Category Archives: Writing

Immigration Project Reflection

5th Grade, Social Studies, Writing, ,

In school, we just finished a very different and awesome project that is called Immigration. We had to interview a person who is an immigrant and make a video about them based on the answers they gave to the questions that we made. After we made the interview we had to make a script which helped us make our video. For the project, I interviewed Nadia Roumani, who is my mom’s work partner.

I learned a lot because of this project because it gave us the chance to interview someone which I really enjoyed. One of the many things I learned during the process of this project was when I was making the questions because I learned that you cannot just ask a yes or no question, you have to ask a question that will get the interviewee to start talking.

I also learned how to use Adobe. For the other projects, we were working on, we always used WeVideo and I forgot how to use Adobe, this was a great chance to learn more about it.

One thing that I found that was really surprising to me was when Nadia said that her home country, Morocco had a queen and king. Before she told me I thought that it had the same government and that it had a president.

One of the things that were frustrating was Adobe because the narration wasn’t really similar to WeVideo. We had to press a button and hold it and a lot of times I accidentally stopped the recording and didn’t realize. Another problem with the narration was that if I started before 1 second then the narration would glitch and it would be ruined. My slides were also very long and mostly I tried to go faster so it would be under 6 seconds. Lastly, I tried to make my voice sound the same as the other slides which was a little challenging for me. I didn’t really like adobe after these problems.

One of the good things that I liked about Adobe is that you could play around and resize the photos. I also liked the transitions and the theme.

Overall, I really enjoyed doing this project, and the part I loved best was when we got to conduct an interview.

Here is my final immigration video!

Refugee by Alan Gratz

5th Grade, Reading, Writing

In school we are reading a book called  Refugee by Alan Gratz, I wonder how all of the characters get the confidence to do things, and how they get so brave?

I think that the war expands their braveness because they have to act like grown-ups, grow up quickly, give things up, and learn to survive which takes great braveness. For example, Josef had to slap his dad in the face and talk about him behaving at the check-up place, which took a lot of bravery because his dad is kind of the boss but he had no choice, he had to do it to survive. 

Secondly, the character Isabel had to do two things to survive. The first thing was saving a man from drowning. She risked her life for her best friend’s dad. I think she did this because her grandmother drowned and she didn’t want the same thing to happen to Ivan’s dad, she didn’t think about what would happen to her. The second thing she did that was very brave is giving up her trumpet for gasoline to get away from danger. Her trumpet was really special to her and she really loved it but she had to trade it for gasoline to survive.

Lastly, Mahmod had to take care of his siblings when their home was being destroyed. He was in shock but he had to gather up all of his courage in him and find somewhere safe to stay.

Another thing I wonder about, in the book Refugee by Alan Gantz is what would the refugees’ journeys be like without the things that are helping the most?

I think that one thing that helped Isabel is the trumpet that she traded in for gas. If Isabel hadn’t had the trumpet then she wouldn’t be able to get gas which would cause the boat not to start and without the boat moving they flee away from danger.

One thing that was important for Mahmud’s family was their money. With their money they could afford the ship and a hotel, but if they didn’t have money they might’ve lived in the streets and they couldn’t afford a boat.

 

Rube Goldberg #2

5th Grade, Rube Goldberg, Science, Writing

We are still working on our Rube Goldberg. In the last blog post, I was talking about what was a Rube Goldberg, my difficulties, my solutions, and my inspirations. In this post, I am going to talk about the next step in this project.

Some of the failures I had in this part of the project was that sometimes the books wouldn’t topple over or stop midway. The ball also didn’t go the right way. And the marble would go out of the cardboard thing. I didn’t have that many failures. I also found a way to improve them so it wouldn’t happen again.

In my Rube Goldberg, I improved a lot. I think I improved every single step in my Rube Goldberg. The first thing I improved in my project was the first step. I pulled the ribbon and the shoulder rest got lifted and the ball was supposed to go but it went backward or it didn’t hit where it was supposed to. So I put a book beside the ramp so it would go straight where I wanted it to go. The third step was the part where the books would topple over each other, but the last few books weren’t hard enough so I changed them to hardcover books. The most helpful and important improvement I did was putting the Jenga blocks. It added one extra step and it made my Rube Goldberg easier. Instead of the book pushing the marble to go the book pushes the Jenga blocks and the last block would push the marble. We changed this because the book sometimes wouldn’t push the marble. Also even if the book did push the marble, the marble would stop exactly when it was going in the cardboard. But a bad side of the Jenga blocks was that I had to set the Jenga blocks and the books 53 times because it took me 53 tries. We also put tape over the cardboard slide because the marble always got out while going down. The last thing I did was change the last step. I have to thank my dad for the last part because he helped me a lot with the last step. If I hadn’t changed it I would have to do a lot more tries than I have right now.

