Category Archives: 5th Grade

Tech Blog #2

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This weeks project is comparing two beams. One is an
I-beam and the other is our own custom design. What you do is you follow the video that he gave us and make the I-beam and then make your own beam, which I just made a square beam. Then you tested it by putting two chairs together and putting the beam on the chairs and it should have the ends on the chairs and the middle touching nothing. You then get cans of soup and put them in a bag and put the bag on the beam. You keep adding cans till the beams can’t hold anymore. For me, my own custom beam worked a lot better then the first one. The I-beam bent in the middle and it started cracking with 5  cans, so I removed one and I bet 4 would’ve done well but I didn’t test it because it already cracked. My beam held 6 cans, it might’ve been able to add another too.

Capstone Blog Post #3

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Capstone was very hard. Especially while I was doing my final video, I was stressing a lot.

After I did my slides, I started to practice my script and it was very tough. I practiced about 4 slides a day and I filmed on Sunday. The filming took a few hours to get it right. I kept thinking, “I should’ve done a Spark Video,” or I thought “Maybe a screencast?” But honestly, I’m proud I did a TED-Talk because I find it the most challenging and I took it. It may have taken me forever to do Capstone, but it’s ok because I can look back and see all the hard work I put into Capstone and it shows me I can work harder.

Answering my main inquiry question was complicated. There are many steps to becoming a successful baker so, of course, I have to break it all down. Some of the steps are, having the right tools, having the best ingredients, making sure your treats look good, all that because that’s what makes people want to buy your cakes and then you become successful. 

I believe overall, Capstone is a great learning experience. My advice to future fifth graders starting Capstone would be even if it’s hard, keep going, because, in the end, you’ll see how good your Capstone will turn out!

https://youtu.be/fM0hVi6tR0Q

Capstone Blog Post #2

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So far Capstone is great! I’ve got my interview done, and all my research, everything is going pretty well altogether.

My teacher helped me find someone to interview, I had two choices. I just picked one randomly. I had picked Lulu Bakery. The chef/partner Victor was the person I interviewed. For the interview, my parents and I sent out my questions for them to prepare ahead of time and we set up the date and time. 

On Friday afternoon we finally did the interview and we called, we introduced ourselves, and I asked him the questions. The answers were definitely different than I thought they would be and it was cool to hear how they made their cakes. I thought it was very interesting and I was excited to hear all the answers. Everything is so exciting about Capstone especially the interview because you get to talk to an expert!

During the interview, I had a recorder, and a backup recorder, a pen, blank paper for writing on, my paper with the interview questions, and my computer so I could remember what I would say in the beginning and the end.

After the interview was done, I transcribed the interview onto a Google Document and I pasted it on my Capstone Note-Taking Slides. The interview was definitely a success and I got lots of information and enough information. 

One surprising thing I learned was that to make the cakes, bakeries need giant tools, especially an oven, mixer, and pots. Victor said the mixer was half the size of a car! That’s pretty big!  Imagine how many they have, they must have a big kitchen! Something else that was interesting is that the mixers each cost about $20,000! If they had a lot of mixers it must be very expensive!

Capstone Blog Post #1

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We are starting a unit in social studies… Capstone! My topic is Baking, and my main questions is, “What are the top ten things a baker needs to be successful?” I chose that as my main inquiry question because lots of beginners in baking don’t know what to get for baking or even how to bake, so I decided this will help people out and it’s also important to know how to be successful when you bake. 

One thing that was challenging was choosing the main question.  I was trying to think of one, but I couldn’t think of any questions and that was probably the hardest part till my teacher helped me and I got, “What are the top ten things a baker needs to be successful?”  I am not good at thinking of things in general but with a little help I’m ok. Capstone is challenging to me because it requires thinking of many questions, and I am not very good at that! As a learner I learned you have to keep trying and take your time, don’t rush otherwise your work will come out sloppy and your research may not be true because you were rushing.

