Capstone Experience Reflection

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When my teacher said we were starting Capstone, I couldn’t believe it. I was so excited! But I knew it would be a long journey. I thought it would take forever to do research, then an essay, then make a script template! And have the final product. But now that I’m done, I feel that it all went by quick. Soon I am going to be presenting my Capstone. The topic of social media and how it affects us.

One of the first parts of the capstone journey was after we chose our topic, we had to do a ton of research. And I mean a ton. We had about two weeks to gather everything and we had a lot of time each day. We took our notes on our Capstone notebook. When I started to research, I tried to organize my notes. I used colors for each sub question and I made it neat. I learned so many things about social media that I didn’t know! More research is always better than less, so to do more research, I spent time at home doing it. One night I spent about an hour. That hour was very useful and got me many pages of research. After that night, I felt I was almost ready to begin the next step. But I still had to do a bit more research. I’ll be honest, at one point it did get very tiring, doing so much research every day. But I got used to it and used my time wisely. A few days later, I was officially ready for the next step, I finished my research early, so I was ahead. The next step was to write an essay filled with all of my research.

The next step was to write an essay. This essay had to be long, but considering how much research I had, I knew it would be long. The essay was to answer your main inquiry question. Mine was “In what ways does social media affect us?” This is what I did my research on. Starting the essay was hard because most people didn’t know what to do for an introduction. My teacher gave us a lesson and showed ideas, so after that I felt better and knew what to do. The body paragraphs were easier because we had all of the research, and we just had to put it in. But it did take long. By the end of it, I had more than 5 pages for my essay! It was easy to put all of my research in the essay but making the wording sound mature and professional was hard to do and had a lot of work put into it. We had many examples of Capstone essays from the past so I got a sense of what to do. Overall the essay was hard, but I really enjoyed writing it. Now, the next step was to make my script. You can look at my essay here.

Picking between a TED Talk or Movie was difficult. I wanted to do a TED Talk because I wanted to present mine out loud and not in a video, but at the same time I thought I wouldn’t be able to memorize everything. And I wanted to do a Movie because I knew I wouldn’t mess up. But I decided to do a TED Talk. When I got my TED Talk script template it was easy because for the narrative, I just copied and pasted my essay in the narrative box. But the next part little did I know would be one of the hardest parts by far. The maximum time your TED Talk could be is 6 minutes. And when I timed my essay, It was more than ten minutes long. So the hardest part was definitely cutting my essay. I had so much good research, it was hard to know what to take out. It took me a long time to figure out how to make 5 pages of words turn into only one page. I thought it would be easy. But oh, was I wrong. But now that part has passed. And its time to really do the script. So after I cut out parts of my essay, I put it into my script template. The way the template was set up was with sections of the words we speak, the time we speak for, the number slide, and what picture we would put in the slide. This part was pretty easy. And after I finished that, it was time to really start getting ready for my presentation. If you want to check out my script look here.

The next part was to create my slideshow. I had to gather many images of different things.I will admit this part was easy. And after that I had to do one of the really hardest parts which was to memorize my whole script. When it came to this part I couldn’t believe I have come this far. But I knew I had to start memorizing. My teacher gave us different strategies to help with memorizing. I chose to print my script, and glue it on postcards. After that I started to memorize. But when I started to memorize, I already remembered my introduction and my first body paragraph. I was surprised, but also happy because it made me think that memorizing would be easy. So I kept memorizing and memorizing. I started to share my presentation to the class, to get feedback. And each time I went up I felt more comfortable every time. When I got to the end of memorizing, I was relieved. Because I will be honest, sometimes when memorizing it was a struggle and hard, so it made me annoyed when I would mess up. But when I finished memorizing,it did not mean I was done. Even though I knew what to say, I still had to know how to speak to the audience, speak clearly, and loud enough for people to hear. This part was easier. I would say memorizing was one of my favorite parts because I was doing hard work and at the end I was proud of it.

