Capstone Blog Post #3

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Capstone is the biggest project of the whole year. It is challenging, fun, and interesting at the same time. You had to research a topic, mine was JK Rowling. You research for weeks to find information and it’s hard to think that it’s soon over. I put a lot of effort into this project, and I’m very satisfied with my product. 

The process all started by thinking of my main inquiry question. I am so happy that I chose to research JK Rowling because I had a lot of fun researching her. I learned a lot about her process when she was making Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. It was hard to take only the information I would end up using and leave the rest of the information because all the information was important. It was also a bit hard to make my script.  It was fun to find information and write it in the notetaking template. It was kind of easy because my resources were very good and gave me a lot of information. I learned that Rowling had a very tough life while she was writing her books. I also learned that her books got her really famous. I would not have expected JK Rowling to get 1 billion dollars from Harry Potter. 

For my presentation, I chose to make a TED talk. I chose this because, in my opinion, TED talks add value to your work because it is in person. I also don’t like doing movies very much because they can glitch and they are harder to work with. I like the feeling of performing in front of people. Memorizing the script was not that hard because I just read the paragraph a few times and then said it out loud again and again. One thing that was very important for doing a TED talk was the practice. Every time you practice, you get more and more familiar with the words and your script. Something that was a little difficult was making the script because I had to figure out how to make my notes into a speech. Also perfecting everything in my presentation was very challenging because there was always something missing or wrong with the slides or my talking. Performing in front of my class was helpful because it gave me the feeling of what it would be like to perform in front of everyone, but it was also a bit nervewracking because when I go from performing in front of one or two people to the whole class, I get a bit nervous. But overall with my presentation, I am proud of how it turned out and happy that I can have a good presentation.

I learned a lot about JK Rowling during this project and was super invested in the research. I didn’t know a lot about JK Rowling before this and my knowledge has only grown from the start. There were a few bumps and struggles along the way but overall the project was perfect. The capstone project is amazing, and it is super fun. I am happy we could do a project like this in 5th grade and I am super excited to perform it in front of everyone! 

Capstone Blog Post #2, Interview

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During the capstone project, we were assigned to find someone to interview. The purpose of the interview is to gain more information on the topic by talking to an expert. You needed to have 10 questions to ask the expert and their response would help you learn more and give you a better understanding of your topic.

 I thought about possible people to interview. It was challenging to think of someone to interview because no one would respond and I didn’t know who would be able to give me good answers about JK Rowling. I came up with the idea of interviewing someone who worked at Bloomsbury, but no one responded. I kept thinking and realized the person can be from a different publishing house and I can ask questions about the publishing process. Someone named Tim Burgard who works at HarperCollins responded. I was so excited and I quickly got to work on my questions. It was a little hard to come up with questions because I needed to think about questions he would be able to answer and I needed to make sure I never repeated anything.  Eventually, I got ten good questions to ask him! I was very relieved to have all the questions because it took me a while to come up with. I had to revise a lot of them to make sure they were on topic about his company and his job. 

 I called on March 17, 2022. Tim gave me a lot of information about the publishing process. I was really happy with the answers. He told me about how to figure out if a book is good enough to be published and how they would figure out which books would get famous. It gave me a better understanding of why a lot of publishing companies declined Harry Potter. It was so interesting. Conducting the interview was fun and easy because all I had to do was ask the questions. It was also fun because I like doing interviews and getting to ask questions and get feedback and answers. 

The interview was so fun and I learned so much more by listening to Tim Burgard talk about the process! I am looking forward to more activities and learnings on JK Rowling and I am super excited to continue with this amazing and fun project, the capstone! 

Capstone Blog Post #1

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Capstone is a project that all the schools do where you get to pick whatever you are interested in, and you get to research the topic. You also get to interview an expert about your topic. Then, you give a presentation about your research! The presentation can either be a Ted-talk, a ignite, or a video. Every year the fifth graders get to do it and now is finally the time! It is the biggest project in 5th grade. I am super excited! The project seemed hard at first, but I am ready for it!

First I had to come up with a topic to research. How I figured mine out was first, everyone had to fill out this interest inventory of things you’re interested in. I noticed that Harry Potter was coming up a lot. Next, you had to choose 2 topics that you could research. I chose global warming and JK Rowling. I liked both of the topics and I was really torn, but I ended up choosing JK Rowling because I was really interested in her and I thought researching her would be a ton of fun!

