My Capstone Experience

Posted on June 20, 2024 by mabdurashidova31

Have you ever heard of Capstone? Well it’s a big project based on research that’s at the end of fifth grade! My grade had to pick between a TED Talk or a movie. I picked the movie. We had a couple of weeks to do research on our topics. My topic was the history of volleyball. Then, we had about a week to do an essay! That essay was basically our script. After I finished my essay I had to narrow it all down and then put it in my script. I took time to time myself to see how long my video was gonna be. And finally, I started doing my actual video.

In order to research my main inquiry question, which was How has volleyball evolved over time? I looked into the following topics: How have the rules of volleyball changed? How accessible is volleyball to different age groups? How has the equipment and volleyball clothing used changed? How did volleyball integrate into the school curriculum? And how has the popularity of volleyball changed? I found a lot of information for most of my sub questions. But I did have trouble finding an answer to how volleyball got into the school’s curriculum. The most interesting facts that I learned while researching were that volleyball was originally played using a basketball and that volleyball was invented so that older, less athletic people would have a sport to play instead of basketball.

After our research we wrote an essay which was basically what we would say in our script. I answered all of my sub-questions which lead me to an answer to my main inquiry question! I realized that volleyball did change in many kinds of ways. At first I was just thinking what to write but when I started typing it all just popped into my mind and it was almost like my hands wouldn’t stop typing. I was very excited when I finished my essay because I knew that next would be the script. If you want to check out my essay click here.

When I was picking if I wanted to do a TED Talk or a movie I had to think wisely because I knew that they are very different. I did end up picking a WeVideo project because recently I had finished a documentary and it was also on WeVideo so I knew that a movie would be the best choice for me. I also thought what would be the hard parts in both? In TED Talk the hard part was memorizing your whole script and in the movie that hard part would definitely be making the actual video. So when I finished my essay I had to cut it down so it would be at the limit of 5-6 minutes. After that I put it all in the script template. You can click here to see my script.

After I was all done with my script I began making the video. I had to time myself to make the pictures go at the same time as my voice. I also was adding some text into my video. One of the most challenging things I had to do was to find good pictures for my topic, volleyball. However, I still think that trying to match my voice with the pictures would be the hardest part of all. But one thing that I enjoyed is the whole process of my Capstone project and getting to do something like Capstone.

In conclusion, Capstone was so much fun and I really enjoyed doing this and having to do this with my classmates. So next time if you want to watch something to learn new things go on Heathcote Tech on Youtube to check out our Capstone projects!!

Immigration Video Reflection

Posted on April 12, 2024 by mabdurashidova31

Have you ever interviewed an immigrant and made a whole video about them? Probably not. Well I have! I interviewed my mom and made a video about her life as an immigrant. There was a lot of editing and recording. Sounds like a lot of fun. So here is my story.

I think making the video was really enjoyable and fun. Before this big project I had podcasting which made me learn a lot of stuff about Wevideo (The app we used to make our video!) I started up with the script and it felt like it would take a very long time to write it but it actually didn’t. Since I interviewed my mom I already know a ton of stuff about her so it wasn’t hard to write the script. I think my favorite part would definitely be gathering the pictures because I got to just sit down and go through family photo albums which was pretty fun. It was interesting to see pictures when my mom was younger! I also found many more pictures I thought I’d never see. For me I think the voice over was the hardest part because I obviously couldn’t put the pictures at the exact time as my voice over so in some parts I had to rush a little.

Although I interviewed my mom, I still found out so many new things about her. For example, I learned what age my mom moved to a different city, I learned stuff about her ancestors and many more cool things. This project also helped me prepare a little bit for my capstone! It taught me how to time my parts, how to add music, and probably the funnest part is to add pictures and videos from Wevideo! Even my teacher forgot that you could add the videos and pictures from Wevideo so she was very excited about that because it was a very helpful resource.

Overall, this experience has been really fun and interesting. It was fun to add the pictures from when my mom was a baby to her as a grown up. It was also interesting to find out more stuff about her. So if you ever get bored, think about watching some of these videos and maybe you will get inspired to make one too!

Immigrant Interview Reflection

Posted on March 28, 2024 by mabdurashidova31

Imagine sitting in class and then your teacher announces that you’re gonna interview an immigrant! You’re sitting there wondering who you can interview… And then it popped into my mind. My Mother! I could interview My Mother, I thought to myself. Woah Woah Woah! Okay back to reality now. We had to prepare questions and photos for the video! It was pretty interesting to find out more things about my mom that I didn’t know.

So I was wondering what kind of question I could ask my mom. Since I already know so much about my mom there weren’t that many questions I could ask but I did need 10-15 questions! So I sorta thought about what I did not know about and how it would make the interview interesting. Ms. Cooper gave us a link to a website with over 20 questions to get an idea! I found a lot of questions that I didn’t think of and they were actually pretty good. I also asked some of my friends and table mates what kind of questions they had to get some more ideas. There were a ton of different ones. It was actually pretty exciting because I couldn’t wait to make the video and add all the fun pictures and voice overs. I asked my mom what kind of pictures she had and we both found such a big variety of pictures that i could add!

