Category: 6th Grade

Top Three Places To Visit in The World

My Ted Talk experience

     This year, my 6th grade class made Ted like talks about something we were passionate about. We started out with brainstorming ideas, then we started planning for our project. At first, we filled out a planning sheet to map out all or ideas and once that was approved we got to work on our slides show presentation. This included researching about our topic, writing a script, adding visuals, and making our presentation as aesthetic as we wanted it to be. Then, once all that was done we started to practice our presentations.

     While doing this, we had to keep in mind a lot of things like, how are we going to capture the audiences attention, what will our call to action be, can I had a story about me to connect with my topic, which pictures should I use, what background will fit best, and the single most important one, how will I make sure my talk fits the 5 minute requirement.

     At first, I had no idea what I wanted to write my blog post on. I contemplated lots of different ideas. I did not know which one too choose, I wanted to do them all. Some of my ideas included doing a talk about field hockey which is my absolute favorite thing to do in the world. It is my life—#fh4life is my personal slogan. One other one I contemplated doing it about was the mental game in sports, how the off field aspect of sports is actually really important. In the end though, I went with one that I thought would please my class the most. I ended up doing it on……..the top three places to visit in the world.

     And so the process started, I started by collecting a list of of the states, countries, and major countries I’ve visited in the world. Then, had the hard task of narrowing my options down. At first, I decided to do it on the top ten places to visit in the world, but after considering everything, mainly the time obligation, I decided to keep it to the top three. After much contemplation, I had finally narrowed it down to my final places. One step in my project done, a lot more to go.

     Next up on my long to do list for completed my Ted like talk was the least fun bit in my opinion, and definitely the one I procrastinated doing the longest was the researching. So, after a couple too many days of waiting I started this step, that was until I realized one thing. I didn’t know what to research! Now with deadlines creeping up fast, I started to get a little nervous so I went to work on finding out what I wanted to share about the places I chose. Once that was done, I could finally get to work. After a couple days of researching and being very nit pick pay about what would be in my presentation, I had completed step two in the the process.

     At this point, I wanted to finish my Ted like talk so bad. Others had already started to present and my panic bells were going off. So, I started one of my favorite steps in my Ted like talk, finding the pictures! A big part of my presentation was food so I had the absolute delight of searching up scrumptious foods, and because this was my favorite part in the project it also went the fastest. Until I realized one thing, all the pictures had to be copyright free. So, I had to restart the process, luckily it was okay because I was able to find tons of copyright free images in a very short amount of time, and I was able to add personal pictures. Great! My presentation was almost complete. Now I just had to finish the final details such as making more my script looked good, adjusting my pictures, and the most important one, practicing!

     I had set a date for when I would present and was feeling great. My presentation was exactly how I wanted it to be and all I had to do was practice. Since I had so long perfecting and memorizing my slides, this part was a breeze. Within the first practice round it was great! There was nothing I wanted to change. I was very confident and for the first time ever, I was excited to speak in front of other people. Now, all I had to do was present.

     And so the day came. I woke up ready, had a good breakfast, and headed to school. My first class went by like a breeze, and once it was done and I headed of to LA-language arts, where I would present my ted like talk. I was second to present that day so, as soon as the first one was done I headed up to speak, without a single worry which was great. Then, oh no! My ipad wasn’t working. After a couple of tries it still wasn’t working, so I got bumped to the third one to present instead of the second. Luckily, I was able to get it to work!

     Once I stood up to present everything worked as I wanted it to. I could not have been happier! It felt like two seconds had gone by and I was done. This was a great experience! I loved getting to present something I am passionate about! The best part though, were my classmates and the respect they showed during my talk. Thank you for this opportunity!!

     

Stock Market Project


Recently, in Language Arts we have been talking about and working with fake stocks. In early April, we started this process. At first, one of our math teachers came in to help us make our Google Sheets to help us organize our stocks. She taught us About what stocks were and how to and put formulas to track our earnings. After that, we each got given an imaginary budget of $20,000 to invest in our own stocks. There are a few obligations. Number one was that we could only invest in up to six different stocks. Number two was that we could not spend a single penny over our budget. Number three was that our stocks had to be part of the New York Stock Exchange. Lastly, number four was that all of her stocks had to produce actual items. That was only the first step in the process, organizing and learning about everything. In the next part of the project, we actually started to check our stocks!