Martin Luther King Jr. Blog Post

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This Monday is Martin Luther King Jr. day. We celebrate it to honor him and his many achievements. In school we are learning about him and his “I have a dream” speech. I think he is one of the most important people of the U.S. and I also think he is also underrated sometimes. He made many movements and made lots of speeches too. I think he deserves more attention. I also feel like people just take his holiday for granted because school is closed and kids don’t even care. Mostly because kids don’t even know him. Schools should teach about him in the early grades so they can reference him as they become older.

Martin Luther King Timeline 

Date Event
January 15th, 1929 Martin Luther King Jr was born in Atlanta, Georgia
1944  Started to go to Morehouse College
1948 Became a pastor at his father’s church
1948 He started to go to Crozer Theological Seminary, religious school
1951 Began studying at Boston University
1953 Married to Coretta Scott
1954 Moved to Montgomery, Alabama with his wife and had a job as a pastor
1957 He joined the NAACP and talked about convincing colored people to join and fight
1957 Joined other colored religious leaders to form SCLC, he began doing peaceful protests
October, 1960 Briefly jailed for joining a group of students at a sit-in
1963 Nationwide civil rights movement across the country
April 12th, 1963 Arrested again with civil rights leader, Ralph Abernathy
April 16th 1963 He wrote a letter from Birmingham Jail about racism
August 28th, 1963 I Have a Dream speech
April 4th, 1968 Shot and died by James Earl Ray while talking to fellow protestors on his balcony
April 9th 1968 Martin was buried in Atlanta

 

Designing and Building and Launching Rocket #3

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In rocketry we are currently building our third rocket. My team has almost finished and we are so excited for the third launch because our parents are coming.

First we designed the rocket, it took longer than expected because we were very slow and didn’t agree much. What we did was copy and pasted our second rocket and then we changed the color and nose cone because we decided the thing we were changing was the nose cone. 

Another team had a pointy tall nose cone and that’s what we wanted so we did what they did. They stacked two nose cones on top of each other. One small and one that actually fit the rocket. Then I taped them separately with black tape, to make them bigger because when I taped them together it was bigger because they already had tape on them. So I taped them with black tape nice and tight. For our rocket body it was the same, skinny and thin. We decided to make it blue with black tape. For our fins we did the same thing as the second rocket’s fins. In our group someone wanted to cut the body in half because in another class they had tiny rockets and they went 218 feet. But we used popsicle sticks and he was also outvoted. 

We didn’t work so well when deciding to change our rocket. Like when someone wanted to cut it in half so it was a tiny rocket, it became a big mess. Then our teacher came around and told him we couldn’t change it again, but he just kept picking popsicle sticks and kept pulling them out until he picked his name. It got annoying at times but in the end it was good and we always have a way to figure it out.

We also launched our rocket #3 at first my class thought we were just building it but then our teacher decided to let us launch it. Our rocket went 153 feet high! The third launch was our highest launch! We were super surprised with the results and didn’t think it would go that high. We tied with team Chicos. Their average was the highest! We were all super happy! 

At the launch, I think it was the best moment from the start of the unit because we knew it would be ending soon and we all challenged each other really well. It helped me because I never knew if we would fight or not and we did, but we always resolved it.

Launching and Graphing Rocket #2

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Our second launch was also good and I was surprised that it didn’t go higher than our other rocket because when you looked up it looked a lot higher. Again I thought it would fail but of course I was wrong again which is great! I am very happy with our results. Though because the group that went the highest basically had the same design and our rocket didn’t go higher than that group’s rocket. I was confused about but it’s okay. My team job was pumper because last time I got one of the “good” jobs. But I didn’t really care because it wasn’t “boring”. I thought it was kinda fun and you got to see the pressure of the air go up! 

 

Our teams launch when we launched everyone looked up and it look like it was almost 150 feet high! I had my hopes up when it came back down that it went really high. But when we asked the clinometer readers they said it only went 121 feet high. Our team was still happy but we were also kinda sad that it didn’t go higher than expected.