I also had to change the last step of my sketch because my first design didn’t work and it was very complicated.

I had more success than failure this time. One very big success for me was that the tractor plugged in the computer! I thought this wouldn’t work when I did it, but it did work! Another success I had with my Rube Goldberg is that the Jenga blocks pushed down the marble. And after I improved the cardboard thing, The marble could go down without falling once!

Now onto the video part of the project. This part was actually the hardest part for me. I had to figure out a way to catch the marble going downstairs. We had to put different cameras every few steps of my Rube Goldberg. We had to find a way that they wouldn’t see the other cameras. Also when I was finished, I had to sort all of the fails and other things in a folder. Another thing we had to do was find the part of the success’s in each device. We all took everything in one whole video so we had to cut the parts that were the success parts and put them together.

Some things I learned in this project were how to make a good video, to keep trying, that it feels good to succeed,  how a complex machine could complete a simple task, and the six simple machines that help people’s lives easier.

Even though this was a kind of fun project, I am kind of glad that I am done with it. When I had the successful run I was so happy!! It felt like a rock had been lifted off my back!

 

Constituion Project Blog Post

5th Grade, Social Studies, Writing

I think that the purpose of this fun project was to learn about different topics in the past. This is related with our Constitution unit because the 19th amendment was in the constitution and it was the amendment that gave women the right to vote. A lot of women fought for their right. Women vote today because of women in the past. We should be grateful for the women who fought in the past. They organized a lot of societies and protests. I chose this topic because I was really interested in the 19th amendment, Also before I researched this topic I realized that I had never thought about the women who made voting a amendment.

There were a lot of steps to this project and the first step to this was to pick your topic and research it. At first I was going to pick civil rights then I changed my mind because I knew a lot about civil rights and not a lot about the 19th amendment so I  chose the 19th amendment. Then we had to research the topic. I used a lot of resources for this project.

The second step to this project was the script. I thought that this step was going to be easy but it was challenging to make it less than 6 seconds and not more than 15 second. Fist i thought that all slides had to be 15 seconds. And I didn’t know what I was supposed to write in the script.

The third step was the slideshow part. We had to put our script in the speaker notes and practice it out loud. The we had to put pictures in it and record.
The recording part was the last step to this project. It took a lot of tries to make it perfect. It almost took like 15 tries. It took a lot of patience. Even if I did every slide right the time would sometimes be over. Also another problem was that I made a lot of mistakes while recording.

I think that the most challenging part of this project was the recording because you had to try a lot before you got it right. It was also challenging because the screencast always went overtime.

The part that was most enjoyable for me was the research because i learned a lot of facts also I went to new sites that I didn’t know. I learned a lot of things about the 19th amendment. One of the things I learned was that the women did a lot of things for women to vote. Another thing I learned is that a lot of women believed  that they should have the right to vote. Also when they were rejected they didn’t back out.

I really liked this project and it was similar to the ignite we did last year in 4th grade. I learned a lot about the constitution and the 19th amendment. The thing i am most proud of is my screencast recording and my slideshow.

Personal Narrative and Reflection

5th Grade, Writing, ,

One writing technique that I used was dialogue. One example of this is when my mom and dad were having a conservation on the phone after the crash. My dad and mom were talking about the crash.

Another example of when I used dialogue is when the crash happened. In the car my dad checked if I was okay. Also the workers in the salon asked me questions and I answered them. This shows that I used a lot of dialogue.

I want to improve the part where the crash happens. I want to improve it because it is not that descriptive.  I think that if I worked on that part the reader would feel and understand how I felt and how scary it was.

When I look back at my writing “The Crash” I am proud of the dialogue I used.

One example of that is in the first paragraph I used a lot of dialogue there. I am proud of the dialogue I used because in the past years I wasn’t that good at putting dialogue in my writing.

If you haven’t read my story recommend that you read it.

My Narrative

Writing

“Is there anything else we have to pack up?!” mom asked us.

“I don’t think so!” my dad answered.

“Did you return your violin?” Mom reminded me.