Once our initial planning was done, we had check-ins of how our stocks were going. Each week we recorded our earnings or losses on a flashcard  to track our progress over a long period of time. By doing this, we were also able to compare our stocks with others and see how theirs were doing too. Everyone’s goal is to ultimately win the project by having earned the most money through the imaginary stocks you invested in. Both the people that earned the most and this imaginary stocks project  and lost the most in this project won a prize! Above you can see the stocks I invested in and how they were doing on 5/30/23. Some have done really well since the last time I checked, but some have also gotten progressively worse. Right now in particular Facebook and Apple are doing really well but Nike on the other hand isn’t. Hopefully, my stocks continue to improve over time event though I won’t be tracking them anymore. 

This project was inspired by The Westing Game. It is a book about 16 people who try and solve a murder mystery. One girl, Turtle thinks investing in and working with stocks in the solution to the riddles/clues everyone is given. We have been working with this book a lot lately, and this is one of my favorite things we did relating to the book because Turtle, the character so invested in stocks, is my favorite character! I love doing this as it gave me a chance to learn more about the stock market and how it works and because I loved investing in my own personal fake stocks to see how they did it over time. Thank you for reading this post!

6th Grade Language Arts has gone by so fast!

The Last Cuentista:

(Picture taken from my books app)


In around November our sixth started reading a book called The Last Cuentista by:  The Last Cuentista is a book about a girl and her family who get selected to travel to a new planet. This journey will take them hundreds of years and in the meantime they will lose all memories of their past. All but Petra, the main character, who goes on a mission to regain everyone’s memories. She does this using the power of words and I’m here to tell you the importance of why.  

Words are very powerful. Words get you out of sticky situations,  words determine whether someone is guilty or not, words keep a conversation going. Words are what ensure our place in the world today. The Last Cuentista is a great reminder of this message. When all hope is given up Petra relies on the familiar stories words created. She relies on the stories passed down to her through her family and shares them with others. By doing this she wanted them to remember some parts about their past. She was resilient; she went through stories and stories and stories until she found the right one. People started regaining their memories of the past. They started to gain back the familiar feeling of being at home while laying in your bed and having your parents read to you. The comfort that it gives. If Petra hadn’t remembered the stories many many people would have lost all All thoughts of their previous lives. 

Words create stories, the stories that are told to us about our family and how to live life. What would happen to us if we lost all these stories? We would lose everything, all of our knowledge. The Last Cuentista is a great reminder of this message. We need to remember words, because the stories that we tell create our future generations. Without them, we would know nothing about the past, we would not be able to create such an everlasting impact on earth. So thank you to those who take the time to spread these messages, who tell the stories of sadness,  happiness,  surprise, anger, suffering, and everything in between. 

Ideal World: 

After reading the story, we have to create our own ideal worlds. We had to envision everything that we would want, design it, draw it, and finally create a blog post about it. Scroll down to find what my ideal world would be like! some small hints: my ideal world was split into three major parts with different unique aspects. 1/3 of my word was completely dedicated to sports, specifically field hockey. One part was dedicated to all the business aspects, and the last was one just as if it was out of a magical fairy tale. This experience was truly so fun, and so different. it was like I was writing down everything out of my dreams and trying to make it a reality. Definitely one of my favorite things about 6th grade language arts!

Book Making:

The next major project in 6th language arts  was creating our own personal 3D books. A local artist, Peg Gignoux came in to help us. She told us how to collage and a special technique of ink printing called Akua. When that was done she helped us assemble our books, create the cover, pick color schemes, and put the final touches on our books. I made my book surrounding a nature theme. I tried to use a lot of plants, trees, foliage, bushes, and natural aspects of our world today. The final step in the process was adding our  Ideal World story and cuento to the book. Read on to find out more about my personal cuento (story)!  Once they were all done they were put up for the whole school to see. This was definitely my favorite thing we did this year!.

Cuento:

Keep it on the theme of stories. We were asked to write about our own. We chose one particular moment about us or someone else  and wrote about it. I wrote mine about cheese, no matter how crazy it is. You see, when I was younger I was obsessed with cheese and went through great lengths to obtain some for myself. so I thought it would be really fun and unique to write about it. I loved how my cuento turned out.

Sixth grade has truly gone by so fast, one moment we were learning about grammar and learning how to enhance our writing, The next we’re riding full on stories for our school for our school to see. Although some times we’re busier than others, we truly did so much. It was a year I will never forget and I made some great memories throughout it. Thank you for reading this blog post!

