Blog Post 2 Capstone

Posted on May 18, 2023 by eling30

After doing the interview, I felt like a rock had been lifted off my back. The interview was rather hard, not only do you have to ask the questions, but you also have to kind of get into a conversation with the person. I did my interview over the zoom, there were no technology issues or anything so it was rather easy setting the zoom up.

Before your interview and all that stuff, you have to find someone to interview. There were many ways of finding someone to interview. Some people have people that they know already that are experts on their subject. For me, I didn’t know who to interview so I had to search websites to find the right person. You could have done two people or one person. As for me, I did 2 people. They both work at the Hockey Hall Of Fame. (Miragh Bitove, Kevin Shea) Both were experts and helped me a lot. The interviews were easy and challenging. At some aspects like tech it was easy, but others like getting into a conversation I found was rather hard.

The interview experience was great and I really enjoyed it. The interview went as expected and everything went very well. I learned a lot of things like trying to find an expert on your project and working the time out. The experience was the best part of all, not only did you get to talk to an expert on your topic that is famous, but I also got to see some of the stuff in the hockey hall of fame.

Up to now, I have really enjoyed everything throughout the project. The interview research and all of the things. The capstone project can be challenging and hard so you have to overcome the challenges. I have learned a lot of things about my topic and people along the way.

Blog Posts 1 Capstone

Posted on May 8, 2023 by eling30

Have you ever heard of the project Capstone? Hi, my name is Ethan and I’m in 5th grade. Capstone is a project that includes research from websites and interviewing an expert that knows about your topic. I feel pretty good right now about the project and I think I’m making a lot of progress in the research part.

I had two topics, the first one was about electricity. The main inquiry question was what would the world be like if there were no electricity? But later I started to think the question could not be answered. So my teacher and I came up with a topic that I was interested in and could be answered. That topic was hockey (NHL), my main inquiry question is: Who is the most influential hockey player in the NHL? I chose this topic because I like the NHL and I know a lot of things about the topic.

Coming up with the main inquiry question wasn’t the hardest part. But having it is really important. The main inquiry question should have something to do with the topic and the sub questions. Most of the challenges were with the sub questions. You had to come up with at least 5 of them and it has to relate to your main inquiry question.

The process of coming up with my sub questions was difficult and annoying. Most of the time you have to make a lot of changes and sometimes you have to change the whole question. Sometimes when you have your main inquiry question but you don’t have the sub questions, you have to change the whole topic. These are my sub questions: Who is the most influential player in NHL history?

“Who had the most impact on the NHL as a coach?
Who had the most impact as a goalie in the NHL?

Has fans made an impact on teams?

Which captain had the most impact on the NHL?
Which individual had the most impact on the NHL?

Which defenseman had the most impact on the NHL?

Which hockey team has had the most impact on the NHL?

Which manager has had the most impact on the NHL?

Which trainer has had the most impact on the NHL?

Do players have an impact on new teams?”

These are the sub questions that my teacher and I came up with. We also started to try and find somebody to interview. The person that you are interviewing has to be an expert from your topic. We have to do research about all of the sub questions. We also learned how to find websites that can be trusted with collecting information.

So far in this project I think I’m doing really good on the main inquiry questions and the sub questions. We started researching all of the sub questions. Throughout the 2 weeks I think I have made a lot of progress and improvement in research and coming up with questions.

Immigration Project

Posted on March 31, 2023 by eling30

This is the immigration story of Lynn Ling. At first, we had to start by making 10 to 15. Then we had to put it in timeline order. The Things I Love project was very similar. It was all of the things they love instead of what I love. We had to interview someone that immigrated here from a different country.

I had to record the whole thing, so I can catch up if I missed out on anything. The interview had to be silent so it could be clear. We had to make 2 documents. One for the questions, and the other for the answers. Since I was interviewing my mom, I did it in person. It was a lot easier because we can focus more and do it in one sitting. We had to find a time that would work for both of us. I used my ipad to record the whole thing. I used my chromebook to type what she said. Instead of asking only the questions I wrote, I elaborated through every question. It took about 45 minutes and the interview was very successful.

After I got all of the information, I had to write the narrative. The narrative was basically a thing to summarize the story. I also had to be in order so it would make a lot more sense when writing the script. When you were done with the narrative you would work on your script. This was when you would make slides and timing. Also you had to think about the captions on each slide. There had to be 30 slides at least, and 60 slides at the most. I had 32 slides. The timing was very annoying. If you just messed up a little, then you had to restart. The video itself had to be 3 minutes to 4 minutes. At the end when you were done with every single slide timing, you had to add all of the numbers up and see if it was enough. Then you had to bring in some pictures of your own and some stock photos. There had to be some type of actual photo of the person. You also had to choose the right caption on the slide for the photo.

After all, the project was really hard. There were a lot of small details that were very important. If you missed one or made a mistake, it was really hard to change. I learned a lot of new things about my mom. For example where she worked. Her family members, and friends. What happened when she first got to the U.S. This project was really fun in general and I enjoyed the project a lot. The video is below!

