Capstone #1

In school, I’m starting a very important project called Capstone, which every 5th Grader in the whole direct has done every year, since 2016. Capstone is a project where you get to choose any topic and research and take notes about it. You also have to interview a person that has to do with your topic -like a professor or someone who specializes in your topic.- Then you gather your information and make a presentation. I feel nervous about doing this project because it is the biggest and most important project before Middle School.

Anyway, for my topic, I chose sunsets and sunrises. I chose this topic because I really am interested in sunsets and sunrises, and I want to know how they are made. At first, when I chose this topic, I thought there weren’t going to be any good resources, but it turns out there is much more than I needed.

After you chose a topic you have to think of a keyword question for your topic and start research in a digital notebook. My question is, “What is the science behind sunsets and sunrises? How do they work?” because I really wanted to know how they work. After I made a digital notebook and wrote down notes from the resources.

I also thought it wasn’t too hard to brainstorm a few sub-questions because I already knew what I was going for. But something that was challenging was finding specific answers from websites, for my sub-questions, because most of the articles were about the same thing.

I am still working on finding someone to interview, but I already found some choices. The way I found someone to interview was, that I found professors or people who are experts in my topic, and I found their email, website, or social media. I found someone from NOAA and wrote an introduction, -which is a request email to interview the person.-

 

Welcome to 5th Grade!

Hi! My name is Jane and I am glad that I am here in fifth grade. I am a bit sad because I have to leave Heathcote after six years of learning here and making life long-lasting friendships. If you are new, I expect you to have a great year here. Anyway, more than half of the years I have been here, my grade has gone through many changes in COVID-19, for example, zooms, quarantine, homeschool, masks, and social distancing. It has been very hard and different than normal years at Heathcote, but I still loved it. Even though sometimes it was hard, a lot of things were fun, especially being a part of building the boat in the courtyard! After everything, we still all put up with it to make the memories here last long and bright.

Now that we are back and learning, I just want to say that I am very excited to have the best last year here ever and my goal is to possibly make new friendships, learn more, and be more determined and a deep thinker. I am so excited for this school year and I’m looking forward to so many things.