By Maria Dostie, Grade 6, Middle School

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The Process of Making this Animation

I had written my showcase project in Google Docs but I decided to create an animation instead. So, I got onto my computer and finished researching, then I started to write a script. The students (Eric, Sean, Astral, and Adalie) would influence the teacher (Mrs. Haylin) to talk more. After three days I got to work, reading off Haylin's lines. It took me two straight days to do Haylin's Lines (I had to use an app called BandLab that let me import the lines onto an MP3 File.) I did a temporary placement for Adalie's lines, because I didn't know yet if Cate was going to be able to narrate Adalie's lines. I imported all of the lines in FlipaClip. Then I got all of the drawings of the characters done and I replaced Alalie's temporary lines with Cates recordings. I put in the beginning of the animatic, doing 957 frames in two days, which took me multiple hours. During this, I took a three day break, slowly working on it. I realized that I had IMovie and I knocked out the background. Just chunking it up, I did the desks and the students. Finally, I pulled it all together and sent the final product to Mrs. Morgan and Mrs. Williamson!

Works Cited

“Chernobyl 30 Years on: Environmental and Health Effects - Think Tank.” Chernobyl 30 Years on: Environmental and Health Effects - Think Tank, www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document.html?reference=EPRS_BRI(2016)581972.

“Chernobyl Disaster Facts for Kids.” Chernobyl Disaster Facts for Kids, kids.kiddle.co/Chernobyl_disaster.

Cole, Brendan. “Chernobyl Reactor Encased in Giant Metal Dome That Will Last a Century and Withstand a Tornado as Ukraine Inaugurates Structure.” Newsweek, Newsweek, 11 July 2019, www.newsweek.com/chernobyl-ukraine-reactor-kiev-1448674.

Debnath, Neela. “Chernobyl Explained: What Happened to the Chernobyl Divers?” Express.co.uk, Express.co.uk, 1 July 2019, www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/1139046/Chernobyl-explained-divers-radiation-sickness-HBO-series.

Debnath, Neela. “Chernobyl: What Was the KGB? Did the KGB Try to Cover up Chernobyl or Silence People?” Express.co.uk, Express.co.uk, 24 June 2019, www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/1144570/Chernobyl-What-was-KGB-denial-cover-up-HBO-series-Jared-Harris.

Higginbotham, Adam. “What Happened The Moments After Chernobyl Blew.” Science Friday, www.sciencefriday.com/articles/the-moments-after-chernobyl-blew/.

Hopps, Kat. “Chernobyl Explained: How Did They Stop Chernobyl from Burning?” Express.co.uk, Express.co.uk, 4 July 2019, www.express.co.uk/news/world/1143540/chernobyl-explained-how-did-stop-chernobyl-from-burning.

“Javascript Required!” RBMK Reactors | Reactor Bolshoy Moshchnosty Kanalny | Positive Void Coefficient - World Nuclear Association, www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-power-reactors/appendices/rbmk-reactors.aspx#VoidCoeff.

“Javascript Required!” Chernobyl | Chernobyl Accident | Chernobyl Disaster - World Nuclear Association, www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/chernobyl-accident.aspx.

Mitchell, Molli. “Chernobyl: How Did the Soviet Government Respond? What Did They Do?” Express.co.uk, Express.co.uk, 31 May 2019, www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/1130632/Chernobyl-How-did-the-Soviet-government-respond-Chernobyl-nuclear-disaster-USSR-Ukraine.

Plokhy, Serhii. “The Chernobyl Cover-Up: How Officials Botched Evacuating an Irradiated City.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 10 May 2018, www.history.com/news/chernobyl-disaster-coverup.

“RBMK.” RBMK - Energy Education, energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/RBMK.

“Radiation Sickness.” Mayo Clinic, Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 22 May 2019, www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/radiation-sickness/symptoms-causes/syc-20377058.

Shani, Ayelett. “I Was Drafted to Clean up Chernobyl – and Lived to Tell the Tale.” Haaretz.com, 6 July 2019, www.haaretz.com/world-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-i-was-drafted-to-clean-up-chernobyl-and-lived-to-tell-the-tale-1.7438495.

Thornton, Alex. “What's Going on in Chernobyl Today?” World Economic Forum, www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/05/what-s-going-on-in-chernobyl-today/.

