun and challenging project. I had to choose a topic to research. My topic was how cars have changed to become safer and faster. I also had to research and interview an expert on your to get as much information as possible. Finally, I had to present what I learned about cars.

Researching was the most important and hardest part of the project because you need the information to make a good project/presentation. I had to have five resources I used to get information about my topic. I had to get a lot of information which was stored in a slideshow. Researching was challenging because I would get the same information a lot. I would have to look for new information in new resources. I learned that researching is challenging, but the information you get will help you a lot.

After I finished researching, I had to make a presentation about all my information. There were three ways I could present my information. A TED Talk, an Ignite, or a Movie. In a TED Talk, you show your information orally, you can have a slideshow, but you don’t need to. In an Ignite, you express your findings in a slideshow and talk in front of everybody, the slides advance every fifteen seconds I didn’t do an Ignite because I didn’t want to time my slides to exactly fifteen seconds for each slide. In a movie, you show your findings in a WeVideo or an Adobe, you don’t need to talk in front of people. Pictures are required and you need to record a voice-over on the pictures. I chose to present my information in a movie because I like making movies and I am good with technology. I didn’t want to do a TED Talk or an Ignite because you need to memorize your script and you can mess up in front of everyone, in a movie, you can do things over and over again until it is perfect.

Some challenges I had with my presentation were that sometimes I couldn’t find the right picture to go with my information, I had to search for more pictures or change the information I was presenting.

I learned a lot about cars and research over the course of this project. I learned that researching can be challenging but you should keep trying. Also, sometimes things won’t work the way you want them to so you have to improvise. I also learned a lot about how cars have changed over time to become safer and faster. Cars have become faster because they have stronger engines. Cars have become safer because of new technology. Capstone was super fun and amazing project, I learned a lot, and I look forward to presenting and finishing my project.

Capstone Blog #2

Posted on June 10, 2022 by Chloe Jin

The purpose of the interview is so you can gather more information about your topic, the person you are interviewing should have new information. I think that the interview is very helpful because I got a lot of new information from it.

The process of figuring out who to interview was easy, my parents helped me find an interview. I thought I could interview someone who was a mechanical engineer or knew a lot about cars so that I could get as much information as possible. I found out that there was a place called, Mercedes of White Plains that fixed cars. I interviewed a person that was a service advisor named Frank DeMaio. When I wrote my interview questions, I included my sub-questions so I could get more information. Also, I came up with the rest of my questions by asking about safety, the speed of the car, and how the engine affects the speed of the car. Some of my questions are, what safety equipment has been added to modern cars for passengers and for the environment? I came up with this question because I knew I needed modern safety equipment so I could compare it to ancient safety equipment. Another question is, explain how hybrid cars (cars that run on gasoline and electricity) help the environment. I asked this question because one of my sub-questions is, how are modern cars safer for passengers and for the environment? I needed to know about safety for the environment.

My experience conducting the interview was good. The interview didn’t go as expected. The interview didn’t go as expected because it only took five minutes because the person that I interviewed already answered the questions and had them written down so I didn’t have to ask him. Something that I learned was that before modern cars, everything was metal and big and bulky in the old days because they thought that it would be strong. Today, we have impact zones that spread the impact throughout the car instead of the car getting hit in one place. The impact zones help because they lessen the impact on the car because they spread the impact throughout the car.

The interview was very helpful, I got a lot of information that I didn’t know before the interview. I look forward to making and presenting my Capstone project. I hope my project is great.

Capstone Blog #1

Posted on May 10, 2022 by Chloe Jin

Capstone is a project where students come up with a topic to research, you have to have a main question that you answer and 5 sub-questions to help you answer it. You need 5 resources to help you research your topic. You also need to interview an expert about your topic to get more information. After you have interviewed an expert, have 5 resources, 5 sub-questions, and 1 main inquiry question, you turn it all into a presentation, you have 3 ways to present, a TED talk, an ignite, or a movie. I think Capstone is a great project and it pushes us to do better.

