Tag: 5th grade

Working on My Final Product – Capstone Post #6

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After a lot of hard work and a lot of editing, I finally finished making my TED-Talk presentation and memorized my script.

After I answered my sub questions and main inquiry question, I started working on my script. The first script that I made was way to long, so I kept having to shorten it until it was perfect. I also re-read it a lot to make sure everything made sense. Once I thought my script was good, I exchanged scripts with a partner and we read each others to make sure there were no mistakes. After that I met with Ms. Robert to make the final edits.

Making my presentation was really fun! Every slide has images that relates to the topic I’m talking about at that point. While I was making it, I kept editing to where things were placed because I knew that a lot of people were going to see it, so I wanted to make it as good as possible.

Memorizing my script wasn’t that hard. It took a couple of days, but it wasn’t really challenging. After a lot of practice reading my script over and over again, I knew it like the back of my hand.

I really hope that people will like my presentation. Can’t wait for CapCon!

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Answering My Main Inquiry Question – Capstone Post #5

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After a lot of researching, I finally got the answer to my main inquiry question which was, “What is a cochlear implant, and how does it work?”

To get the answer, I looked at a lot of articles, websites, books, videos, a site visit and an interview. The things that helped out the most though were the site visit and the interview. Dr. William Shapiro answered my questions very clearly and well and so did Tara.

One of the things that I learned which I though was pretty interesting was that in the 60’s and early 70’s there were single channel cochlear implants. There was one electrode in the cochlea and every time you spoke to the patient, that electrode would be stimulated and it would stimulate the auditory nerve.

During the research process I printed out the articles that I was reading online so I could underline the important parts that helped me out a lot. After underlining I would take the important information and put it into my research journal. In my research journal, I would make graphic organizers to organize my information, like charts, venn diagrams, lists, etc.

To organize my information I also used a few note sheets. Everyone in my class had to do at least one note sheet for each sub question that they have. Basically, what the note sheet made you do was pick an important part of a resource that you’re using and then make it into your own words. Then, you’d have to write an idea that you grew from the source. That made me used to changing important information into my own words.

To keep track of my resources I made a document in google drive for links that led to websites, articles, and videos. I also made a list of the books that I used.

I thought that answering my main inquiry question was NOT easy. It took a lot of hard work and it takes time. You can’t just rush through the research phase because you have to make sure that the information that you gather is true. You also have to make sure that you gather enough information to answer your questions in a way that makes sense.

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Colored Sugar and Liquid – Science Experiment

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Today at school, my class and Ms. Boyer’s class switched rooms for a quick lesson. Ms. Boyer taught science and Ms. Robert taught math.

For the lesson, we did some experimenting with colored sugar and three liquids. We conducted three experiments. For each one, we combined colored sugar with either vinegar, oil, or water. Before the experiments, we made a hypothesis for each one. A hypothesis is the “science version” of an educated guess, kind of like an estimation. My group got to do only two experiments because we ran out of time. We chose to combine colored sugar with vinegar first and then oil. In both the experiments, my group’s hypothesis was confirmed!

For our first experiment, our hypothesis was, “If you combine one teaspoon of colored sugar and twenty-five milliliters of vinegar, then the vinegar will dissolve the sugar and it’ll turn green because of the vinegar’s acidity.” When we conducted the experiment, that’s what happened. The vinegar dissolved the sugar and turned green, which shows that our hypothesis was right. One thing my group noticed, though, was that it took a lot of mixing for the sugar to dissolve completely.

In our second experiment, our hypothesis was, “If we combine one teaspoon of colored sugar and twenty-five milliliters of oil, then the oil will reject the sugar because sugar and water mix and oil rejects water.” And again, when we conducted the experiment, that’s what happened. The oil rejected the sugar and the oil also turned green when the sugar was combined. One thing that my group noticed was that the sugar sank to the bottom because it was denser than the oil.