Bedford Challenge Course

Posted on November 17, 2022 by eling30

The field trip to the Bedford course all started when two buses left our school. I was on the first bus with basically all my friends. We sang songs on the bus and started chants. This experience was fun and I hope that you can hear and experience it as well.

When we got there it seemed like the place was a school. When we got there we dropped our stuff. Then we are selected into groups. After we went through the first stations. The first one was jumping rope to another platform. The goal is to make it there with everyone on the platform. The second element was like a bridge. We had to go through it without touching each other. After we were finished there was another element including thin beams. The trees were checkpoints. So when you fall after you touch a tree you start where the tree is not the beginning. Before we knew it, it was lunch.

At lunch we sat on the logs that we first came here, We talked about our experience in the first few ones. There were a lot of wild bugs including bees. Many kids were afraid or maybe even allergic to them. After maybe 20 minutes of eating. The counselor there told us to clean up and make it look like what we came before. We went to the fourth station where you can turn into a tree. You try to make everybody finish to the end. It included teamwork. We finished up the last stations, which included walking on a very thin bean, and trying to make it to the end with three blocks which are platforms. The only tool you have is a short wooden board that didn’t make it to the other platform. Before we knew it we had to leave. The bus ride back was great, we told memories of the course and sang songs. Altogether it was all pretty fun.

I learned that teamwork is important in these types of courses, not only these courses but also life to life. I have enjoyed this experience and I hope you enjoyed reading this article.

Halloween

Posted on November 4, 2022 by eling30

Did you know that Halloween comes from Ireland? Well the word hallow actually comes from the Irish language. So does ween. All together they put it together and they got Halloween. Do you know any interesting facts about Halloween?

I couldn’t make it to the Halloween party at school on Friday. On Halloween day we had a parade for all the kids. We walked down the street with our costumes. After that all the parents went down to the field and took pictures of us. Then after they took pictures of us we got into a big group to take one picture. After the Halloween parade, we got back and did some games including math and Halloween spooky stories. We also colored in pictures of other Halloween options. That was it for the school Halloween events

We went up to the first house, it had a couple of good pieces but it was not what we were hoping to get. The second house was so good to me that my friend and I had to go there twice and pretend not to be the same person. They gave us 2 big bags of share size candy of our choice. After we did the houses on my friend Gabe’s street, we went to another road that was on the other side of the intersection. The candy there was not bad. Then there was another road we turned right which had a lot of kids on it. We knew a couple of the kids from our grade that were there. They were also getting ready to go so we got candy quickly. We finished up the street and headed back to Gabe’s house. Also in the meantime doing all of that my friends costume broke in the middle of the road. So that caused us to be late. When we got to his house his mom fixed the costume, it took about 20 minutes and we were late for our other friend’s party. After Gabe’s mom fixed up his costume we finally left. Then his dad took us to a friend’s party. There were about 10 kids at the whole party and we went to do some more trick or treating. The first house was really good. I filled up my bag just from that one house! We went through houses and got more and more candy until we barely had any energy left.

At the end, we all had a good time. We enjoyed every bit of it. Did you go trick or treating? Did you get a lot of candy?

Toy Theater 2.0 week 6

Posted on June 14, 2022 by eling30

Last week we started doing things like making a WeVideo and putting all the recording and backgrounds together. The thing that I hated most and the hardest part in my opinion now came editing the video. This was very hard because I never tried or even thought about doing it. As we did more of these things we had some more problems like glitchy backgrounds and not hearing what we were saying in the script. So now we are in a spot where we have to read and do something like saying our scripts a lot of times. So this is what happened so far in our project. I wish I can just get this done as fast as I can and finish this project.

Toy Theater 2.0 Week 7

Posted on June 14, 2022 by eling30

This week we finished editing the video. It was a lot of work but we managed to get it done. The hardest part of the project is now over and here is what I think about this project in general.

The first step was to look at different scripts. We looked at scripts that were assigned to nobody in this class. Then we got to find our group and our topic. After about a week we started typing the script. This was very easy for me because I don’t think typing is really hard. This took about 3 weeks. We revised it for about another 3 days. We then showed it to our teacher. Which we passed very easily. This was probably the easiest step of the project and we breezed through it. Then we had to figure out who would say what. This was easy because you got to decide who would say it. We had to time our thing. The video had to be close to 4 minutes and 30 seconds. We practiced a few times before we went to the computer lab. The next day we started doing backgrounds and puppets. We chose our puppets online and then we cut them out and colored them. We then did the backgrounds which took more time than the puppets. We then went to the computer lab and guess what the next day we found ourselves on the list of recordings. After we recorded we found many problems like the glare and many other light problems. This was the hardest step. We were facing more problems as we went. Our lab teacher decided to just rerecord which was amazing because we had a microphone which made us louder. After that we ran into a lot less problems like the glare and many other things. We worked and changed many things. And after 2 weeks we were finished! The hardest step is done and now we are basically done!

4th Grade Reflection

Posted on June 13, 2022 by eling30

The first major project was Ignite. We all thought that it was so hard since we never did this before. But we managed to get over it by practicing our parts. Honestly that was probably the hardest project we did in the school year.