To come up with my topic, I had to list topics that I was interested in or knew about, so it would be easier to research. I chose the topic of cars because I am interested in how cars have changed over time. I needed to choose a certain topic within cars so I thought of choosing the topic of how cars work and function but then I decided to do my Capstone on how cars have evolved to become safer and faster because I was more interested in that.

To come up with a main inquiry question I had to make questions and see which ones I was interested in. I was interested in a few so it was challenging to pick one out of many. I decided to research the question how have cars evolved to become safer and faster?

Coming up with my sub-questions was both easy and challenging at the same time, the first three sub-questions were easy to come up with because I knew I needed the answers to those questions to answer my inquiry question. My first 3 sub-questions are, what were the first cars like? What were some changes after the first cars? And, what are modern cars like? The other sub-questions were hard to come up with, but because my main inquiry question was how have cars evolved to become safer and faster? I knew I would need information on safety in cars and the speed, my fourth and fifth sub-questions are on speed and safety. My fourth and fifth questions are, what safety equipment has been added to modern cars to

So far, Capstone has been fun and challenging and I look forward to finishing and presenting my Capstone project.’

Immigration Blog Post #1

Posted on April 8, 2022 by Chloe Jin

In our immigration unit, we learned about push/pull factors. To understand immigration better, I am conducting an interview with an immigrant, the immigrant that I chose was Yasong Jin. Once I had the interview finished, I’d have to transform the information into a Wevideo or an adobe creative cloud video.

The process of preparing for the interview was hard, I had to watch BrainPOP videos and the immigration videos of fifth-graders before me to help create good questions. I had to create a list of twenty questions so I could have multiple questions to choose from. I couldn’t have more than fifteen questions or less than ten questions. The questions had to be open-ended, which means they had to be answered with more than one word. I had to consider if the questions I chose were important or not so important, it was hard to decide which questions should be cut out and which questions should remain.

The interview was conducted in person. It didn’t really go as expected because it was hard to get my immigrant to go into further detail, I had to tell him things like Describe…Tell more about…why or why not? I could get enough information. I learned that when you conduct an interview, you have to be patient and let the person you are interviewing get comfortable and you have to allow them to remember things. The most interesting thing I learned from the person I interviewed was that his family taught him how to cook when he immigrated to America.

In conclusion, the immigration interview was hard and I learned a lesson, I learned that you have to be patient, kind and let the person you are interviewing get comfortable. Also, I hope that the next part of this project is more fun than this part is.

Rube Goldberg Blog Post #2

Posted on March 14, 2022 by Chloe Jin

Overall, the process of designing the Rube Goldberg machine was fun and also challenging. The most challenging part was designing the machine, I had to alter it two times and it took fifty-three tries. Also, the car kept missing the block so the machine couldn’t function. When it finally succeeded, the inclined planes that the car was to run down had to be carefully placed and aligned with the block.

The easiest parts of the Rube Goldberg were drawing the sketch and making the video, making the video was easy because I knew what to do and place in it because of my script. Drawing the sketch was easy because I just had to draw the plan and what I predicted/thought would happen, I wouldn’t have to actually test the design/plan until I got to the designing and testing stage.

I learned that sometimes your invention won’t work and that you have to keep trying and changing things to make it successful.

Making the video was easy because I had a whole document devoted to it, the script was very detailed (narration, hear, see, etc.) Also, I had all the video clips and pictures that I was going to use downloaded into wevideo and I just had to put them inside the timeline.

(Rube Goldberg machine sketch)

The sketch I made doesn’t look anything like the final build, I had to change things because I realized that the sketch would never work.

(Rube Goldberg machine video)

The resources I used to make my Rube Goldberg machine were, “Sprice on America’s Got Talent” and, “Joseph’s Machines” The simple machines I used in my Rube Goldberg machine were, two inclined planes and a wheel and axle.