“Oh yeah” I said. I had forgotten to return my violin because of all the excitement. We  were going to Turkey to see our family. I had been waiting for a year for this day to come. I was overloaded with excitement. My dad said that we had to return the violin because it was a rental. My dad went outside and waited for me to get my violin case. I flew upstairs and got my violin from my closet, and headed downstairs. I sat in my seat and buckled my seat belt. My dad typed in the GPS where we were going.Then we went. After a while we stopped at the red light. We were almost there. I could see the store.The green light was on, my dad started to move. Then a black car appeared at the side. “CRASH!” Everywhere went white out of the steering wheel there came an airbag. The car was making a honking sound that was so loud I couldn’t hear myself. While everything was happening I was in shock. My heart stopped for a second. Then I broke down in tears. “Ahhhhh!!!” I shouted. My dad quickly turned his head. 

 “Are you hurt!” he said in a scared voice.

“No!” I said in tears. Everyone in the street looked up. We got out of the car. My head was dizzy and my legs were trembling while I cried. The workers in the salon came outside to see what had happened. When they saw that there was a crash and that I was crying, they came and took me inside to calm down.They gave me water. When I calmed down they asked me questions.”How old are you?” one worker asked 

“Ten” I answered and looked outside. I was so grateful that nobody got hurt. I looked at the car to see how it was damaged. The door was bent and scratched. The police and ambulance came. My dad signaled for me to come. I got up from the couch and headed to the door. The  paramedics  checked me to see if I was hurt. Then he checked my dad and asked, 

“Does anywhere hurt?” 

 My dad told him that his leg felt like it hurt.The police were also there. He was asking questions to the man that crashed into us. I eavesdropped on their conservation. “What did the traffic light say?” he asked. I leaned closer to her to see what he was saying. 

“Well, I went on the yellow light,” he admitted. Ohh so that’s what happened I thought WHY couldn’t he wait for the green light. Then a truck came up and pulled both of the cars. The police said to follow it. A car came while I was crossing the road. I squeezed my dad’s hand. When we arrived at the shop, the owner asked “ What can I help you with?” his voice echoed in the place. When we told him that our car was here he guided us to the man behind the desk. He was talking on the phone. We sat on the chairs waiting for the man to be done. After he was done my dad got up and talked about what we had to do. While they were talking I couldn’t get over what just happened. I was in shock. There were butterflies in my stomach and they wouldn’t stop flying. After my dad was done talking the man gave him his card. “Thank you so much” my dad said he was so grateful

“My pleasure,” he said with a smile. We walked out of the shop. My dad called a taxi. I looked where we had crashed and the shop we were going to was right there! We waited there for a while. A black car came and we assumed that it was ours.We got in and the first thing I did was buckle up my seat belt. My dad got his phone out and called my mom. When she answered my dad said “ We had a crash” There was no sound for a second. Then my mom said “Did anyone get hurt” I could hear the concern in her voice. “ Thankfully, nobody got hurt,” he answered. When we arrived home, my siblings were waiting for me at the door. When I arrived they all asked questions.”How did it happen?” 

“What happened?”  ” How did it happen” But there was no time to answer their questions so we had to go to the airport. We carried out the luggage. Then a car came and we moved the luggage to the trunk. And went in I leaned out the window and thought of everything that happened. And realized how much I’d been through in one day. I closed my eyes and went to sleep. 

 

 

 

 

Land of Stories 4 by Chris Colfer

5th Grade, Reading, Writing

Hi! I finished the Land of Stories book 3 and now I am on the 4th one. Conner and Alex are twins and the main characters in this book. I think that Alex is very determined and brave.

One example of Alex being brave is when she tries to find out who the masked man is. Alex, Goldilocks, Jack, Red Riding Hood, and Conner all go into books to try to stop him. Alex does not hesitate a bit. She is very confident. Even though her brother and Peter pan  are captured by the Masked Man she does not give up, In fact it motivates her to work harder and stop the Masked Man.

Another example is when she was kicked out of the fairy council by the fairies because Alex had gotten mad at them and she used her powers on his brother and the fairies. So the fairies kicked her out of the fairy council because all she thought about was capturing the Mask Man. Even then she did not quit.

This shows that she is very brave and determined.

Land of Stories by Chris Colfer

5th Grade, Reading, Writing

The book I am reading right now is Land of Stories book 3 by Chris Colfer.   I love the Land of Stories series because it is full of mystery and it is also fantasy. There are two main characters in the book, Alex and Conner.

In the book “Land of Stories” the author  describes a lot about the two characters and their history. The twins live in different worlds. Alex lives in the fairy tale world and Conner lives in the normal world. Their father died in a car accident. Conner was in the airplane returning from Germany. Conner went in the bathroom on the airplane and was talking to Mother Goose from the magic mirror. And he got caught talking with mother goose by Bree. And he had to explain everything to her.

Conner and Bree try to find a way to go the fairy tale world because the fairy tale world is invaded by the french army.  And then when they come to the fairy tale world they try to stop the french army with Alex.