 

Science Project

Recently, we completed an experiment involving heat transfer. In groups we had to use tools provided to create the best insulator we could. Our creation had to keep an egg from cooking while heat was applied from a blow torch for three minutes. We were able to test the materials that we thought would work best. We had one hot side which was the side where the heat was being applied and one cold side which was the material behind the hot side. The cold side was the side that would end up being nearest the egg and we hoped that the hot side was a good enough insulator that it was able to keep the heat from going to the cold side. The testing was done by joining 2 materials and seeing what their temperature would be after heat was applied from a heat gun for one minute. Sometimes, our ideas were great! They were able to sustain a good temperature leading us to think they would be great in the actual experiment. Sometimes however, our ideas did dot succeed. They were super hot and would not make for the best heat shield. During this whole process we had to be very purposeful with what we were doing. Why? You may ask. This is because we had a budget, in our case we had a hundred chips or fake dollars to use. This made the project extra challenging because we couldn’t just use an infinite amount of the best insulator there was, especially because the good materials were more expensive than the bad ones. We had three main restrictions for our final project and if we did not follow them points would be taken off. First, our creation had to be one centimeter or less. Second, our creation had to be 45 grams or less. Third, as mentioned before, we only had 100 chips/ fake dollars to use.

When our whole class had finished we made presentations on our projects. Then, we could finally see if our ideas were a success or not. Sadly, ours wasn’t. It didn’t explode so that was great, but there was some cooking and charring. Our egg only cooked .3 of a millimeter, still it wasn’t enough to get us any points. This is how the point system worked. Important: If there was any amount of any of these things it would be zero points. No charring=100 points, No cooking=100 points, any leftover money you had: 100 minus the amount your project cost was rewarded as extra points. This was a really fun project, it was super fun and I learned a lot!

Ideal World

One World Three Luxuries

By: Mae


 

Can you envision the world of your dreams, perhaps school with no homework or life without rules? My ideal world world would be split in 3 parts. One of them being whimsical and a type of life out of a fairy tale, the other full of all things field hockey, and finally the business related part which would include things like schools and stores. 

I love field hockey, so I have dedicated ⅓ of my ideal world to it, specifically to the details of the fields and the temperature. I love hot and sunny days but they can be excruciating to play in, so the constant temperature and weather of this part of my world would be in the high sixties, with sun, some clouds, and a breeze in the air. With this being said, I would also want the fields to be in perfect condition. Goals in perfect shape and crisp field lines for the most accurate play. Next, all fields would have at least one water refill station with water that was nice and cool, plus it would never run out. Finally, I would enforce everyone who played to have at least a scrimmage per weekend with umpires that are actually trained to make the best calls. Now, it’s time to describe the more business type of my world. 

Although, life without rules and school seems fun, it would be complete chaos. So, there are a few things that would make it better. School is fun but the work that comes with it isn’t always so great, so the number 1 rule at schools would be no homework. The only exception to this rule would be projects that require more effort. Next, all stores would be at reasonable prices so more people could afford them. Even though it would definitely not be enough, hopefully this would reduce hunger by some amount. You have to be able to get to and from school so it’s important for the roads and sidewalks to be clean, no littering allowed! Last but definitely not least, there would also be trees that grew candy constantly ready to eat.

Being comfortable and relaxed is very important. So, the last part of my world would be just like one out of a fairy tale. A pastel colored sky with bright stars and dotted with white fluffy clouds would be the first part of this section. Next, the ground would be a lazy river that is always completely clean and at the perfect temperature for you. On the way around there would be homes made of candy and cute and cozy shops where you can dine in for free. There would be hot springs scattered around for a fun surprise once in a while and to solve the problem of not wanting to be wet when you get out of the water, in my world you would feel the water surround you but you would never actually get wet. Most important part of this part of my ideal world would be the ability to reign in a cloud at any time. They would be fluffy, the perfect size, and they would infinitely reproduce. Once you use a cloud once though, it would disappear back into the sky. There would be a way to control the amount of clouds in the sky to make sure there were never too much and never to little. If you had a condition that prevented you from being you you wanted to be, there would be magical potions you could drink to solve the problem. Only a certain amount per lifetime though, no over usage! After all that, my ideal world is complete.

In conclusion, my ideal world would be split into three sections. One dedicated to field hockey, one dedicated to business related things, and the other would be like life out of a fairy tale. All of these sections would promote peace and love, hopefully reducing the amount of violence. So that’s it, my ideal world is complete!

Field Hockey Tournament

This past weekend my team participated in The Sunshine Showcase which takes place in Orlando, Florida. We play field hockey and as a team we competed for the top spot in our division. Did it end up happening? It did not, in fact our record ended up being 1-1-3. (1 win, 1 tie, 3 losses) This was definitely not the result we wanted, but it’s okay. We all put forward our best effort and had a great time hanging out together as a team. Next time though, we are definitely aiming for some more wins!