Next, I had to make a curriculum wheel where I came up with possible questions to research about JK Rowling.  I made my curriculum wheel and found 2 questions I really liked. I noticed that one was about the Harry Potter movies, and one was about JK Rowling. I thought of switching the topic to Harry Potter instead of JK Rowling, but I liked the questions both equally. I was yet again torn between the two. I ended up keeping my topic with JK Rowling. The final question I chose was: “What inspired JK Rowling to write the Harry Potter series and how did its success change her life?” I decided to choose that question to research for the project because it would be fun to learn about and I could get a lot of really good research. Also, I was a little more eager to learn about the books than the movies. Also, I already knew a lot about the movies and I wanted to learn something new.

Now that I had my main inquiry question, I needed to come up with 5 sub-questions that would help me answer my main one. This was hard because it was very easy to come up with a lot of sub-questions so I had to narrow them down or combine two. An example of when I combined the two is my 5th question: “What was going on in JK Rowling’s life while working on the series, did anyone help her? How has her personal life been affected after the books?” I combined this because they both had to do with JK Rowlings personal life. Also, on my 3rd sub-question, I ask something broad so I can cover a lot with one question, the question is: “What were JK Rowling’s greatest struggles when writing the Harry Potter series?” After a while of thinking, I narrowed down my questions to five really good sub-questions. Then I was off to the research…

Capstone is a really fun project that I look forward to. I am excited to learn more about JK Rowling and to share the information with everyone. 

Immigration Blog Post #1

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To immigrate is to move to another place and to stay and live there. In class, we were learning about immigrating to America and the push and pull factors. We have to also interview an immigrant that immigrated to America. This isn’t so easy, though! There is a whole process to do! Let me tell you about it!

When I heard we had to interview someone, I thought that the project would be hard from the beginning. It wasn’t that hard though. First I had to figure out who I was interviewing, and I realized that I was living with an immigrant: my Aupair, Monica! I asked her if I can interview her and she said sure! Next, we had to learn how to write interview questions and figure out which ones would be good. A resource that I thought was very helpful was BrainPop. It taught me how to make my questions not “yes or no” and to make them questions that Monica would be able to say more on. We also learned about how to make follow-up questions to make the person we were interviewing say more and elaborate on what they were talking about. We also learned that we have to ask questions that we don’t already know, but the questions have to be important. They can’t be useless questions. I had to have 10-15 questions but I started with 20, then I narrowed down my questions to the best ones, I also sometimes combined 2 questions if they went together or if they were very similar. It was a little hard to narrow down the questions because I had to figure out the ones to delete, I finally got my 15 questions ready, so the next step is to interview!

The interview took place in the dining room. I started recording and then I just started asking questions. It was really fun doing the interview! It was so cool asking the questions and getting really cool answers! It made me feel like I was in a game show or on tv. Her story was super cool and fun! A few things that were a little challenging were that when I asked a question, she would answer a really good answer, and it would make me wonder about something else! Staying on my questions was a little hard. Another thing was sometimes someone would come into the room and distract me, so my choice of where it should’ve taken place could’ve been better. But overall, I really liked interviewing Monica because she had lots of good answers and her story was fascinating! The interview took about 19 minutes and later that night, I rewatched it and wrote down her answers as I listened. That was a little challenging and I had to rewatch some parts, but when it was finally done and written down, I was satisfied!

The immigration interview was super fun. The story was incredible and I was fascinated the whole way through! I am so excited to make a video about the story of Monica immigrating to New York!

Rube Goldberg Blog Post #2

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Projects like the Rube Goldberg machine take a lot of determination and never giving up. It takes many tries to get it right. The process throughout the whole way is a struggle, but in the end, it was all worth it. 

 

My Rube Goldberg machine was so fun to make! The starting process was hard because you had to try and think of how to make it work. The hardest part about the planning was figuring out what to do in the end. When I was building it, it was hard to keep setting it up every time. I realized the hardest part was the small parts like the phone or the marble falling. When I finally finished it was so satisfying and I was so happy. 1 year ago I was watching my brother do his Rube Goldberg machine, and it looked so easy, I did not realize how hard it actually was to make it work. 

 

Starting to test, I realized different things along the way. For example, the blocks had to be at the perfect place for the marble to hit it. Another thing is that the phone had to be at the perfect place for it to actually fall or else it would stay put. It took me 15 tries for my whole Rube Goldberg machine to work. When it finally worked, I was so happy. It was tiring at some parts to keep redoing it and sometimes it would make me want to give up, but it was actually really fun to make and to test. 

People in my family that helped me were my dad (who helped plan and build, my mom (who helped plan and was the photographer and video), my grandparents, and my brothers and friends and family as an audience!

