Capstone Blog Post #3

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

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

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.