Category: 5th Grade

Capstone Blog Post #3

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For my final Capstone project, I made a video. I did this because I was more comfortable with making a video than any other format(TED talk, Screen castify). What I liked the most about my final project was putting the pictures together and finding just the right music. The challenges I encountered were recording my narration because sometimes in the video, my voice was too small or too loud and I had to fix them. Overall, I think I did really well on my final project. (Just saying, I am not bragging here….)

Here is my video! (I worked really hard for it, so please give me some comment if you have any opinions for it! *Also, I know my voice sounds weird sometimes.. Please forgive me for that! )

Capstone Blog Post #2

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In Capstone, you have to do an interview on someone for your project. For me, finding someone was hard because my family didn’t know anyone that is expert on Climate change. In class, my teacher said if you don’t have any relatives or someone you know for your topic, then you should ask the teachers at the high school and college. When I heard her saying it, I immediately searched for an environmental science teacher at the Scarsdale high school. There were about fifteen teachers so it was very hard to find. But in the end, I found one environmental teacher so I emailed him. I was really relieved. But I was wrong. He didn’t email me back and I had to find another teacher! I really panicked because he was the only environmental science teacher. So, I just picked a teacher randomly and then she emailed back to me a few hours after I emailed her. I was really really happy! I thought I was really lucky. 

 

My interviewee’s name was Ms. DeLuca. She works at the Scarsdale high school. When I emailed her, she said she was really busy with her students, so I emailed her the questions and she sent them back to me.

 

The questions were….

 

  1. What is Climate change?
  2. What are some negative effects on climate change?
  3. What are some ways people are working to solve Climate change?
  4. Which part of the world is most affected by Climate change?
  5. What are some ideas to solve climate change in the future?
  6. What is causing Climate change?
  7. When did Climate change become a social issue?

 

I had my friend’s help (Charlotte, it’s you!) to come up with the questions. Most of them are my Sub-Questions. The most important thing I learned from Ms. DeLuca was the question #4 because I had problems answering it and she helped me answer the question. Overall, the hardest thing was finding the interviewee because it took the longest time. In the end, I am really happy with my interview!

 

Capstone Blog Post #1

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My topic for my capstone is Climate change. I chose this for my capstone topic because my brother was watching a video about it and how it’s affecting the world and I thought, I think this would be a perfect topic for capstone when I saw him watching the video. 

 

My main inquiry question is “How are people working to solve the problems related to climate change?” I chose this question because I was really interested in how people around the world are trying to find a solution related to climate change. When choosing the main inquiry question, the curriculum wheel organizer really helped me. I tried and tried the combinations of the questions I wrote in the organizer and then it was done.

 The most challenging problem I faced when choosing the main inquiry question is that I had to brainstorm a lot. It was really hard but in the end, I was really happy with my main inquiry question. 

 

The process of coming up with sub questions was very hard too. For the first three questions, it was not hard to think of it but for the last two, I couldn’t think of anything. But with my teacher’s help, I was able to get some ideas. Without her help, I don’t think I had come up with the last two  questions by myself. The sub questions are “What is climate change?”, “What are some negative effects on climate change?”, “What are some ways people are working to solve climate change?”,”Which part of the world is most affected by climate change?”and “What are some ideas to solve climate change in the future?”

A Long Walk to Water Reflection

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A long walk to water is a read aloud book Mrs. Cooper read to us. The story is about a girl and a boy who live in Southern Sudan.

The part of the book that had the biggest impact on me is when there was a war in Southern Sudan and a lot of people died. I was very scared when Mrs. Cooper was reading that part. A lot of people had weapons to kill people who lived in Southern Sudan.

My overall thought is that if you work hard enough and try your best, you can achieve it. In the story, Salva wanted to help the people in Sudan. He achieved his goal by giving people of Sudan clean water. Nya worked really hard by walking to a lake everyday to get water for her and her family. It took a whole day to go and come back from the lake. In the end, she didn’t have to walk miles to get water and could get clean water whenever she wanted.

