Animal Story

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Photo by me

Here I am going to talk about the process our class took to make an animal story for endangered animals. First out class read the book Squirm where there is this hunter who Billy and his dad are trying to stop from hunting animals. Our class also annotated the whole book and added some information to a slide show. Then, after we finished reading and annotating Squirm, our teacher gave us a list of endangered animals to choose from. For my endangered animal project, I decided to pick the blue whale. The blue whale is endangered by humans because of global warming and water pollution. The blue whales can consume millions of microplastics just from feeding on krill. When everyone was close to or finishing their animal story, we were lucky enough to have local artist Peg Gignoux help us make handmade books. We cut out and decorated the whole book so that anyone reading it could read the story and see a scene of our animal in its environment. Here is a little bit of my animal story.

I am Willy the blue whale, and scientists call me Balaenoptera musculus. Right now, I am swimming in the warm Indian Ocean when I suddenly spot a huge boat coming straight towards my group of whales, called a pod, just like an eagle flying over water to catch fish. I try to swim away, but I realize that I am too slow, and it will just come down to luck if any of us gets hit. I still try to swim down anyway for a better chance of not getting hit by the boat, and then I close my eyes, praying that the boat does not hit me or any other Blue Whales swimming around me.

Making and writing the book was really fun and thanks to local artist Peg Gignoux helping us make the book and could have not done it without her.

6th Grade Field Trip

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Photo by my teacher

Photo by my teacher

On Tuesday, April 28th the sixth grade went to the Museum of Life and Science. When we were told that we were going to the museum, everybody was super excited because they had already been there before and knew a bunch of fun things to do! The drive to the museum did not take that long and the group in my bus was playing games the whole time so it felt even shorter. When we got to the museum we had to wait outside in the big dome for a while. After that we went to the Hideaway Woods which had a huge treehouse and we got to play a lot of fun games! Then we explored the rest of the outdoor area and then we went inside. In the museum there were a lot of fun activities to do and even a paper airplane launcher! Last we got to go inside of a special room where someone showed us multiple animals. The field trip was really fun and I would go back any day.

6th Grade Stock Project

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Image made by Canva AI

On Wednesday, April 8th, my class did a project where we pretended that each person had 20,000 dollars and we could invest in up to six public stocks and then we would sell them in about two months. We were told about the project about a week before we actually locked in what stocks we wanted to invest in. When we were told about it, everyone started searching up anything to help them figure out what the best six stocks would be. After we locked in which stocks we chose and how much money we wanted to put into them, everyone was constantly checking to see if their stocks had gone up or down in value. One of my friends even put all of the 20,000 dollars into one stock! Then our teacher made us make little notecards for advertising our stocks that we picked. The whole project has been really fun so far and it even gave us a little bit a real world experience on stocks!

 

6th Grade Tree Planting

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On February 20th the 6th went to plant trees at Hillside Park. Hillside Park was donated to Durham by John Sprunt Hill and in 1922, Hillside Park High School was built on the property. Hillside Park High School was the first school in Durham that served black students. We went to plant trees at Hillside park to purify the water there and to make more shade. While we were there we learned how to dig a hole for a tree, pull the roots out of a circle from the tree, and put dirt back onto the tree once it is in a hole. During the second group of 6th grade students that went to plant trees it started to rain on us which in my opinion made it more fun to plant trees but then when we finished planting trees everyone was huddled around one big tree to get protection from the rain.

Snow in North Carolina

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Image by Me

I was excited to see 3 whole inches of snow in my backyard on Saturday, January 31st. I have never seen this much snow since I was a little kid. Unlike the weekend before, when we only got ice, this snow was fluffy, powdery, and great to play in. I also have a trampoline in my backyard, so it was fun to jump around in the snow. Since I live at the top of a hill, all the kids in my neighborhood used my front yard to sled. While it is fun to have off from school, my mom did put me to work shoveling the driveway and the patio. I also could not see any of my friends since the roads were still a little dangerous to drive on. So that means I could not really go anywhere outside of my neighborhood for two whole days. Despite that, I was still really happy to see a lot of snow in North Carolina.

Book Review

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Image from Sora

Do you like fiction and survival books? Then this book is for you. The Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, in my opinion, is the best survival book that I have ever read. This book is about a boy who has to survive in a forest until he can get rescued.

The story starts with Brian in an airplane going to see his dad in Canada, and then the pilot has a heart attack, so Brian has to land the plane without dying. Thankfully, the pilot taught Brian how to fly the plane a little before he had his heart attack. When he lands the plane, he has to find food, build shelter, and survive the wild animals he encounters in the forest over the coming days. It does not help that a rescue team is nowhere in sight, and he thinks none will arrive. Thankfully, Brian brought a hatchet on the plane to help him while he is in the forest.

I rate The Hatchet 5/5, it always had something exciting going on in each chapter, so that I would always want to keep reading. The story also gets a little nerve-racking when Brian gets hurt or loses something important to him, so when you read, you feel really connected to the story. When you finish The Hatchet, then you should read the second book of the series, The River. Don’t forget to suggest The Hatchet to your friends! If you have ever read this book before, then leave a comment on whether you like this book or not. Do you think that you could survive in a forest?