Each game came with its own challenges, whether it be the refs or the other team. This was very frustrating for our team, but it was also a great learning experience. We had many situations where the umpires would make bad calls. This influenced the game and how we played a lot. We would come off the field and whisper to each other about how annoying the umpires were, but in the end there was nothing we could do. So, with every game that passed we were less and less influenced. When a bad call was made we got back and defended strong. This helped a lot, by letting things go we had continued results going upward. Even though it didn’t show it in the final scores, our performance as a team had definitely improved from the time we set foot on the fields to when we took our last steps off them.

 

 

Window or Mirror

Dust and Grim

The most recent book I read was Dust and Grim by Chuck Wendig, Genre: Horror fiction/paranormal fiction/fantasy fiction. For me this book was more of a window. This means, I don’t have many personal connections to the setting, plot, or characters in a book. So, what was my book about you may ask?  It was about a girl who tried to gain acceptance into the family from her brother. When in his home she snoops around and ends up getting herself caught up in a magical mystery including her uncle, the only person in the world that she thought was on her side. 

I chose the book Dust and Grim randomly, I picked it from the shelf and saw that one of my favorite authors had given it a good review so I decided to read it too. Even though I haven’t realized it, most of the books I’ve read have been windows. This is because my personal preference of books is fiction over nonfiction and although I would love to, I am not involved in any magical scheme that lots of fictional books are about.

The Smuggler

The Smuggler – Click here to access our project 

In class we read some wisdom tales from around the world and then made projects about them. My partner Georgia and I decided to do a stop motion video about The Smuggler. 

What is The Smuggler about you may ask. It is about a man who also got his donkeys checked by a guard before entering an open air market. The guard always knew that he was smuggling something, but he never knew what. Then, one day after the guard’s retirement he came across the man with the donkeys and asked him what he always smuggled through to the market. The donkeys, that is what I have smuggled through to the market for so long was the response of the man.

A Somewhat Interesting Day at Ski School

Can you imagine being stuck on a ski lift for 3+ hours? Well, I couldn’t either until it actually happened to me. It was an average day, I was at ski school in Breckenridge, Colorado having a great time. We had just eaten chicken nuggets and fries for lunch and were getting ready to go down our first slope of the afternoon. I love to be the first, so naturally me and my partner brought forth all of our energy and trekked up the little slope before the ski lift as fast as possible. Everything was great! I felt myself relax as my body touched the icy bench that was going to take us to our next hill. Then, the next thing I knew we were moving up the mountain. Out of nowhere we lurched forward, our bodies hit the bar protecting us from falling and I realized that we had stopped. We were about 30 feet from the ground and I felt the urge to jump. Just then I heard the voice of the ski lift patrol yelling up to me that the lift was stuck and he could not fix it. He also yelled and told me that one of my group members didn’t feel well so he had to go back down to the base. “Oh great” I thought to myself, “it’s freezing cold outside and I’m stuck with nowhere to go.” To make matters worse it even started to snow. I was bummed and annoyed when I felt clumps of wetness splotch down on me realizing that this was going to take a while. 

As minutes ticked on I felt a deeper dread in my body. This was going to take an unbearable amount of time. And I was right, my instructor was gone, the rest of my group was down the mountain and I was stuck sitting there doing nothing but talking with my partner. Even though it was fun for a while, I found it very hard to entertain myself for what ended up being the next 3 hours. We were so close to the snowy cushion of whiteness below us but we had been strictly forbidden to jump, which as you know, I really wanted to fo. Finally, after what had felt like an eternity, something amazing happened, the lift started to move! It was an insanely long process, we moved forward 1 foot, lurched forward, and waited another 5-10 minutes before continuing. At one point, the lift broke down again and we waited for another hour for it to continue. However, after this grueling and exceptionally long process, we managed to make it to the next tower. O, how it felt so good to step in the sauna like patrol center. My toes could finally start to warm up and I could shake all the wet snow from my eyes. I was so happy to be out of that now dreaded lift. 

How did it all end you may ask. Well, after another 30 minutes of waiting a ski patrol car FINALLY showed up and me and my partner had a long awaited ride to hot coco and treats waiting for us. After such a long day, being out of the snow and indulging in salty and sugary goodness felt like luxury in my stomach. In the end, that was a tiring, frustrating, and around great day. This is one day that I will never forget.