It feels like just a day ago I had my first Capstone lesson, but capstone is almost done! I’m proud of how far I’ve come and I’m happy to say this experience has been very fun. What topic would you do if you had Capstone? Would you do a TED Talk or a Movie? If you want to look at my Canva poster with more information about social media look here for my digital trifold. And here for a printable copy. Also, if you want to check out my video of my presentation, look here.

 

Immigration Video Reflection

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Doing my immigration project has been exciting, a bit of a challenge, and fun. I have loved doing this project but there has been challenges. Doing the script has been hard and many other things but overall this project has been good.

Making the video was challenging, and exciting. I already did my narrative, which was the easy part. But then I had to do the script. This was my biggest challenge. For the script I had to think of pictures to put in, and think of what I Had to put in each 6 seconds. Also, we had to time it to make sure it was around 6 seconds in each part. I knew what words I would put in each part, but not what pictures. Also the video would be 2-4 minutes long. So if each part was 6 seconds, and you had to put a picture in each part, I would have to have a lot of pictures. But when I went on to wevideo, they also had videos for me to put. So I ended up only needing a few pictures. When I finished the video I was happy, and proud of my work.

As a result of this project I would say that I have learned much more about my grandpa, and I didn’t know much before this project. This project gave me an opportunity to learn more about my grandpa, and learn more in general. I learned how to interview somebody, create a video based on a person’s life experience, and based off me interviewing them. Doing the video and making it was also fun. And gathering images was something that was hard, but also enjoyable. And having due dates for the project and certain things, made it more exciting for me because I felt like I was doing something important. Which it was. This project was fun, hard, and exciting.

Overall, this project has been a good journey. I have learned from it a lot and I have definitely enjoyed learning more about my grandpa.

Learning and Curling

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When I first started curling in P.E I had a lot of trouble. I knew nothing about curling and I was not that good. But as I started to get the hang of it, it became fun. We watched videos about curling, and my P.E teacher taught us a lot. I had a very good experience of curling. And, it was fun. So I’m going to be sharing my experience of curling.

When I started to be taught how to curl, I was confused. I play a lot of sports. Basketball, soccer, softball, and tennis. But I never heard of curling before! That was until one day in P.E we started to learn how to curl. At first it was a bit hard. I had to get used to the equipment. We learned how to use the stone. At first we started with bean bags. When we started to get the hang of that then we used fake stones. This felt more like curling than using bean bags. Using the fake stones would make us feel more comfortable when using the real stones because we already kind of know what it’s like. After a few P.E classes, we moved to using the real stones. This was not really the same. But the real stone was bigger, and the fake one looked nothing like the real stone. Also, the real stone is a bit more heavy than the fake ones. After we knew how to use the stones, we started to learn how to sweep. We did not work on this as much as using the stones, but we still did about 1 P.E class on sweeping. It actually was hard to sweep. Often, people, including me, forgot what hand to put on top. I remember when I tried to sweep, I did it wrong, I could tell I was doing it wrong and I thought to myself “What am I even doing right now” .After we learned all of this we started to actually play against people in our class. We would choose a partner, and then play against another group of two. All of this was super fun and I’m glad that I know how to curl!

When my P.E teacher introduced us to curling I didn’t know a lot about it, but now I do. We learned a lot about curling throughout January and late December.For example, we watched a lot of videos about curling. In the videos it showed interviews of people who curl, and it showed curling matches. It also showed facts about curling. We watched videos a lot, almost every P.E class in January But we didn’t just learn about curling through those videos, we also learned about curling by learning the rules. Which is one of the most important parts of a sport, to know the rules. We learned what the hammer was. The hammer is the person that gets to throw the stone last. Which you change anything by being the hammer because you can knock somebody’s out. Or you can knock one of your teammates’ stones out. You can also learn to know who won the round. For example, if one stone only is in the circle, than your team only gets one point. But if there are more stones in the circle, then you get as many points as the amount of stones in the circle is. Learning about how to curl has been such a good experience.