The part where I actually interviewed my mom… So I sat down and called my mom and said “Mom, I need to interview you!” My mom came and I started asking her all the questions I prepared. I didn’t expect the interview to go the way it did because I thought that it would be sorta boring and just be fast but it wasn’t like that. I got to know even more stuff about my mom that I did not know. That led me to asking even more questions which made it so interesting and fun. There were so many things that I heard for the first time. For example, I learned that my mom would want to be a traveler in the future so she could visit all of her family members around the world. It was really fun.

Overall, this experience of having to interview an immigrant was really fun, interesting, and educational! Would you want to interview an immigrant for a project?

Fun on Ice

Posted on February 9, 2024 by mabdurashidova31

Do you know what curing is? Well my class and I went to a curling club so I’ll be sharing my experience! If you don’t know what curling is, it’s a sport where you deliver a stone to a circle called a house on ice. At first I thought that curling was very easy but when we actually started playing at the rink it wasn’t what I expected it to be. I’ll be talking about what was easy vs. challenging and how we played in P.E at school vs. at the curling club!

There were a lot of hard and easy things. I thought that delivering the stone would be easy but there were some challenges I had to face. First, the stones were extremely heavy and it was very hard to move the stones. The ice itself was also super slippery and it was hard to slide without falling down. After a few tries me and my group got better at delivering the stones and there was some progress. Something that was sort of easy was sweeping. In my opinion sweeping was probably the easiest thing and it was also so much fun! My group’s instructor showed us how to sweep and how to do it properly. Once again it was very slippery and I was the one person who kept on falling down hahaha!! I remember thinking to myself hello twisted ankle…We could not stop laughing. It was so hilarious! It was also very fast but I enjoyed it. My favorite thing was being hyped up! For example, Daphne, one of my teammates, was saying stuff like “Yeah Mary!!” Or “You got this Mary!” I also hyped up my friends a lot. I said things like “Nice shot Kathrine!” And “Good job Daphne!” Though I may haven’t done great every single time I was happy anyways because my group hyped me up.

Before we even went to the curling club in my mind I was thinking how different it would be compared to the gym at school. I thought to myself What I noticed was that the stones were different. They were way heavier at the club than at school. The brooms weren’t different because when we had the sweeping lesson in P.E the teacher, Mr. Borgia brought his own and showed how to use them. Now let’s talk about expectations v.s reality! At first I thought that it wasn’t as cold but believe me it was very cold. After warm ups it wasn’t that cold anymore but still a little chilly. I also did not expect the stones to be so heavy! The ice there was very slippery too. I kinda knew it would be slippery a little but it was not “a little slippery” i kept on falling down which was really funny too. I did not expect curling to be so challenging but I enjoyed every second of it.

As you can see, curling might seem really easy when you hear about it but it’s actually not. This curling field trip was so much fun! Thank you Mr. Borgia for taking the fifth grade to the Ardsley Curling Club. We all had a blast!!

Feature Article Reflection

Posted on December 13, 2023 by mabdurashidova31

Do you know who Taylor Swift is? Well I wrote my feature article about her! Now you’re probably wondering what that is… It’s almost like a newspaper but about something or someone you know very well about. So in fifth grade me and my classmates got to do these. As you can see, mine is about Taylor Swift. It was a long way but it was so much fun! I got to learn even more stuff about Taylor but I also learnt a ton of other things because I got to help my classmates with their feature articles.

We had to come up with something we know a lot about and a message. I picked Taylor Swift because I have been researching her and listening to her music since 2021. First, I came up with the title and subtitles. Then, I came up with three categories I was gonna write about. So then I started drafting all of my writing. When I was done with the drafting I started to plan how my formatting will look. After all that we finally got to the fun part. The photos. My class and I were in the lab and we were looking for pictures to put on our feature articles. Then we did the formatting. For me the formatting was kind of hard but at some point fun. I enjoyed picking a fun color and fonts for our articles!

Writing the feature articles was really fun but not only because of the pictures or the coloring. There was also a ton of teamwork and partnership. We got partnered a couple of times to comment on each other’s feature articles. It was so interesting to read everyone’s feature article and learn from the information that they wrote. If i would be very honest i thought doing Taylor Swift was a bad idea because no one really did their feature article on a specific person but once my classmates got to read my article before printing it out they made me feel much better about my feature article. Now, i didn’t have ALL of my classmates to read my article before printing but most of them read it and they all said that they loved it so much and didn’t know most of the stuff that i wrote. I was so happy and proud of myself when my classmates started telling me how well I wrote on the feature article.

After a while when my whole class was done with our feature articles we printed them out, did a little last minute editing and then the next day we had something called a publishing party. It wasn’t an actual party but we printed the articles and had a commenting sheet on our desks and then we had to walk around the classroom and read a couple of our friend’s articles and then comment on them. We had to do it with about five people. It was super fun because I mostly got the people I haven’t read before and I found out so many cool things about dance, dogs, rubik’s cubes, and Jewish culture. All of those feature articles were so interesting and I found out so many fun facts!

