Capstone Project Proposal

Spencer Toporowski January 4th/22

Mr. Harvalias Block D
The capstone strand I have chosen is the project strand.
Building a model home.
My inquiry question for my capstone is, what is it like designing and building a
miniature house?
I chose this inquiry question because I like working in the wood shop. I have been
taking woodwork for the last 6 years and would like to go into a career that
involves working with wood like carpentry. I would also like to test my skills and
see if I could manage to go into the trade.
After taking woodwork for so long I have become knowledgeable in many ways in
the wood shop. I know how all the machines work and what they are meant to
do. Last year I worked alongside Mrs. Dahl to help make the “snack shack” for our
school.
At this point, I am interested in going into carpentry as a possible career path.
This inquiry connects with the career path that I want to follow because it gets me
to design and create something from nothing. I believe it would be an effective
way for me to gain a little bit of exposure while also learning the basics of
framework and how to detail a house.
This project will engage different skills. I will be using math for measurements and
dimensions, critical and creative thinking for designing and laying out the house,
communication for collaborating my ideas with Mrs. Dahl, problem solving,
patience, and my woodworking skills to make the house.
I will be showing my work and progress with pictures consistently updating of
where I am at in the project and a summary explaining how far I got for the time I
worked on it and where I would like to go with it moving on> I will also document
any problems I ran into and how I used my critical thinking and judgement to
overcome them.
How will I learn during this project? I plan to watch several different YouTube
videos. An example of this would be, If I wanted to build a wall and had no clue on
how to I would go on YouTube and watch several different videos on how to make
a wall. If there are no videos on how to build a wall, I would find websites on how
to build a wall, and if there are no websites then I will have to ask Mrs. Dahl for
help.
My mentor for this project will be Mrs. Dahl. Mrs. Dahl is an excellent
woodworker who is truly knowledgeable and experienced in this field. Mrs. Dahl
will be able to help me if I have any questions on “how should I go about this?”
The few limitations I can think of is time. Because it is a very doable project, but I
do not have a dedicated block to work on my capstone because I do not have a
wood working block so I must go in on my spare block and share the wood shop
with another class of 26 people, and with winter break taking two weeks and I
cannot work on my project at home because I do no not have the machines I need
to use.. Time management and my terrible procrastination seems to be the
hardest things that I will have to deal with.