Throughout December and January curling has been so much fun in P.E. I have learned so much. And now I know how to play another sport! I have learned how to play, I learned the rules, and I learned about curling in general! This has been such a good experience for me and I look forward to playing curling again in the future. Have you ever participated in curling?

Feature Article reflection

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I have had a long journey of writing my feature article. Drafting, formatting,just everything. Well, except for one thing, choosing my topic. My topic was my sleep away camp, Camp Pontiac. I knew I was going to do that because what’s not fun when you’re writing about something you love! Anyways, get ready to hear all about my feature article and how I turned it into what it is now.

When I first started my feature article I thought it would be easy, but oh was I wrong.  I thought of my topic very easily because I mostly do everything about camp. For drafting it took quite some time. You had to pick three sections about your topic. I chose special activities, activities and the athletic program.  Writing each section was my most enjoyable part because I love talking about camp so writing and writing about it non stop is fun for me and it makes me happy to talk about something I love. But, at some points it was also hard but most of the time I knew exactly what to say. It’s pretty easy when you have been at the place for 3 years. So I typed and typed. I had to edit many things. And I deleted and put different stuff in many times. I had a lot of writing for each section, so when we had the slides to just draft, it was hard to put everything in one slide. Especially when we had a certain font size. Sometimes it would also be hard because I would forget words that I needed. For example, when I was writing the section Athletic programs I forgot the word I wanted to use which was the word “program” so for a whole day I was trying to remember the word but I just couldn’t! Until someone said the word which made me remember. But at the end of drafting everything came together and all though I had to change many things and work with ms. Cooper, many times my drafting turned out really good.

Formatting took a lot of time. One step before formatting was  Thinking of a good catchy title. This was hard for me because I couldn’t think of a good title. But at one point I thought of one. The title I chose was “more than a sleep away camp”. I also had to think of a good subheading name for each section. This was one of the hardest parts. In the end, I chose “amazing activities”,”Pontiac programs” and “one night only”. Formatting was the most challenging part for me because it was very hard to fit everything into one page and make it look good and not weird. Also, because I did camp and we had to find our pictures from the google slide, no Pontiac pictures came up. So I had to search up on google for pictures which was easy, until I had to copy the link and paste it in my captions. This made it harder for me to make my captions look good since there was so much text in the caption box.  At some points I struggled because I thought I was behind. For example, when everyone had their pictures on their slides and I didn’t I was nervous and pressured that I needed to catch up. But I did catch up and it was all fine. Because I had a lot of text it was also hard to put everything together, so then I just ended up having a lot of slides. Although there was a lot to do, I enjoyed formatting.

Overall drafting, and formatting was really fun and it was a good experience.  I definitely think my feature article turned out really well and I’m glad it did! Have you ever written a feature article? Would you want to?

 

Thanksgiving

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Thanksgiving was a good experience. I spent it in some different ways. One of the ways I spent it was making food. I made a bunch of delicious things with my dad. For example, for a while now, for each Thanksgiving my dad and I always make pumpkin bread. We follow a recipe on my dads phone and it is super good. It is also so fun to make because I like to mix everything together and pour things in. Every year the guests love it. We also make mashed potatoes. This is pretty easy but it is really good. I also went to the city to see my grandparents. My cousins also came. This is my dads side of the family. I have 3 cousins from my dads side. A fourteen year old Harli, a ten year old Skylar and a eight year old carter. My cousin Skylar is my age. We had a lot of fun. These cousins live in New Jersey, so we don’t see them as much.We talked and ate some mini hotdogs for a little and then started to eat. All of the food was so delicious. I sat at a little table with my cousins and my grandparents, aunt and uncle,and my parents sat at the dining table. After we ate dinner, we went to the couch, took some pictures and then just talked. At least 30 minutes later, we ate my favorite meal, desert. All of the food was really good, especially the apple pie. Thanksgiving was really fun and I can’t wait for it next year

Happy Halloween!

