Dear Parents,
Happy Valentine’s Day! May it be a great day for you and those whom you love.
We have now completed fourteen chapters of Alice Sebold’s novel The Lovely Bones. Students have been engaged and are even starting to make connections between the book and other pieces that we have read. They are beginning to understand the degree to which Shakespeare has influenced contemporary writers. This week we have been discussing the following connections between story elements and characters in Shakespearean tragedies and those in The Lovely Bones. As examples:
- Iago, the villain in Othello has a great deal in common with the Mr. Harvey character in The Lovely Bones in that they are both treacherous and highly intelligent
- The romance between Ray and Susie in The Lovely Bones is not unlike that of Romeo and Juliet in that there are numerous obstacles that both must overcome if they are to be together
- The notion that Jack Salmon should kill Mr. Harvey, whom he suspects of having murdered his daughter Susie is much like the dilemma faced by Hamlet, when the ghost of his dead father informs him that he was killed by his brother Claudius
In Social Studies we continued following the Democratic and Republican primaries in New Hampshire. On Tuesday each of us attempted to list the top five finishers on the Democratic side. Only Robby and myself got the first five in order which were:
- Bernie Sanders
- Pete Buttigieg
- Amy Klouchar
- Elizabeth Warren
- Joseph Biden
In the Republican primary, while we knew that Donald Trump would receive the vast majority of the votes, we noted that Bill Weld, who served as the two-term governor of Massachusetts in the 1990’s garnered 9.1% of the vote.
We also continued looking at where the candidates stand on a variety of issues. Last week we looked at the top six candidates’ positions on the environment and found the following:
Donald Trump – does not necessarily believe that global warming is man-made and thinks that it may be a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese to make U.S. manufacturing less competitive around the world. He is hesitant to devote money and resources to something he is not sure is a problem. Concurrently, he says that he wants the United States to have the cleanest air and water on the planet.
Bernie Sanders – believes global warming is the biggest threat facing our nation. He wants to wean the United States off fossil fuels. He proposes spending $16 trillion dollars so that the nation may move toward clean energy. Sanders claims that his program would pay for itself over 15 years, by taxing the wealthiest Americans. He would also demand that industrial polluters pay more to clean up the environment
Pete Buttigieg – believes that global warming is an existential threat. He wants to retrain workers in the fossil fuel industries so that they may work in clean energy fields. He proposes spending $2 trillion to slow global warming. The money to fund his plan would come from additional taxes on the richest Americans. He would create a $200 billion fund that would help workers displaced from their fossil fuel occupations
Elizabeth Warren – believes that climate change is real and that it is the result of government corruption. As an example, she points out that private interests use publicly held lands to extract fossil fuels and do not pay for the clean-up. She proposes a moratorium on all new fossil fuel leases on public land and would reinstate the Obama-era rules that restricted the emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas from existing drilling and mining sites.
Joe Biden – believes that global warming is a threat. He was the first senator to introduce climate change legislation in 1986. He would promote the use of electric cars. He is championing what he calls his “Clean Energy Plan” which would cost $2 trillion. He would partially fund his plan by rescinding the $1 trillion in tax cuts given to taxpayers by the Trump Administration.
Amy Klobuchar – believes that global warming is a threat to the United States. She believes that the United States can have zero emissions by the year 2050. She is a co-sponsor in the Senate of the New Green Deal. She would have the United States rejoin the Paris Accord on Climate Change. Her plan to combat climate change would cost $1 trillion. The cost of her plan would come from a carbon tax on polluters.
In Science we learned about where spices we use every day actually come from. The specific spices we looked at were those used to make gingerbread cookies which include:
- Cinnamon – made from the dried bark of trees
- Ginger – a root that is harvested, dried and ground
- Nutmeg – made from the seeds of trees in Indonesia
- Cloves – made from the dried flower buds of Indonesian trees
- Allspice – made from the dried berries of trees in the Caribbean and Central America
In Math, we went over rates. By rates, I mean proportions that are used to determine price as an example, or distances traveled. A few of our problems included the following:
36 inches/9 days = ? inches/day
$10.00 for 20 highway tolls = $2.00/toll
60 meters in 5 seconds = 12 meters/second
As a result of working with rates, students should be better able to determine those rates that are favorable to their pocketbooks and understand the speed of different modes of transportation.
We also engaged in a Math activity for Valentine’s Day that involved creating Mobius-Loop hearts. For more information, please visit the following YouTube video:
As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me at: michael_flynn@platoacademy.org
Dr. Michael