Zubacheva, Ksenia. “Who Was Valery Legasov, the Soviet Scientist That Saved the World from Chernobyl?” Russia Beyond, 4 June 2019,

By Lainey Cooley, Grade 8, Middle School

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By Ruby Colwell, Grade 8, Middle School

By Elsie Peacock, Grade 4, Helen Thompson

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By Kaitlin Davidson, Grade 4, River View

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By Quinn Keune, Grade 5, Helen Thompson

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By Mia Hersom, Grade 6, Middle School

My Animation Process

By Mia Hersom, Grade 6, Middle School

• I started looking at the computer and I found a M.A.P. which stands for a multi-animator project, where several animators collaborate to make a song based on part of one of the books or with a song and their made-up characters.

• I was intrigued by this process. So I did some research and wanted to try it out. So my mom ordered me XP-Pen 30, a graphic pen tablet.

• You plug this into your computer and you use the pen and draw on the tablet. You need an animation program for the pictures to go into to be animated. I use Adobe Animate, but you can also use Procreate. However, Adobe Animate costs $40 a month. Once you have drawn on the tablet, the lines go onto your computer screen. This is what allows you to animate animals that you have drawn.

• Once you have drawn one picture. For on the screen, it’s called a frame of animation. It takes 30 frames to make one second of animation. Mine took about 165 alternating frames. For your character you’re animating to move, you have to erase a part of it and redraw it in a slightly different pose. Then you repeat this process several times until you have a finished picture. Adobe Animate teaches you how to do this by starting with a simple ball bounce animation. You start with a pink screen and a red ball you create by using the circle tool and bring it to the top of the frame. Then you create a new one, each one slightly lower than the one before until you get to the bottom. Then you are shown the squash and stretch technique. The more it has these two elements, the softer the object is. So if you had a ball with no squash and stretch, or SS, as I like to call it, it will seem harder than a ball with it. Finally, you copy, reverse and paste the frames on top of the first one to make a continuous loop of the bounce.

• As a beginner, I have spent about 2 hours a day on this project, for about three or four weeks. When I finish, I should have 5 ½ seconds of animation. Even though I’ve been working on this for that long, I still don’t know what a lot of the icons in the program do.

• A lot of animated Disney movies are created like this too, which really gives you a whole new respect for them.

About the Warrior Cat Saga

• I got into the book saga Warrior Cats by Erin Hunter, which is the pen name of five authors including Vicky Holmes, Kate Cary, Tui T. Sutherland, the author of Wings Of Fire.

• What are warrior cats? Warrior cats is a book saga about four clans of cats that live in the forest. One day, a kittypet (housecat) named Rusty explores beyond his fence and finds them. He is allowed to join their clan and becomes an apprentice under his new name, Firepaw. All apprentice’s name’s end in paw, kits end with kit, and leader’s end with star, suggesting that they are closer to Starclan, their ancestors who see the future and deliver prophecies, than most cats. He gets to be the leader, Bluestar’s apprentice.

By Lizzie Kropp, Grade 8, Middle School

The Kiss

This year for my Reach project I decided to recreate Gustav Klimt’s painting, The Kiss. In the beginning, I knew that I wanted to recreate a painting, but when I came across Klimt’s work I knew that The Kiss was the one. Its use of shape and color was unique and it caught my eye immediately.

Gustav Klimt was a nineteenth-century Austrian artist who is known for his paintings, murals, and sketches. Most of Klimt’s art was focused on the female body. This was seen as a sort of a ‘rebellion’ to traditional art.

I started my variation of the painting at the beginning of quarantine in early March. I did some thinking and the painting took me about 12 hours on about 6 scattered days.

by Isaiah Shearer, Grade 4, Pittston Randolph

The Mystery of Oak Island

By Bristol Sweatt, Gr. 5, Helen Thompson

Island Characteristics:

Oak Island is a 140-acre island right off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada in Mahone Bay. Some people say the island looks like an elephant, and some say it looks like a bunny or rabbit. The island is outlined with rocks and sand, and the rest of the island is covered in native forest and brush. The Summers are long, hot and humid, and the Winters are short, cold and windy. Most of the time though it is wet and cloudy, sometimes foggy. The island has a lot of parts to it, like the Swamp, Smiths Cove, Sellars Cove, Sheerdans Cove, the Money Pit, and Nolan's Cross.

Theories of the Treasure on Oak Island

Marie Antoinette Theory:

Some people believe that Marie Antoinette's crown jewels are buried on the island.

The Shakespeare Theory:

Some people believe that William Shakespeare's lost manuscripts may be buried on Oak Island, because a Freemason claims that Shakespeare created a coded map that pointed to Nova Scotia.

The Sunken Ship Theory:

Some people believe that the triangle shaped swamp on Oak Island is man made, and that a ship was sunk and buried there to hide the treasure on board.

The Dual Cipher Theory:

A stone found 90 feet below ground at the Money Pit, that had markings that said "Forty feet below, two million pounds are buried".