Rube Goldberg Blog Post 1

Posted on February 18, 2022 by Chloe Jin

A Rube Goldberg is a contraption with multiple steps to do a simple thing. For example, a Rube Goldberg could use eight steps to do a simple thing like knocking over a cup.

Designing my Rube Goldberg was challenging, Some materials that are used in the Rube Goldberg are two levers, seven balls, a toy car, car tracks, cups, an inclined plane, and a book.

Something really frustrating was that I couldn’t find a toy car, it made me go crazy until somebody helped me to find one. And then I realized that I didn’t need two toy cars, I only needed one.

A revision I made was when I changed a pulley to a lever, I saw that two pulleys wouldn’t be compatible with my setup because, in my basement, there weren’t two hooks to hold the pulleys up, there were only one. Another revision I made was when my teacher (Mrs. Robert) told me that I couldn’t have blocks repeating three times in a row.

Instead of having the blocks three times in a row and a pulley, I changed those materials to an inclined plane, cups, a lever, some blocks, balls, and a book.

Before I tested the contraption, I realized that the balls on step 5 could not possibly go up the ramp, so I changed the design. The goal is the same, knock down a cup. But the steps and its design are different.

Somebody’s hand will push the car into the blocks, the blocks will fall on the track so the ball will go down and hit the block, the block will hit the box which will hit a cup which will hit another cup with a ball in it, the ball will roll out and knock down the last cup.

When somebody helped me realize that this plan would never work, that the ball inside the cup wouldn’t be able to knock the next cup down, the design changed. Now a car will come down two inclined planes and hit a block supporting a book, on top of the book there is a ball, when the car hits the block, the book will turn into an inclined plane and the ball will roll down, hit more blocks which will hit a metal book lid. That lid will hit a cup which will knock down the final cup.

Testing this design was very exasperating, the ball that was supposed to hit the blocks kept missing the blocks and hitting the metal box lid instead.

Constitution Project Reflection

Posted on January 21, 2022 by Chloe Jin

I choose to research the question “what is Freedom of Speech and how does it work?” because I wanted to know what kinds of speech is free and what kinds of speech is prohibited. I also wanted to research Freedom of Speech because Freedom of Speech is the thing that gives us the ability to express our opinions without government restraint. Being able to freely speak and express opinions without government restraint is important so I wanted to deeply research Freedom of Speech.

In this project, I found finding resources challenging. I also found that getting information that isn’t the same was challenging because I went to different websites and some of the websites said similar things about Freedom of Speech. For example, history.com said, “While freedom of speech pertains mostly to the spoken or written word, it also protects some forms of symbolic speech. Symbolic speech is an action that expresses an idea.” And Legal Information Institute said, “You can exercise the freedom of speech is a direct (in words) or a symbolic (in an action) way.”

Overall I think I did a good job explaining my question and what I learned in my screencast, I answered my question, and I explained what is allowed in free speech and what speech is prohibited.

Welcome to 5th Grade!

Posted on September 30, 2021 by Chloe Jin

Hello, I’m in 5th grade we are the oldest kids (and the coolest) in the school. I’ve been waiting for the start of fifth grade.

The last 18 – 20 months haven’t been so great because we finished third grade online, and fourth grade was hybrid for the first half of the year. When we were hybrid we had cohorts, cohort A and cohort B. Cohort A went to school in the morning, and cohort B went to school in the afternoon. We also had specials on zoom. Then for the second half of fourth grade, we had school for the whole day, and instead of working in our regular classroom, we moved into the library.

I am looking forward to math this year because I want to learn quicker, new strategies to solve math problems such as the rules of divisibility. I also want to learn new things like exponents and factorial. Another thing I want to work on in math is decimals because over the summer I forgot some steps about how to multiply and divide decimals.

Bar Model Tutorial 1

Posted on January 31, 2020 by Chloe Jin

This is my first attempt on making a guide for bar modeling it was inspired by khan acadamy. We worked hard on the guide but we still have mistakes and room for improvement. We used google slides and then screencastify for recording the google slides. Our computer teacher made a folder for our classes bar model guides.

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