I thought that conducting these experiments was very fun because whenever my group made a hypothesis, I really wanted to see how the experiment would turn out and whether we would be right. I hope we have another lesson of MESSY SCIENCE!

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Site Visit – Capstone Post #4

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For my site visit, I went to observe a speech and auditory therapy session at Listening Partners. People that get cochlear implants need this kind of therapy after the surgery. If they are very young and don’t know how to speak yet, they need the speech therapy because they need to hear a word more times to learn it. And even if they already know how to speak when they get it, they still need the auditory therapy to teach their brain how to hear with the implant.

Before the session started, I asked Tara Gallagher, a therapist, a few questions and I learned a lot from her. Then I watched her work with a four year old girl who has cochlear implants in both of her ears.

First they worked on her speech by playing “Go Fish”with cards that had pictures on them. Go Fish is a card game in which each player, taking turns, asks an opponent for a particular card and is told to “go fish” from the deck (grab another card), if the opponent doesn’t have the card you asked for. The person who ends up with the least cards wins. The girl did great.

Afterwards, Tara worked on her listening skills. She asked the girl to complete certain tasks on a worksheet following two and three step directions like, “can you please color the bear that’s about to jump, green?” It’s not as easy as it sounds but the girl did great again!

I really enjoyed observing this therapy session and I thought that it was very interesting. I really learned a lot!

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Interview – Capstone Post #3

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This Saturday I had my interview at my house with Dr. William Shapiro who is the Supervisor of Audiology at the NYU Cochlear Implant Center. It was very exciting!

He taught me a lot. I asked him questions that related to my main inquiry question. Some of the questions that I asked him were very similar to my sub questions. He answered them really well. For the interview, he brought a very old cochlear implant and some new ones so I could see the differences between them. He also brought some diagrams of the ear so I could understand how people hear normally and how people hear with a cochlear implant.

One of the things that he talked about that really interested me was the process after getting implanted. One of the things that are needed to make a patient very successful in hearing is that the implant needs to be constantly programmed. He inspired me to know more about programming the implant, which is called MAPping.

Overall I really liked the interview and I learned a lot. It was very useful. Now I have a lot of new information that I can write down in my journal. I can’t wait until I have my site visit!

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Choosing a Main Inquiry Question and Sub Questions – Capstone Post #2

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My class has just picked their main inquiry question and sub questions for their project!

After we had our topics ready we started thinking about our main inquiry question. We “pre-searched” (by pre-searching I mean learning a bit about our topic) on our topics to try and come up with ideas for our question. Once we had some ideas on what could be our question, we narrowed down to questions that we had in mind to the ones that really interested us. Finally I chose “What is a cochlear implant, and how does it work?” I chose that question because a lot of people don’t know what cochlear implants are. Most of my audience probably won’t know what they are. What I thought was challenging about choosing a main inquiry question was that I knew that I’d have to do a lot of research on this question. I really needed to chose a question that interested me because if it didn’t interest me, then everything about capstone would be boring. I learned that when I have to chose a question to research on for a project, it has to be one that gives you a lot of information.

After we chose our main inquiry question, my class “pre-searched” some more to come up with possible sub questions. We need to have five sub questions for the project and those sub questions needed to be related to our main inquiry question. After we had about nine sub questions in mind, we started to chose the ones that most interested us. I chose the five that interested me the most out of the ten that I had in mind. It was pretty challenging to choose these questions because, like I said before, these questions really needed to interest me. It was also hard to come up with sub questions because those questions needed to be ones that your sure can be answered by either a person, website, book, database, etc.

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Choosing a Topic – Capstone Post #1

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We just started Capstone! I am so excited. These past two weeks I have been thinking about what topic I wanted to do for my Capstone project. My class filled out an inquiry packet that helped us get good ideas on what we might want to do. Then we started narrowing down to some topics that really interested us.

A topic that really interests me is cochlear implants. It’s an incredible device that lets people who are deaf hear. Cochlear implants interest me because my brother was born deaf, and if it weren’t for that device, my brother would have been very different. He would have to do sign language and he would only be able to communicate with a limited amount of people who know sign language. I think that this device is amazing and it really makes an impact in deaf people’s lives.

