S'More Community News - NPHS

Lately, we have had several activities going on at the high school. Multiple state send-offs occurred this week for wrestling, dance, and cheerleading. We wish them the best of luck in their competitions!

As we move forward through the rest of February, we want to remind folks to attend any remaining winter sports sessions. Best of luck to all of our students involved in activities. We are excited for upcoming spring activities and the new events that will be coming to our school. Please keep an eye out for the latest events.

Thank you for your support!

Important Events Happening in the Counseling Office:

• 2023-2024 School Year Schedules are underway. Students and families have access to the course description book found on the NPHS Counselors Corner.
• College Visits are happening to UNL, UNO, UNK, MPCC. Check out announcements and/or see the counselor's for more information.
• March 21st is the Junior ACT and the Sophomore PreACT tests.
• March 23rd Seniors Final Steps to College Information. Seniors and their families are invited to come learn about final decisions to make, summer to dos before going off to college, and how parents can support their senior (now college freshman!)
• April and May are full of graduation preparation. Senior students and families please check your emails and the Senior Google classroom to stay in the know.

Click here to see more resources from the library!

In Mr. Bruck's World History Class:

Students are just about finished with the Medieval Period unit and are about to move on to the Renaissance, Reformation, & Exploration unit. One of the biggest class projects will take place in this unit, in what I call, The Renaissance Bulletin Board Project.

•Objective: The class will create a bulletin board made up of Renaissance Art, Reformation, and Exploration material that is connected to a theme.

•The class will be split up into two groups. Each group will be responsible for the following:

•Electing a group coordinator who is in charge of the project

•As a group, decide on a theme (can be ANYTHING)

•EBay, Back to the Future, Olympics, The Bachelorette, etc.

•The most important aspect of this project is that you connect your theme with what you learned in class.

•Example: EBay theme, Leonardo is trying to sell his Mona Lisa on Ebay for $75,000,000.

For the following unit, students will learn about the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the American Revolution

I just wanted to take a moment to introduce myself. I'm Jacqueline Mraz, one of the high school special education teachers. I just started my fifthteenth year teaching. I spent nine years in the North Platte school district, before venturing to Paxton Consolidated schools for five years. I am excited to be a part of the NPHS team this school year. My husband, Ryan, is a teacher in Sutherland and our two children attend school there. Rylee is a third grader and Jeremiah is a first grader. I enjoy spending time with my family, whether it be a sporting event or hanging out at home. Just a few quick little facts - January is National Birth Defects Month and January 20th is International Day of Acceptance - this is a movement to help people around the world to help educators embrace love and see past the disabilities. I look forward to getting to know the students in the building during the second semester! Go Bulldogs!

My name is Kim Boyer and I am one of the freshmen English teachers. 9 th English is off to a great start this semester. We are just completing the novel Of Mice and Men and working on comparing and contrasting the novel to other literary works. Students in my classroom have written two short narrative essays and have worked on punctuation for compound and complex sentences. As we look forward, the class will continue to be participating and learning from our trial curriculum, as well as studying two other classical novels.

Spanish 2 is learning how to order food in Spanish! Did you know that in Spanish we don't say "Can I have more salsa" or "I'll do the enchilada plate?"

Instead we say "Will you please bring me more salsa" or "I would like the enchilada plate." We have learned lots of important vocabulary and phrases for restaurant etiquette and will apply this on our big Cinco de Mayo fiesta. We are supporting cultural interactions while learning the basic curriculum in our Nebraska state standards.

Hello from the Art Department!

It’s officially Art Show season!! Our students were able to showcase their wonderful talents at the Sweet Affair of the Arts on the evening of February 14th. Between the live musical entertainment and visual art display, it was definitely a sweet Valentine’s Day evening. We also have our 27th annual All-Area Art Show coming up next month at the Prairie Arts Center. This year, we are able to showcase the artworks for the entire month of March, so please join us in supporting these young artists and recognizing their hard work! Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11:00 am – 4:00 pm, plus we will also be hosting an open house/reception on Saturday, March 4th from 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm. All are welcome! :)

Mr. Coopers courses are working diligently on the following class work.