Overall, the feature articles were so much fun and I really enjoyed the process of the writing, formatting, adding pictures, and publishing. I’m so glad that I got to write about Taylor Swift and so thankful for the support that I got from my classmates.

Fun in the Woods

Posted on November 9, 2023 by mabdurashidova31

The bus finally arrives and we go onto it. I sit with my best friend Alya and think, “How will it be there? Will it be fun? When we got there we went into the woods and started the challenges. My favorite challenge was definitely the rope swing challenge because it was fun, there was a lot of teamwork and some very funny moments. When I jumped onto that rope I started holding on very tight but then I thought I almost got it but ended up falling on my back…

Let me tell you about my favorite trip that I had in 5th grade. Me and my grade had a very fun field trip at the Bedford ropes course. There were a lot of different and fun challenges. although I did have my three favorites. Number one is definitely the Rope swing challenge. You had to get on a rope and try to get on the other side. It was one of my favorites because there was a lot of teamwork. For example, I jumped on the rope and my teammates started swinging me around. I was so so close to getting onto that second platform but I ended up falling on my back. It was very painful but also really funny at the same time because I fell in front of everyone hahahaha. My second favorite is the “Indiana Jones” challenge. It’s like wires, beams and swings. It was very fun to do and there were a lot of people hyping me up! Sydney said “you got this Mary!” and that got me so excited and hyped up to do it. I really liked this challenge because so many people reminded me what teamwork was. My third favorite challenge was the wire walk. It was basically just wires attached to many trees and you had to walk on it without falling. I think I did pretty well on it. In my opinion teamwork was used the most in the wire walk challenge. There were a lot of people who hyped me up because I was scared at first. Then when I got to the little cube where you could help people I got Noah Conway with me and Noah Sitman and all of us helped other people get across the wire. It was pretty fun and I learned what teamwork really was.

I also learned a lot about myself, my classmates and obviously teamwork. Just like people say teamwork makes the dream work. The one thing I learned about myself is that I was really good at stuff after people told me “you got this!” or “you can do it!!” There were a lot of things I learned about my classmates. For example, Daphne was very helpful and always came up with a good plan. Noah Sitman let everyone know when he wanted to take a turn instead of cutting. Last but definitely not least is Avery. Avery was really good at listening to everyone and had good ideas. I also learned about teamwork. I feel like I’ve used the word “teamwork” like 100 times haha but anyways what i did learn about teamwork is that we have to listen to each other, speak up, always make a plan TOGETHER. These are the important things I learned.

Overall this trip was the funnest trip of all fifth grade! I’m sure there will definitely be more fun field trips like this one. I learned so many things and most importantly i enjoyed this field trip the most! I wonder if you would wanna go to a ropes course after you read this. I recommend going there to classes or people who want to learn about teamwork. Would you ever want to go to a ropes course like this one?

First Week Of School

Posted on October 2, 2023 by mabdurashidova31

beep, beep, beep,my alarm is off. I’m rushing to get dressed and worrying about meeting my teacher. ”MOM I’VE NEVER EVEN MET MY TEACHER”. I’m running to school to meet my friends before we go our own ways.”I hope she is nice”. *bell rings*. Oh no, the first day of school has officially started!!! I was really nervous until we started doing fun stuff like identity maps, locker signs, choosing books and a lot of fun stuff.Turns out first day of fifth grade was actually really fun!!!Fifth grade has had a lot of fun things so far,but there are a few things that stood out to me.We did a lot of fun things. I really liked the index card challenge because there was a lot of teamwork and communication.But I also had to think out of the box because it was very fun but also hard. I also really liked a project called “identity map” because I got to be more creative and show people who I am. It was very fun because I got to draw and color.To add up to this I also got to do a project called “we make a difference” . I really enjoyed doing it because I got to pick some nice quotes about my traits and write them and I got to draw a portrait of myself.I was really fun to ask other people about their quotes and get their ideas from them and the way they drew themselves. And finallyIi got to do my locker sign, it was so fun I got to draw whatever I wanted and I chose my camp colors! Finally, my very favorite part is the index card challenge. I really enjoyed doing it and I have a few reasons why. First, is that I improved thinking outside the box. Second, there was a lot of communication and teamwork because we had to have a plan and think about it to make it work and make the index tower high. I’m also and finally I want to make new friends.

super excited for the fifth grade halloween party because i get to see people’s cool costumes. I bet the fifth grade volleyball game. I hope it’s gonna be very fun and let’s hope we win!!!And there are so many more things I can’t wait for but these things are the ones that stand out to me.This school year I’m looking forward to good grades because I want to improve and succeed. I’m also looking forward to improving my work in math and writing.

This school year I want to get good grades because I want to improve and succeed. I’m also looking forward to improving my work in math and writing. And I want to make new friends. Those are the few things that I’m looking forward to.

Hello world!

Posted on January 10, 2023 by mabdurashidova31

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