 

The WeVideo was the next step. First I had to plan it out on a script planner. That was pretty easy! Next, I started to import my videos into WeVideo but they wouldn’t load. I finally figured out that you had to watch them load. When they finally loaded, I started to put them into the WeVideo baseline. It was actually really fun to make. It was sort of hard because one time I tried to put in a transition and it ruined everything, but when was done I was really proud of myself!

 

Overall, this project was super fun and I loved all of it so much! The process was hard at first, but the end product was worth the struggle! My video of my Rube Goldberg machine, Cherry on Top, is going to be below, so watch it when you get the chance, please! But, after all of this, I think I’ll just go back to putting on cherries the normal way!

My video:

Sharks debate

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When I heard that we had to do debates I was pretty excited! I thought that debates would be really fun because you get to argue on a topic on two different sides! I got on the debate where we debate whether sharks should be protected or not. I really liked this debate topic because it was really interesting and I like sharks. I also knew some information about sharks before so I was prepared for what we were going to be learning about. The people in my group were Hayden, Daniel T., and Gabi. We got our folders with articles about sharks. We looked at the names of articles and tried to figure out what information they had. Then, one by one, we would read articles, annotate them, and take notes about the pros and cons. We eventually finished all our articles and we had all our information. A few days later we split up into sides for the debate. One side would say that sharks were dangerous, and the other side would say that sharks should be protected. Before we got our sides, I wanted to be on the side that says sharks should be protected because I think that was the right side and it had more information. When I got on the side that says sharks should be protected, I was happy that I got on the side I wanted. Hayden and I would be on side A, and Gabi and Daniel T. would be on side B. I already had a lot of information from all my articles so now I just needed to gather it all together. Then Hayden and I  had to make 2 reasons for why sharks should be protected. We reviewed our notes and came up with 2 strong reasons to use in the debate. One, sharks are really important to the ocean ecosystem, and two, humans kill way more sharks than sharks kill humans. Ms. Robert then gave us a document to write the intro, our two reasons, and our conclusion, (with no counterarguments) but first we had to figure out who would say what in the debate. We settled on me saying the intro and the second reason and Hayden said the first reason and the conclusion. That night for homework I started writing my introduction and my second reason. When I finished I was very happy with my work. After a week or so, Ms. Robert gave us another document with counterarguments. I started writing on the new document and I think it was more fun with counterarguments because you get to say why the other person is wrong. I wrote longer when I used counterarguments. I finally finished my side and the other side also did. Then we started to practice the debates altogether. I think it started a little hard but we got the hang of it! When it came time for the debate, I was ready! We did the debate in the auditorium and sat on 2 sides. We did a practice run, and then we did the real one on video. It was very fun. I think I did very well and I really liked the debate work!

Rube Goldberg Post #1

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A Rube Goldberg machine is a long contraption that has many steps and is made to do a very simple task. Rube Goldberg machines don’t work on the first try. It takes many tries and fails to finally get it right. Sometimes it can be frustrating, but when it finally works, it is worth it. You will be hearing about another Rube Goldberg machine today, so get ready to learn about the process it takes to make this fantastic machine.

 

When I first heard we had to do a Rube Goldberg machine, I was excited, but I knew that it would be hard. The first step was to do a sketch of your Rube Goldberg machine. At first I thought it would be easy, but I was definitely wrong. I thought it was super hard to think of all the steps for it because I was constantly thinking if it would work in the final Rube Goldberg and how it would work. I was originally thinking of pushing down the toaster, but I realized you need to apply solid pressure to push it down and that would be hard, so I decided to change it to putting a cherry on top of an ice cream sundae! This still would be pretty hard!  I also had to include at least 3 simple machines! I knew I was going to use an inclined plane, but I didn’t really know for the rest. I realized that a toy car has a wheel and axle in it so that works, and I finally decided to use a lever. Then all I had to do was figure out the steps in between and then I was all set!

 

Before starting to build the Rube Goldberg, I noticed that it would be hard to figure out a place to do it. First of all, I would need to find a place where there are flat surfaces that I could use and still make an inclined  plane at, I needed to know how to get from one height to another with tables and other flat surfaces, and I needed to find a place where I can have all my resources and materials. I figured that it could be my basement. Then I started to build! I started testing certain parts of it like the part where wood blocks fall over like dominoes. I was trying to test the part where a toy car goes down an inclined plane, but 2 problems came up. 1. The car kept going down by itself. I fixed that by putting a piece of straw as a stopper on the inclined plane. The second problem was that the dominoes couldn’t knock the car hard enough to move. I kept trying to make it work but I finally realized that it wouldn’t work. I needed to change my build. I changed it a lot by taking out the car going down an inclined plane, and I replaced it with a marble going down a hot wheels track. (still an inclined plane) I also changed the beginning and took away the lever in the middle and put it in the beginning. I made more steps in the beginning so I had enough. Finally I got a solid plan for my Rube Goldberg machine. Then I started building. 