College Algebra

There is strong scientific consensus that human activities are changing the Earth's climate. Scientists now believe that there is a striking correlation between atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and global temperature. As both of these variables increase at significant rates, there are warnings of a planetary emergency that threatens to condemn coming generations to a catastrophically diminished future. *

In this unit, they have been looking at creating formulas, called functions, that model data for average global temperature and carbon dioxide concentration over time. Understanding the concept of a function will give you a new perspective on many situations, ranging from climate change to using mathematics in a way that is similar to making a movie.

Statistics

In Statistics we have been evaluating Normal distributions. Normal distributions can be used to describe many real-life situations and are widely used in the fields of science, business, and psychology. They are the most important probability distributions in statistics and can be used to approximate other distributions, such as discrete binomial distributions. The most incredible application of the normal distribution lies in the Central Limit Theorem. This theorem states that no matter what type of distribution a population may have, as long as the size of each random sample is at least 30, the distribution of sample means will be approximately normal. When a population is normal, the distribution of sample means is normal for any random sample of size n. The normal distribution is essential to sampling theory.

English 10

Hello, I’m Sarah Snively, and I teach English 10. This is my ninth year of classroom instruction and twelfth year in the education field. So far this semester, the sophomore students have written personal narratives and honed their reading and writing skills with a unit focused on nonfiction articles and summary writing.

Currently, we are field testing curriculum options to accompany our new Nebraska English-Language Arts standards. First, we are pondering the question: What is the power of language? A selection of short stories, poems, and nonfiction articles are guiding our thinking. Ultimately, students will write a literary analysis essay exploring this topic.

We will close out the quarter with our second curriculum option, for which we will examine the idea of outsiders and outcasts with the question: Do people need to belong? Students will study a variety of short works in different genres to ultimately train our argumentation skills. This will segue into a research and argumentation unit. Finally, we will close out the year with book clubs.

Sometime in late March or early April, a long-term substitute teacher will be taking over for me. My family and I are preparing for the arrival of a baby girl, who will be our second child. Celebrating her impending arrival with students this school year has been a joy, and I know they will be in good hands with our long-term substitute teacher.

Skills USA has been busy first Semester. WE had a Fall Leadership conference in Hastings. Student members and an Advisor learned some good leadership qualities and toured a business while they were there. It was a good experience for everyone. Then some of our officers and one advisor went to Mid-America conference in Columbus. They learned how to help our chapter run smoothly throughout the year. We have also made Wood Duck nesting boxes that Ducks Unlimited will auction off at their banquet. Coming up in April is our State Leadership Conference and competition.

The North Platte FFA Chapter has been staying busy! Twenty six members competed in our first round of district contests on January 25th and two of our teams qualified to compete at the Nebraska State FFA Convention on March 29th-31st. The two qualifying teams consisted of Agriculture Mechanics (Lane Heil, Jake Henry, Jaxton Robinson, and Wyatt Thompson) and Agriscience (Ava Franzen, Brynna Barker, Makynzi Smith, and Jazlyn Arensdorf). Our next round of district contests will take place on February 8th.

Ms. Tolman's Marketing class experienced a bit of the underwater world January 24th. Ms. Tolman used scuba diving as a way to demonstrate experiential marketing. Experiential marketing involves

getting the customers to use their senses to touch, see, feel... really experience a product. Ms. Tolman brought her dive equipment into the classroom and invited her students to use the gear and experience what it feels like to put scuba gear on and breathe underwater.

The students who put their faces under the water loved the feeling of breathing bubbles!

Hi all! I am Emily Kearney, and I am one of the sponsors for Key Club. Key Club is an international, student-led organization that provides its members with opportunities to provide service, build character, and develop leadership skills. We are partnered with a local chapter of Kiwanis and work with schools in the district and partners within the community to volunteer for events and other service projects. We have been busy volunteering around the community for the last several months, working with multiple elementary schools and other area organizations during the months of December and January. This month, we are focused on fundraising for future projects in the coming months and next year. Be on the lookout for our "Kiss a Graduate Goodbye" flyers to purchase candy roses for your special graduate before they move on to the next adventure in life. Information will be going out to schools within the next few weeks!