I hope that I will learn a lot about cochlear implants through this process. I also hope that my final presentation will be amazing and that my audience will learn a LOT. I realized that by educating people about cochlear implants, I am helping people who have them because if people know what they are, the less different they will feel when they come across someone with cochlear implants. They’ll just treat them like anybody else. Which would make another impact on deaf people’s lives.

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5th Grade Philadelphia Trip

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Earlier this year, we had our Philadelphia trip. I decided to post this now, just like a few other posts because I never got to post them. Anyway, we went to Philadelphia to learn about the important things that happened there in the past. Like the Constitution. I really liked the trip. I thought it was really fun and exciting. Right now, I am going to tell you some things about it.

There was one annoying thing about the trip. We had to be at school at 5:45 a.m. to get on the bus at 6:00! I wasn’t sleepy though because I was too excited. One awesome thing was that the bus was a coach bus and we were allowed to use our phones on the ride there and back. In all of the places we visited, our teachers allowed us to take photos and videos with our phones. When we went to see the Constitution, we weren’t allowed to take pictures with flash because it could ruin the paper because of how old it is. I thought that the liberty bell was pretty cool. When I went there, I saw it for the first time. What surprised me though was that it was smaller than I had expected it to be. We saw a show too. When we were close to leaving, it started to rain really badly, so I got really wet. The bus ride back was longer than getting there and plus I was uncomfortable because of how wet I was which was really annoying! At least we got to use our phones though.

I suggest that you go to Philly one day. It was really fun and I think you’ll really enjoy it!

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Adobe Spark

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In class we have been working on a few things in Adobe Spark. There are four projects that we have been working on lately, an “Instagram Post”, “Video”, “Infographic”, and a “Newsletter”.

So far, I have liked using Adobe Spark. I think that it is very similar to iMovie and WeVideo. There are a lot of different things you can make in it. You can make posters, videos, slideshows, and many other things. It’s fun to make these things on this website because you can customize them with many different cool features. For example, you can put in music if you’re making a video, have a theme for different slides, put in media, colors for text, etc. At first, if you don’t know how to use the website, it tells you what to do and how to make and customize projects.

I suggest that you try Adobe Spark. I think you’ll really enjoy it.

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Rube Goldberg – Post #7

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This is my last Rube Goldberg post. Overall, I really enjoyed this project! The two things that I liked the most were testing out our machine and making the final video. I thought that testing out our machine was really fun because it was cool to watch it at work and to try to figure out what changes to make to failed attempts which would then lead to a successful one. Making the video was also fun because we got to experiment with a bunch of different features. Nick and I chose a very cool piece of music that we wanted and used the fading in and out feature which Mr. Casal taught us how to use in WeVideo last year.

I learned a lot from this project. One thing I learned were the different ways different objects react to something hitting them. Sometimes objects reacted in a way that I didn’t expect. For example, at first I didn’t expect a domino to knock down a cassette, but I realized that it was because the domino hit it at the top. If that domino hit the cassette at the bottom, it wouldn’t have knocked it down. Another thing I learned is that making small changes to the machine can make a huge difference. Maybe the most important thing I learned is that you have to be very patient to make a Rube Goldberg because it can take you A LOT of attempts to make it be successful. And trust me, sometimes you’ll get REALLY FRUSTRATED. Especially when you’re building a row of dominoes and then, all of a sudden, one of them falls, which causes ALL the rest to fall too. I suggest you test out the machine by parts. That’s what Nick and I did and it helped us out a lot. I think it was the reason the machine was successful on the second try. If you test out every part and change it until it’s perfect, then when you test your entire machine it’ll probably work in one of the first few attempts.

Here is an “Instagram Post” that I made in Adobe Spark about my Rube Goldberg video on Mrs. Robert’s YouTube channel…

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