The first actual project is I’m a mathematician. It was kind of like getting to know your things and like things you do often. We got to make our own emoji since our teacher really liked them.

Then the self portrait. It was inspired by the book Wonder which we read later in the year. It was the words that describe you.

Animal We Videos was another big project. We got to pick an animal from the world for me it ended up as a Lion. Lions were strong. And male lions are leaders. And that’s why I chose it. We had to do some research and put it all together to put some script together. We had to find images to put it all together and that was basically it for that project.

Writing essays for example personal essays, persuasive essays, Realist Fiction, we did that for about 3 weeks and then had a test about it. If you get the hang of it and the steps of writing it then it’s really not that hard. my personal favorite is always the persuasive essays. I enjoy trying to persuade someone to do something. Realistic Fiction was also pretty fun to do. I like the part where you make up a story but it can happen in real life. Personal essays I don’t really enjoy. Though it can be fun when you are writing something funny that happens to you. In the middle of fourth grade I remember reading a book called Flora and Ulsysess. It has one of the spectacular themes I have read in a book.

The native american slideshow project is one of my favorite projects. We got to pick who are partners were. our group were researching the Algonquins who were a native tribe who lived near New York. After we were finished we had to present it.

Diary Entries were great. My favorite part of them is that you get little teabags that you drag along the paper to make it look old like it was mad in the late 1700s. We also got to make up our own character. You had to include how you got to the new world and what was your job? What life were you having a hard one or easy? These things are things that you had to figure out. I also included my friend’s 1700s name like John Henry which was one of my friends and the fork night which was a ship that we came up with. That was basically it for that project.

Poetry Anthologies were another big project. It was basically smashing all your poems together to make about 20 poems and then add in some new ones. My favorite type of poem was the shape poem. You got to make shapes like a computer in google drawing. This project basically took about 6 weeks to finish. It was one of the longest projects we did. It was painful to type with my hands at one point I knew my hand would fall off. After many revisions and typing I showed it to my teacher and finally I was about to be finished with what would be the hardest longest project I did so far. I was looking forward to the next step of fourth grade.

Making comics was pretty fun and easy. We had to do a paper kind and a book creator type. I enjoyed typing and making the characters on the computer. I thought that the paper kind was fun as well but I think the digital kind was my favorite. Basically we had to make panels for every setting and scene. My favorite part of writing the paper kind is coloring things in. I did it carefully making sure the color was in the shape and not outside. I also enjoyed making characters on both of the kinds of comics. I liked the digital kind better because it’s more accurate. For example if you were supposed to draw it would not be that accurate. But if you use the digital kind then you can just type in a circle and there you get yourself a perfect circle all accurate. I also liked making the background and where the character is. I enjoyed doing both types of background on both comics but I liked the paper kind better. You sometimes can’t find the background you are looking for when on digital but on paper you can draw exactly what you want that you planned to do.

The last project that we had not finished yet is toy theater 2.0. I liked this project so far making puppets and doing the backgrounds my least favorite is saying the script. I find it very hard to read so much. My mouth is dry when I finish and I’m forced to drink water. The details in the puppet were really good. We also finished all the backgrounds. We just started recording in the computer lab yesterday. We did it in one try and today we will head to the computer lab again to learn the next step of the project. I’m looking forward to doing more and 100 percent finishing.

I think I did well by making new friends and going through hard times like when we are in an argument and we can’t figure anything out.

I would like to work on next year to make more new friends but still care about the old ones I made throughout the years. And eventually have better solving skills. Like solving problems with friends or solving problems on a test I think those things are really important to think of next year.

If I could have done something different that I already did that would be participating more positively. That means raising my hand more often. Showing respect. I think I only did that for half of the time. That I can work on.

Specials were kind of like my break from math reading and all those things. I enjoy every special but personally I like PE the best. I like being active and not just sitting at a desk doing nothing. Art is fun, you always get to create things with a paint brush to a pencil. My favorite part about art is that you can do whatever you want on a piece of paper using any material there is. Making something unique from others. Chorus was decent. Not my favorite but not bad. I like standing on the risers looking forward to the seats. Looking at the director as well in the meantime. Music was basically like a chorus but sometimes we get to do things like musical dots and pass the flying pumpkin. Spanish is also one of my favorites. I liked the stars when we earned them. 500 stars and then we get to go outside.

A tree fell on the fourth grade wing and we were forced to stay in a new classroom for the rest of the year. We started making this project in math that included making a new community with area and perimeter.

I liked fourth grade generally and I can’t wait to move on to summer!

Toy Theater 2.0 Week 2

Posted on June 2, 2022 by eling30

Research is one of the most important things of the project. It’s challenging because some of the databases do not have information on my topic that is the Declaration of Independence. things on other websites that have information might not have information that I was looking for.

The interesting part of this project is you never know when information is just going to pop up.

I usually use websites in our school databases that are usually helpful. But I also use books but just not as much.

I have a few concerns about how I will find even more information. Which might be a major problem.

Toy Theater 2.0 week 5