The Sir Francis Drake Theory:

Some people believe that Sir Francis Drake's looted money was buried on Oak Island along with him. It is said, "When you hit metal, you might have hit his coffin."

The Portuguese Templar Theory:

Some people believe that The Knights Templars built a friendship with the local tribe known as the Mi'kmaq (also spelled MicMac), and buried their treasure on Oak Island.

• The Knights of Templar:

The Knights Templars are a large religious group of soldiers that some people believe had a collection of treasures that included the Shroud of Turin (the cloth that Jesus was wrapped in), The Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail.

The Aztec Gold Theory:

Some people believe that the Aztecs traveled to Oak Island and buried some of their treasures there to keep the Spanish from stealing it.

Timeline of the Search on Oak Island:

• 1150: The Knights Templars arrived on Oak Island.

• 1795: The McGinnis brothers arrived on Oak Island, looking for answers to a 30 year old mystery.

• 1804: The Onslow Company found the 90 foot stone, wood platforms, small stones and charcoal, a putty-like substance, and coconut fibers.

• 1805: The Onslow Company dug a second shaft to get to the treasure, but both shafts flooded.

• 1849: The Truro Company relocated the Money Pit (also called Shaft 1), and attempted to dig a new hole, but it flooded.

• 1850: The Truro Company discovered the 5 flood tunnels in Smith's Cove, and also dug shafts 3,4,5, and 6. Shafts 3 and 5 flooded with water. In shaft 4 nothing was found and shaft 6 caved in with mud and water.

• 1861: The Oak Island Syndicate dug shafts 7 and 8, and both flooded. After September 30th, the first treasure hunter died after a boiler explosion.

• 1862: The Oak Island Syndicate dug shaft 9 and came across tools from 1849 at 90 feet from The Truro Company, and tools from 1804 from The Onslow Company at 100 feet. They also dug shaft 10 to try and cut off the water source, but it flooded.

• 1863: The Oak Island Syndicate dug shaft 11 and found the Money Pit at 108 feet, but they couldn't dig down below 110 feet because it would flood.

• 1864: The Oak Island Syndicate struck a flood tunnel, and the Money Pit flooded again. The pit was deemed unsafe, and The Oak Island Syndicate was finished.

• 1865: The 90 foot stone was moved to a bookbinders store in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

• 1886-1867: The Oak Island Eldorado Company built a cofferdam in Smith's Cove, but it was destroyed by bad weather and tides. They also drilled 3 holes with 3 inch wide casings, but holes 2 and 3 had nothing of interest, while hole 1, 108 feet down struck wood, gravel, soft clay, blue mud, along with water, and coconut fiber, charcoal, and dry reddish soil down at 130 feet.

• 1878: Mrs. Sellers, a resident of the island, was working in the field with her oxen when it fell into a hole. Later this hole (shaft 12) would become known as "The Cave In Pit".

• 1893: The Oak Island Treasure Company made their first attempt at the "Cave In Pit, but it didn't work out due to flooding, and was abandoned.

• 1894: The Oak Island Treasure Company dug shaft 13, but had to be abandoned because it flooded.

• 1895: The Oak Island Treasure Company tried to dig out the Money Pit again, but it flooded and was abandoned for the rest of the year.

• 1896: The Oak Island Treasure Company started working in the Money Pit again, to drain the hole down to 70 feet. Shaft 4 got cleared out to 78 feet, but water flooded in, but they used equipment to drain the hole and found out that they could drain the Money Pit, and then they were able to dig down to 97 feet.

• 1897: Maynard Kaiser who worked for The Oak Island Treasure Company lost his life when he fell to his death. The Company dug down to 110 feet, and found one of the old tunnels entering the Money Pit at 108 feet was the source of water filling it.

• 1897: The Oak Island Treasure Company dug down to 111 feet in The Money Pit, and they found the flood tunnel from the ocean and Smith's Cove. In October, they started shaft 14.

• 1898: The Oak Island Treasure Company, stopped digging in shaft 14, and dug shaft 15. Shaft 15 flooded and was abandoned. A second flood tunnel was found entering the Money Pit. They also dug shafts 16, 17, 18 and 19. Shaft 16 was abandoned because of rocks everywhere. Shaft 17, 18 and 19 were abandoned due to flooding.

• 1900:The Oak Island Treasure Company dug shaft 20, but was flooded and abandoned. They also dug several drill holes down into the Money Pit, but they never found anything. This also ended The Oak Island Treasure Company's work on the island.

• 1909 - 1912: The Old Gold Salvage and Wreckage Company explored and searched the island.