 

In my class, almost everyone went higher than 100 feet. Except for one group, but it went 96 feet which is still high. My groups rocket went 3 feet higher than last time, which I’m actually pretty happy about. Not every group has wrote down how high their rocket has gone but so far the highest rocket went 136 feet high! Last time, the highest rocket went 192 feet high. I think when everyone changed something it totally made a difference in the rockets.

 

Our team was so happy after the launch and we were such a good team! During the launch we were all happy we could almost hug each other, but we didn’t. I think our teamwork paid off even though we argue sometimes. When we aren’t arguing we are getting along and laughing together. Because all of us but Charles were working on the presentation, he graphed it. He did a good job and that was our final graph.

 

After we had launched we all sat down by a tree to take notes of what we observed.

Designing and Building Rocket #2

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After we had launched our first rocket we had moved on to building and designing our second rocket. To design it we copy and pasted our first rocket design onto a new google drawing. The rule was, we could only change one thing on our rocket. Not two or three because then we wouldn’t know what failed. My group decided to change the fins because one of the groups that went the highest had skinny, and tall, fins. So we did the same thing almost to improve our rocket. After we had changed our fins we changed up the color too. Our rocket body was skinny, the nose cone was point and small, and the fins were thin, and tall. 

Building our rocket was so much easier than building the first rocket, because we had already built a rocket we knew what to do to build our second rocket. It was easy this time. We folded up the paper to make our body, though that did take a few tries only because we kept on letting go of the paper and kept unrolling. Other than that it was pretty easy to build the rocket. The nose cone was super easy to make. I made it. I had to put tape all around it too but that was easy for me. The fins everyone else took care of because I was doing the nose cone. After we had got everything on we were set and good for our next launch.

With my group everyone was agreeing on everything. It turned out to be good and in the beginning I thought the group could never get along but after the first launch, we all had a better bond. Though while designing we did argue rarely about colors of the rocket, how big and small fins were, and deciding what the one thing would be that we’d change from the first rocket. But after all, I’m happy with my group. 

Launching and Graphing Rocket #1

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A day after we had finished designing and building our rockets our teacher told us we would launch the next day. Everyone was so excited for our first launch! My team could not wait for the launch!

For our launch there were jobs. One job was launching and placing the rocket, another was countdown master and rocket retriever, and the last two jobs were air pumpers. For our first launch how we decided jobs was we picked out of paper in a cup. We all put our names in and we picked out one name. That one name got to pick what they wanted their job to be first. My name got picked second and I picked rocket launcher and placer. 

The day of the rocket launch we went out to the field and everyone gathered around to listen to the instructions. My team went last because we are the last team, team 6. When one team went there were four clinometer readers and they would split into two groups and one would go to the back field and one would to the blacktop. Then when the team launches the readers get into action and they use the clinometer to read how high it goes. Our team’s rocket went pretty high! It went 118 Feet high! Wasn’t as high as the other teams but we are still proud of how high it went. I think it was a very successful launch as I thought it would be a big fail. Nothing fell so I was very happy about that!

Everything was good with the collaboration, and I think we all got along much. Sometimes we had arguments but not very much. It was rare if we had an argument.  I think after launch #1 our relationships with each other got stronger and better.

 

Designing and Building Rocket #1

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Designing our rocket was hard. We couldn’t always agree on what our parts of the rocket would  look like. Half our group wanted long fins and the other half didn’t want that. But someone in the group was always messing around and stuff so it was very hard to work. 

We had a pointy nose cone so that the air hits off the top and helps it glide better. We had a skinny body because it will shoot up instead of slowing down with the wider tube. We also had 3 fins because it will help with stability and the fins will help the fins stay in the direction the rocket is launched in.

Building our first rocket also took a lot of time and we didn’t know exactly how to build it like what materials and stuff. We didn’t know what color it’d be and what tape we’d use for the rocket and what color the fins would be and stuff. We had to always vote while building our rocket. We didn’t very much get long. But in the end our rocket turned out great and the launch was successful!