Tag Archives: School

My TED-like Talk

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At the end of the school year in Language Arts, we had to create our own TED talk. We chose our own topic, made our own slides, and wrote what we were going to say. At first I was a little freaked out. I mean, that’s a lot of stuff to do. And it’s at the end of the school year! But once I picked my topic – 6 Good Books to Read in 6th Grade – it got a bit easier. I compiled a list of random books that I read and have liked, and put them together on slides. It was hard finding copyright free book cover images, but I managed.

Our teacher gave us a list of tips from someone that had done TED talks before, and those tricks came in handy. Some examples of the tips were stuff like, “If you have more than one image on the screen the background should be black” and “Think simplicity and contrast.” There were a lot more helpful tips that I tried to use. Once I had put together the slides, the real challenge came-what I would say. The hard part wasn’t what to say, it was how long it took. I had my talk memorized without ever writing it down, but the problem was that it was way too long. We had 5 minutes to give our TED Talk, and my talk… was 9 ½ minutes. My friend helped me write it down so that I could see what to cut. She said, and I quote: “write the summary of the summary”. And you know what? It worked!

This whole process took a while, especially with the fact that I procrastinated in the beginning. Because of that, I was the 2nd-to-last person in the class to go. When I got up to present, I was pretty nervous. What if I blank? What if no one laughs at my jokes? What if I take too long? What if? What if? But once I got up there and started speaking, I did it! I knew what I was going to say and it felt pretty good. And let me tell you something. It feels GOOD to be done with that. When you start it’s annoying and looms over you, then as you get closer to a deadline you start to panic and work on it nonstop. Then you are done! I would highly recommend trying this, even if it’s just with friends and family.

Heat Shield Experiment

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This year in science we did a heat shield project. The project went like this: your job was to create an effective heat shield to protect an egg from a blowtorch for three minutes. You got a certain amount of ‘credits’ which was imaginary money, and you had to stay under budget. Each material cost a certain amount of credits. You also had to stay under a thickness limit of 3 cm.

Everybody was placed into random groups of three. Then each of us were assigned one of three jobs; Materials Master, All Star Analyst, and Challenge Captain. Once that was divided, we made our test heat shields. Everybody tried lots of different ideas. Some worked, most didn’t. In the end, my group had two successful prototypes. To test, we used a heat gun instead of a blowtorch and instead of an egg, we just took temperatures.

For the final test, we combined our successful prototypes and prayed like crazy it would work. One group’s shield caught on fire, and one just melted. By the time it was time for ours, we were convinced it would fail. But lo and behold, it WORKED! Our shield, (which had been named babygorral [not a typo]) had protected our egg, Kevin. (Named after Kelvin Units) So we won and got one million totally-real-and-not-fake-at-all dollars on a big check. It rocked. Plus we learned a lot about how certain materials prevent heat, and some spread it. 

 

Museum Field Trip

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Last week, my grade went to the Raleigh Museum of Natural Sciences for a field trip. There were a lot of interesting things about animals to learn. There were 4 whole floors! Each floor had something new and interesting to learn about. One floor had an entire whale skeleton! There was also an exhibit on bugs, dinosaurs, gemstones, weather, and sea life. When we were in the sea exhibit, I was watching some shrimp in the corner of the tank when I saw one just fall over and die. It was pretty sad. Then the other shrimp circled around the dead one and I think they were eating it.

Up in the weather part of the exhibit, there was a little room off to the side with a bunch of cool 3D-printed stuff. There were interlocking 3D bits that moved and flexed, and there were things like never-ending puzzles. Ther was also a really cool large, multiple-piece dinosaur skull that was bright orange. All of it was really cool to look at and explore.

There were also multiple spaces where  you could watch people working at their job. I felt a little bad for them because they were constantly being watched. Among those viewing areas was an actual animal hospital where you could watch them perform surgery!

Another great exhibit was the exhibit on race. It had a lot of different posters explaining and showing how and why race was made up, and ways the race affects people’s life. It was really interesting and fun to learn about and I greatly appreciated the experience.