• 1931 - 1932: William Chappell dug a shaft near the 1897 shaft, and found some artifacts, including an axe, a miner's pickaxe, and a fluke anchor.

• 1934: The Canadian Oak Island Treasure Company found and charted the flood tunnel from Smith's Cove. They also dug 14 boreholes in hopes of locating the treasure.

Shaft 1 - They found pink sand around 58 feet that they believed was caused by red dye that was used to test water flow.

Shaft 2 - Pink sand found again at 58 feet.

Shaft 8 - Small pieces of oak wood were found around 110 feet and small bits of china were found around 123 feet.

• 1959 - 1966: The Restall family began searching Oak Island. In 1965 they attempted to seal the storm drain from Smith´s Cover and dug a shaft down 27 feet. Robert Restall and his son Bobby both died in the pit from toxic fumes, and became the 3rd and 4th people to die in search of the Oak Island treasure. Two other men also died that same day attempting to save both men.

• 1967-1990's: In 1967 Daniel Blankenship, David Tobias, Robert Dunfield, and Fred Nolan formed a syndicate for treasure exploration on the island. Two years later, David Tobias and Daniel Blankenship formed Triton Alliance after they purchased almost all of the island. During their search, they dug a borehole called 10-X that was supported by a steel caisson (a special watertight structure). They lowered down cameras into the borehole to explore, but the images were too unclear and in the end the shaft collapsed and they abandoned it. Work stopped on the island for a while due to lack of money and the partnership falling apart.

• 2005 - Present: In 2005 a part of the island was put up for sale by David Tobias, and was purchased by brothers Rick and Marty Lagina. In July of 2010, Dan Blankenship and the other members of Oak Island Tours were granted a treasure-trove license that gave them the right to resume treasure hunting until the end of the year. In January 2011, the treasure-trove license was replaced with the Oak Island Treasure Act, which allowed treasure hunting to continue, but under the restrictions that the Ministry of Natural Resources placed.

What has been found on Oak Island

The current search team that includes Rick and Marty Lagina, Fred Nolan, Craig Tester, Gary Drayton, Jack Begley, Alex Lagina, and Charles Barkhouse have found:

• A Spanish 8 Maravedis coin dated to 1652

• Coconut fibers that were not from the island, and dated back to 1260-1400.

• A 1797 Cartwheel Penny

• Pieces of a French Military Cap Badge dated to the 1700's

• A decorative lead piece dated to pre-15th century

• A gold plated brooch dated back as far back as the 14th century

• A tag with the name Ball on it, that they believe belongs to Samuel Ball, a freed American slave that became one of Nova Scotia's richest landowners.

• A Roman Pilum (a type of javelin) that was dated back as far as the Ancient Roman Empire, BC-500 AD.

• A Garnet Pin that dated back as far as the 16th century

• A decorative keyhole plate

• A Spanish Galleon spike dated from the late 1600's to the early 1700's, that would have been used to nail down deck boards on the ship.

• 2 King Charles II Britianna coins from the 17th century

• Parchment and leather bookbinding

• 2 Human bone fragments dated back to the 17th century, one European and one Middle Eastern.

• Shards of pearlware pottery that is believed to have come from Staffordshire, England between 1780-1800.

• A purple wood fragment that might have been used in bookbinding.

• A gold plated button dated to the 18th century

• An unknown shiny object that could be gold, was seen on a video camera, but has not been found and identified.

• A lead cross that dated back to the 1300 or 1400's.

• French drains used to control water flow without pumps or pipes.

• A wrought iron hinge that was dated between the early 1600 to 1700's.

• Some sort of U-shaped structure that was able to be dated back to 1769.

• A wooden slipway that was dated to 1771.

• A box drain that could be an entrance to one of the five stone box drains on the island.

My Theory on the Oak Island Treasure:

I believe that there is some sort of treasure connected to Oak Island, but that it is not actually on Oak Island. I think it is hidden on one of the smaller islands that are nearby, and might have been put there by the Knights Templars.

Bibliography

History Channel <www.history.com/shows/the-curse-of-oak-island>

March 17, 2020

Wikipedia

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_Island>

March 19, 2020

Oak Island Tours - History

<https://www.oakislandtours.ca/history.html>

April 27, 2020

By Bailey McFadden, Grade 7, Middle School

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by Jasmine Robertson, Grade 8, Middle School

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By Owen Grant, Grade 8, MS.

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by Xavier Smith, Grade 7, Middle School

by Seth Nichols, Grade 5, River View

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by Julian Kennett, Grade 7, Middle School

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By Randi-lyn Heath, Grade 5, Helen Thompson

By Emily Grover, Grade 8, Middle School