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“Trick or treat!” It is Halloween! Each house you go to is a new adventure. That’s how Halloween goes every year! I usually wear a different costume for school. Halloween is mostly the same every year. But this year I want to share my experience of Halloween. So I will be telling you about my Halloween at school and at home.

I spent my Halloween in school, and home. For school I did two different things, we had a parade and we played Halloween games. There was also a Halloween fifth grade party. For the parade it was at the start of the day. The parade is where each grade walks around with their Halloween costumes in the parking lot and all the parents come. It was more important than any other year since we are in fifth grade and it’s our last one. For the Halloween games, we did that at the end of the day. You could watch spooky videos, make spooky stories, or do Halloween word searches. I did halloween spooky stories with my friend Sydney. We made a bunch and they were interesting and enjoyable to make. Our stories were scary, but most were school appropriate. For the fifth grade Halloween party, it was before Halloween. It was at our school, there was a DJ and then in the gym there were games. In the room where the DJ was, there were snacks,water, and candy. The Halloween party was something everyone was excited for including me. Because of the DJ nobody got bored. They played songs the girls and boys liked. The chaperons secretly judged the best costumes. So at the end of the party the people with the most creative, and funniest costume got a gift card to scoop shop. Everybody’s Halloween costumes were unique and the fifth grade Halloween party was a great memory. All of this stuff was surprisingly very fun and I enjoyed it a ton.

My Halloween experience at school was fun, but it was more fun at home. For my Halloween outside of school I first went to my friend Lexi’s house. I had a group costume with her and a few other friends, we were Taylor swift albums and I was speak now. I really liked our Halloween costumes this year, we all looked very good. Me and my friends in the costume all went to her house to get ready. You might be thinking what we were getting ready for, we were getting ready for Lexi’s Halloween party at her house. The Halloween party was with girls from another school, they were all doing a costume together too. It wasn’t that much of a party, more like a hangout before trick or treating. However, we had pizza and talked a lot. After the hangout we started to trick or treat. For trick or treating at first both schools trick or treated together. Everything was going good until people weren’t waiting for each other, people were pushing to get candy, and there were too many people at a house at once. So then, everyone decided to split up, the costume groups went together. We trick or treated for a long time and then went back to Lexis’ house. Afterwards, my friends from the other school came. We played a lot of games, and traded candy. This Halloween was so much fun and I’m looking forward to more enjoyable experiences.

Although I love Halloween,at least it is closer to camp now! This year’s Halloween in and outside of school was very fun and it was a good experience. I am looking forward to Halloween next year, especially because it’s my first year of middle school! Did you have a good Halloween?

Tree Trek

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 Imagine going on a ropes course for a school field trip, hanging on for dear life while your teammates are saying “Come on!” “you got this!” And then… YOU MAKE IT! All of your teammates are so proud and so are you. Isn’t that fun? Well, that’s what happened for me. For one of my fifth grade field trips, we went to a ropes course. Called Bedford Ropes Course. There were five stations, we also split into three groups to go to stations. Some were challenging and some weren’t. But even though it was just games and challenges, we learned a lot. Me and my classmates and the other class learned how to work together, and a lot of other things. So I will be telling you about my experience at bedford ropes.

There were a lot of challenges. But three of my favorites were called the “Indiana Jones”, the Rope bridge challenge, and the Rope swing challenge. The Indiana Jones challenge was  where you would go through a bunch of obstacles. This was fun because it was very challenging, which sometimes makes you want to give up. But instead my team kept on trying and in the end we had a great time. When I felt my feet wobbling I thought to myself This won’t end well. And no surprise, I did fall right after. Also, it was not a teamwork thing but the people that finished guided others and helped them through. The next challenge I liked was called the rope bridge challenge where you would have to make it through the ropes without falling and without touching your teammates feet. This included a lot of teamwork and strategies which made it more fun for me. When some of my teammates said “good job” after I went past someone without touching their feet, it made me feel good. That made me want to try harder because I knew my teammates were counting on me. The last of my favorites was the Rope swing challenge. This was fun since we got to swing on the rope to get to the other side. Although some people didn’t get to go, you could still help by giving advice on how to get to the other side. When we almost had the record of the most people to get to the other side for the day, it made people encourage others more by saying, “You got this!” or “you’re almost there!”  All of the obstacles were fun, but these are the three I would love to go back to sometime.