Halloween Party

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Have you ever had a Halloween party at your school? In Heathcote elementary school in Scarsdale, NY, fifth graders had a Halloween party on October 25th, 6 days before Halloween.

Students were very excited that day, so they were talking about it all day before the party. 

The party started at six o’clock. When the students arrived in their costumes, they went straight to the lunch room or to the gym. When most of the people came in the grade, the D.J. started a game. After playing a few more games, the students started to dance. 

There were also estimation jars. Students were also excited about this too. 

When the party ended at eight, the students started to leave and the parent volunteers started to clean up after the mess.

Overall, everyone enjoyed and was very happy about the party. 

“ I thought it was really fun, ” says Charlotte from class 5C.

Blastoff!

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“3,2,1, blastoff!” On October 17, 2019 students in class 5C launched their second in their school’s field. It was very cold in the morning that day. Even though the weather was very cloudy, the students were eager to launch their rockets. They launched their second rocket because the students wanted to see how high their rocket will go. There were six groups in total. Astros, Three Musketeers, Flying Saucers, Shooting Stars, The 4 Rocketeers, and Astro Rockets. 

“ It was fun, We got to do an extra launch,” says Charlotte, from class 5C. The rocket that went the highest was the Astros. 

“ The rocket went high but it didn’t go as high as I expected so I want to change the fin material for the third rocket,” says Mark, who is in the Shooting Stars group. 

Overall, all the students of class 5C enjoyed the experience.

Launching Rocket#2

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I think the launching the second rocket went  better and higher than the first launching. This time, my job was air pumper and bottom presser for fun. Being a clinometer reader was very fun too. I think the second launch compared to the first launch was very different. I think this because our rocket went higher than our first launch. 

The average of our second rocket launch was 34.5 m. The average went higher because our first average was 29. When my group realized that our second rocket went higher than the first rocket, we were so happy and excited.

 I think my group will be changing our nose cone for the third rocket because we used our same shape for the last for two rockets and nose cone is the only part of the rocket that we haven’t changed.

Designing and Building Rocket #2

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For the second rocket, my group first struggled on deciding which feature to change. But at last, we decided on one part, and it’s fins. 

We chose to change the fins because for the first launching, a group called Flying Saucers’s rocket went the highest and our group realized that their fins are so different than our rocket and we thought if we change our fins, our rocket will go higher. But we couldn’t agree on one still! So what we did was we mixed up our fins that we want for our rocket. Other groups didn’t have the fins we were going to use so we were happy about it. We also did use less tape than we did last time because we realized that the groups that went higher than our group last time didn’t use too much tape like we did. So this time, we used a little bit of tape. We didn’t change our body or our nose cone because we were only supposed to change one feature of our rocket. I think building our second rocket, we did great on changing the type of the fins. I think changing only one feature on one rocket and deciding which part was the most challenging part about building the second rocket.

Launching Rocket #1

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Launching the rocket was very exciting and fun.The most exciting part was when I got to measure other group’s rocket with clinometer. I got bigger number that I thought it would so it was fun. I also took a video with an ipad for a group. 

When my group launched our rocket, it went so high and when it came down, it went from the nose cone so it was so funny and a lot of people laughed. Also putting air for the air pumper, it was harder than I thought. I am so excited to build another rocket and launch it again. I hope next time, my group’s rocket will go higher than the first launching. 

Designing and Building Rocket # 1

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My group’s name is the Shooting Stars. First, we made an inspiration board to help us see what we need to do to make a rocket. Then, we started to make rockets. First, we made Fin template. It was hard because we couldn’t agree on one design right away. Next we had to agree on how many fins we should use.

Then, we made the body out of construction paper. We chose this paper for our rocket because it was the lightest paper and we thought if we use heavy paper, the rocket won’t go up as much. After, we made our body. We taped it with a lot of tapes. Our name was the Shooting Stars so we taped it with red and yellow. At last, we glued and taped all the parts together. It was very fun to build the rocket.