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.