There were a lot of fun things that I did, but I also learned a lot. Something I learned about myself is that I don’t always have to do things alone. Sometimes people including me get embarrassed when they need help from a person. But after this field trip I realized that if you get help by someone it can sometimes help you become a better person.  I also learned something about my classmates. My friend Lexi is my classmate, we were in the same group for the field trip so I learned a lot about her. I learned that Lexi is very good at obstacles. For example, on the Indiana Jones challenge the one time she went she never fell, but for me, it took me a long time to not even finish the course. Lexi is also very encouraging. When people were having a hard time Lexi said “You got this!” and that made people feel good. Something I learned about teamwork is that it is very important. Most of the time it is much harder to do things without someone by your side. I learned this because when we were doing the challenges after a while I knew that nobody can do any of this without their teammates. So I learned teamwork is very important. I did not expect to learn so much but I ended up learning a ton of facts I didn’t know.

This field trip was very fun for me and I hope I can do something like it again. At the start of the field trip I thought to myself They think this is a challenge? But in the end, I couldn’t believe I did all of that and that I learned so many new things. Would you like this field trip? I think you would. This was a great experience and I am looking forward to more fun field trips for fifth grade.

Home Of The Brave Reflection

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Today I will be talking about Kek from the story Home Of The Brave by Katherine Applegate. Windows and mirrors are similarities and differences, windows are differences and mirrors are similarities. But me and Kek have a lot of windows. So today I will be talking to you about me and Kek’s windows.

One window that me and Kek’s life have is that in Kek’s life he felt very lonely and he was missing his family since he came to the US alone. That is a big window for me because I have always lived with my family. Also, I have never even gone on a plane without my family before. But Kek, he is unsure if his mom is even alive. She is currently not with him and he is missing her. When he goes to the US and is reunited with his extended family he realizes just how much he misses his closer family.

Another window that me and kek’s life have is that in his life he had to get used to technology and the way things work in America. For example, when he tried to wash dishes he put them in the washing machine because he thought that was how you wash them. That is because he was not used to things like that in America since he never did that stuff in his old home . Also, when his friend Hannah gave him coins for the bus he didn’t know it wasn’t a lot so he said “No I can’t take that from you!” So it is hard for him to get used to all of this in the US. But for me, I have lived in America for my whole life so I always understand things. But if I don’t I would learn easily. Now that I’m realizing it must have been very hard for Kek to get used to everything. Especially with none of his family helping him.

Now that I have told you about Kek’s life and our windows do you think you can relate to Kek? Do you have any mirrors with Kek? 

 

First Week Of School

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BEEP BEEP. Your alarm clock goes off, you hit snooze until you realize it’s the first day of school! All of the sudden you get butterflies in your stomach because you’re nervous. You get dressed and get in the car, when you arrive at school you wish you just started summer. You get to class and your face is red. You’re so stressed it’s hard to even think! Until you just draw an identity map. You start to think it’s kind of fun. And at the end of the week…BEEP BEEP. you get right up,  you actually like it.

There were a lot of things we did for the first week of school, but there were three things that really made my first week of school the best it could be.  One of them was making an identity map. It was really fun and enjoyable to make. After making it, It made me more creative. My Identity map turned out so amazing. It took a few days but overall it was really cool. It  was fun expressing myself but on paper. We also did a few other projects, including a project called We Make a difference. This one was where we would have to pick a quote about a trait you have. Then you draw a portrait of yourself. I enjoyed it. It was cool seeing a bunch of different quotes from people. I thought the quotes were inspiring. The last thing that made me enjoy the first week of school was making our locker sign. The purpose of this is so you would know which locker is yours. It was fun to design and mine ended up really pretty.Also everyone would see our lockers so I thought it would be cool for them to know who I am and what I do.  All of this was really fun to do and It was a great way to start off my school year.

