Welcome to the Last Quarter of the School Year!
Greetings, Philomath community! We hope everyone had a fun and restful Spring Break. We’re now in the second week of the final quarter of the school year. As a reminder, there will be only one holiday before the end of the semester on Friday, May 26th, at a date to be announced as soon as possible. Here are a few highlights to look out for in your child’s classes in the coming days:
In Math fourth grade is mid-unit and practicing conversions with imperial and metric units. In about two weeks, fourth grade is on track to wrap up their grade-level content, at which point they will begin previewing fifth and sixth grade math for the rest of the school year. Sixth grade is focused on fractions, equalities, variables, and coefficients.
In Social Studies your child will be working on a short research project related to the early history and colonization of their state. Students will be given time to work on this assignment in class on Friday the 31st, but some work may need to be completed over the weekend to turn in their notes on Monday and rehearse their full presentation for the following week.
ELA class is in the middle of a short poetry unit at the moment. This week your child will need to memorize and recite a poem from 100 Best-Loved Poems or another source for our class on Thursday. (See example recitation and bloopers here.) They will also have a vocabulary quiz on Friday and a poetry-writing exercise due next week. Finally, if you have not yet acquired a copy of Echo by Pam Ryan Muñoz, please do so as soon as possible. Our class will be reading the book beginning on Monday, April 10th—please make sure your child doesn’t begin reading until we start it together in class.
Once again, we’d like to give a friendly reminder to please pass our name along to any families you know who are looking for tutoring services or a virtual school program for the 2023–24 school year. The most our school grows, the better we can help our students learn and thrive in an authentic, enriching way!
Last but certainly not least, this month our ELA story contest focused on the theme of travel and journeys, and for the first time our community voted for two winning stories! We are over the moon to present those winning stories here: “The Path to the Poles” by sixth grader Emil and “Let’s Travel the Time Universe” by 4th grader Nico Hennon. Nico’s story is formatted in a very creative way, so rather than copy it here we’re sharing a link to a copy of this prize-winning story. Emil’s story is shared below in this blog post. Congratulations, Emil and Nico!
The Path to the Poles
By Emil
A couple of astronauts landed on the rocky planet of Mars. They looked up into the stars, they looked down at their count of oxygen about to go into their snout…
“How much oxygen is there remaining?” asked the first astronaut… “Only 7,700 liters, we have left to breathe in”. Said the second astronaut. “That’s only 1 week worth of O2! I can’t believe it! Is that true that you can’t too?” “Yes it’s very very true, but our mission we have to pursue, there is no going back to Earth, It’s all under the climate wave, it we won’t be able to save, and the people will need to come to Mars! Oxygen is very low, we have find it (go back home, bring the people to their new home), we can’t go!” The second astronaut poemed out…
End of exposition, Chapter 1:
A cold wind gust flew over the astronauts. “Brrr…. It’s cold!!!” yelled the first astronaut… “I have an idea!” yelled the second astronaut. “On the poles of Mars, there is frozen CO2, a snow-like substance, we could get rid of Carbon, and take the oxygen to ourselves! Said the astronaut. “That’s a good plan! Where are we?” asked Astronaut 1… “Yes, we are in the Gusev area, a flat area near the martian equator… Currently, it is winter here, and right now we are seeing temperatures about 29 F or so…” “Let’s get our MArs truck and go!!!” said the first astronaut… The astronauts grabbed their truck and started their journey. Mars was a humongous science laboratory on wheels… It was large and as it rode, it spun red, martian dust into the atmosphere… The land was getting rigid… “Oh no!!! A crater!!!!” said Astronaut I. Astronaut II stopped the truck, and turned around the craters… They were now nearing mount olympus… Bamm!!!! BAmm!!!! “What’s going on?” asked Astronaut I… In a couple of seconds. A huge boulder fell on his head! “Ouch!” he cried back… “MEteorites!!!” he said… “Dang, Dang!!! “Who are these guys banging and danging???” “WE are the giant protists, we are the giants of mars. We aren’t simple protists! Carbon dioxide helps us!!! We take in the O2, in frozen co2, and add some hydrogen, so we can drink! So we can drink! And you wanna take it away from us, and you wanna secret it out… No way Jose you doing that No way No way Jose!”
The unusual humongous martian protists sang. “Well, we also need to make something out of CO2—--> Oxygen and water… Don’t worry—-> we will take just a little…” reassured astronaut I… “How much?” asked one protist. “6700 liters per week……………………………. That is okay with us. How much carbon snow does the area receive???” “It’s a desert so it receives 300 liters of that precip a year, that isn’t much a week… But we are big, 30 feet wide, and so how much you take is okay with us short term, is this short term?” asked the protist… “Yes we will come up with something long term, this is short term, and plus at the end we will bring some CO2 with us, this will make the climate more bearable and more resources for us both…” “Oh yes, so nice TX!!!!!” said the protists all at once… The journey continued… They where nearing MT O LYMPUS, the largest mount in our solar sys!!! This mountain is 21KM, 13MI tall!!!
CHAPTER 2, CROSSING MT OLYMPUS:
The MT OLYMPUS was huge… Just as they started their crossing journey, a sand-storm started… Red martian dust filled the space between them and the mountain, making it harder to see… Winds howled and kept pushing them back and forth… They rose to an elevation of 2,000 feet, and then 3,000 feet in these conditions… 4,000 5,000 6,000 7,000 8,000 9,000 10,000 20,000, 30,000. The temps dropped from 29 F at the beginning, to -56 F where they already were… Winds stopped, sand stopped… Now, they realized that their truck's wheels didn’t turn… “We will fall off mount Olympus and collapse if we don’t figure something out!!!” yelped Astronaut I… “I have an idea!!! Astronaut I, crank up the leverage!!!” yelped back Astronaut II… That is what happened… Suddenly, they started to fly! They didn’t need to cross the MOUNT OLYMPUS by wheel anymore!!! Now they easily crossed it by wing!!! Once they got to the end, the land became easier to cross…
Chapter 3: The borealis
👍The borealis was colder than expected…The temperature dropped to -179 F during the night… In the distance, Martian snow was seen… They kept on driving… The land was growing frosty and slippery… They decided to fly… Once they landed on the polar terrain, they ran out of oxygen… 😡Astronaut I took of his mask… They could breathe! Astronaut II followed… “How is it possible! We could breathe!!! They were next to diffusing CO2 in an extremely hot geothermal vent system with Oxygen coming out, designed by protists!!!
The End…