 

Some resources and videos I watched while planning were Joseph’s Machines on youtube. I loved watching all of his videos because they were funny, and they gave me some good ideas. I also watched the video “Rube Goldberg easy examples” by Kelly Dunn on youtube. A video that helped me know how to use simple machines in Rube Goldbergs was the video “Simple Machines and the Rube Goldberg Challenge” By TeachEngineering on youtube. A few videos that were fun to watch were “OK Go – This Too Shall Pass – Rube Goldberg Machine – Official Video” and Sprice Machines. Those were all my resources that I used and all the videos I watched while making my Rube Goldberg machine. 

 

Planning and building my Rube Goldberg was a bit of a struggle. It was hard to find things to do in it, and I was always thinking about it and how it would work, but it was a super fun experience so far building it! I really enjoyed this part of this amazing project. Below you can see a picture of my original Rube Goldberg sketch (before the revisions). I hope you liked hearing about this process so far!

 

 

Ruby Bridges Project Reflection

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For the constitution project, I chose to do my question on Ruby Bridges. I chose this because I was looking through people that were civil rights leaders for the project and Ruby Bridges seemed so interesting! She was a 6 year old black girl that changed segregation in schools! I am really happy I chose to do Ruby Bridges because she was so fun to learn about and study.

My research question was: Why is it important to learn about Ruby Bridges and her experiences today? When I first got it, I thought it would be sort of easy to do because it was a broad topic. But it was a bit of a challenge. I liked my question though. Sometimes I found it challenging to find the right information because I would sometimes get a lot of information I didn’t really need. I also found it a bit challenging to write some of the script. But I kept trying and at the end, I was very proud.

I think this project was long but very fun to work on! Sometimes the process was a little hard because I would get stuck on what to write, but I figured out a way to make everything work. I learned so much on Ruby Bridges. I learned that she was 6 years old when she went to an all-white school. She was able to change peoples thinking about segregation in schools. Overall, this was a super fun experience and I think I learned a lot about Ruby Bridges and how she was a huge part of our history!

You can check out this video I made of Ruby Bridges!

Welcome to 5th Grade!

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Okay! I am super excited because I still remember from kindergarten the first day, walking into school and everything new surrounding me. The youngest kids in the school. Now I’m in 5th grade! The oldest kids in school! I still can’t believe it! Although my years at Heathcote have been awesome, there were a few bumps. What am I saying, A LOT of bumps. Specifically speaking the last year. Those 18 months. Covid came into my life without warning. All of a sudden, lock downs, sicknesses, hospitals filling up, masks, but most of all… ONLINE SCHOOL! I was only in 3rd Grade at the time so going from in person school with everything normal, to online school with online zooms, online assignments, online specials. It was a lot! Everyone thought it would stop in just a week or 2. NOPE! After 2 years from then Covid is still here.

About 18 months ago was the real challenge. Hybrid school is annoying because we had to do specials on zoom at 9:30 or so. Then in the afternoon I had to eat a quick lunch and then rush to school. Finally when we heard the news that school was starting all in person again I was so happy! But I was so annoyed that we had to wear masks the whole day and we had to eat lunch at our seats and we couldn’t talk to friends. At least we got to watch movies and have mask breaks!

Now that I am in 5th grade I feel so much older than everyone and I’m also excited because we get more privilege’s and we are going to be doing crazy activities! I still don’t know a lot about what a capstone is but I think it will be fun! A lot of people are excited for it. I am hoping that we will be able to have the 5th grade vs teachers volley ball this year! If we are the students will win! I thin 5th grade will be fun and probably a memorable year! Stay safe! Bye!

Super Fudge

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I read Super Fudge as my book club book. It’s about 2 boys, Peter (older) and Fudge(younger) and they live in New York City. One day their parents told them the were having another baby, Tootsie. Another day their parents told them they were moving to Princeton for a year. Peter was not happy about all of these changes. Fudge didn’t mind. Once they got to Princeton Peter was worried about school and having to make new friends. He’s also sad because he misses his friends from New York City. In addition Tootsie was getting all the attention. But it turns out it wasn’t so bad at all because Peter and Fudge made new friends and they were able to see their old friends sometimes. Also Tootsie wasn’t so bad. At the end they moved back to New York City and got used to Tootsie. The lesson learned was that changes aren’t so bad. Don’t be afraid of changes. Thats the story of the book Super Fudge. Heres a link to my story mountain that I made. I hope you like it!

super fudge story mountain