Now that I’m in 5th grade, and the oldest in school, things might be different this year. I’m looking forward to a lot of things this year. One of them is a fifth grade only Halloween party. I’m excited because we never had a school halloween party so I think it will be cool. We have Halloween at school but sometimes that’s not your real costume, so I think it will be fun for people to see my costume. Also it is just our grade! So I think it will be fun. Since we are in fifth grade, There is also a volleyball game with your teachers. I love sports so I think It will be really fun to play sports in school. I don’t play volleyball so it will be a new sport for me. It will be fun to try something new, and against your teachers! And lastly, I’m really looking forward to field day. It is one class against the other and you do a lot of competitive activities. Since we usually just do school work in school, it will be fun to play for once besides recess. At the end there are hot dogs! I think it will be super fun and delicious. With all of these fun activities, it makes me a lot more excited for 5th grade.

Overall, the first week of school wasn’t as bad as I thought. We did a lot of fun things, as mentioned previously the identity map, We Make a Difference and making a locker sign. And there is even more I’m looking forward to. My question for you is, did school go well for you? Do you like it? What are you looking forward to?

Ignite

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When my teacher Mrs.Rickard told me we were doing an ignite on weather I was very excited. My teacher put us in groups of 5 or 4. There was a tsunami group, an earthquake group, a hurricane group, a volcano group, and a tornado group. I got put in a group of 4 people, the earthquake group. But, there was also subtopics, each group would discuss who should get which subtopic. There was cause,effect,how they are measured, and prevention and safety.I chose cause. When I first started researching I could not find much on how earthquakes are caused. But then, I started working harder and I gathered a bunch of research. I used the resources that Mrs.Rickard gave me and as I was working harder it was much easier.

After a few weeks of researching on different websites like Just for kids, weather wiz, and other websites I started to really like learning about how earthquakes are caused.It started to get really interesting. My teacher gave the class sheets to write our research on. Each subtopic got different sheets, except for Cause and effect.Cause and effect had the same sheet. one side would be cause and the other would be  effect.Then after getting all of my research and writing it down I had to write my narrative, When I was typing my narrative I just typed all of the research I got which by the way was a ton of research! And because I started to get interested in learning about earthquakes it made it a lot easier because I focused a lot.

But then,for my script,  I had to cut out most of my research because I only had 30 seconds, So I kept the parts that I thought were the most important. This was one of the hardest parts because I had so much research and it was all so good so I did not know what to take out. I missed a few days of school, so I was a bit behind on my script which was hard.But Everyone in my group helped me and I got caught up. The script was kinda hard because I did not know what to cut out. So I read over all of the research that i got so I could see what were the important and not important parts.

My group started to make a google slideshow. In the slideshow I had two slides. I had to put pictures on each of my slides, but only one. The pictures were based off the research I would be saying on each slide. After that, I had to memorize the research I kept. Every night I practiced and practiced memorizing. Memorizing everything was also very hard too. After almost a week, I started to memorize my script more. But that does not mean I don’t have to practice, So i practiced at school and at home even more! I started practicing with my group like we were actually doing our presentation. What made this a lot easier was that I was practicing at my house. If I wasn’t, I would have not remembered my script at all!  At home I practiced it to my parents each night. If I messed up you might think I would start over, but actually I just kept going! And when I kept on doing that it made me mess up less every time.

When I was practicing with my group at school, I started to realize I had way too much research in my script so I had to take out even more. Since I took out more of my script and we were in the middle of the project I had to memorize it again but without the parts that I took out. It was kinda hard to memorize without some parts but it was not as hard as memorizing the whole thing. This project was so fun and I loved it.