Opinion and Cartoons

This is term 6 for journalism. Charlee Mapes, Emily Gibbons, Ben Dunbar, Chase Twedt, Tessa Dillinger, Sophia McColley, Ava Gibson, Isabella Caldwell, and Copper Albaugh all had journalism for term 6.

Hello, we are Term 5 journalism. The people who had journalism this term were Caitlin Vonnahme, Carly Jepsen, Jenna Krantz, Reagan Crowdis, Madelyn Cory, Lainey Jenkins, Elise Fosselman, and Aiyana Drake. Jenna, Carly, and Aiyana's favorite parts are that it is chill, lowkey, and it is not boring. Caitlin, Lainey, Reagan, and Elise say that it is fun to be creative, take photos and write stories. We thank Mrs. Stubbs for being okay with our wild personalities.

We are so glad that you got the chance to read our stories! One of Olivia, Katelyn, Nia, and Julia's favorite things was photography and doing the photo scavenger hunt.

Dear NPMS reader,

Aloha! We are very excited for you to read our stories from this term. We enjoyed being a part of this exploratory and having Mrs. Stubbs as a teacher. We had 8 students this term, Aaron Greene, Andrew Flesher, Landon Huber, Claire Heuermann, Hannah Haaland, Kate Mulbauer, Jenna Manock, and Mia Reichart. We had a total of 11 stories. Some of them are about winter sports, choir and band, student council, teachers, and some opinion stories. We hope you enjoy the variety of stories this term.

One of our members, Mia Reichart left our school to go to Collins Maxwell. We banded together and threw her a going away party just before winter break. We miss Mia a lot and there is an article about her on this website.

We would like to thank Mrs. Stubbs for teaching us. Also Mrs. Seiligman and the 2020-2021 Yearbook staff for letting us borrow pictures and cameras.

In our class we learned about the news, what makes a good news story, how to take pictures, and how to interview. We have all enjoyed this exploratory and hope you enjoy our hard work.

Thank you,

The NPMS Journalism Team

Advice from a Youtuber

By Andrew Flesher

January 15, 2021

So for starters having a Youtube channel you have to have a lot of ideas for videos. As well as keeping a good upload schedule so you can gain viewers and keep your viewers entertained. But not including that you need to have a good setup like having reliable electronics like having a PC or Xbox maybe even a PlayStation.

As well as if you feel comfortable with having a face cam that will really help your viewers connect to you and also knowing who you really are as a person.

Also don’t focus on having stress over making videos, focus on the fun of making videos and upload them when you feel like you need to upload. In my opinion Youtube videos are really fun to make because you can livestream them or you can just record them. What I do for my Youtube channel is Livestream so people can type in the chat box and I can hear or look at what they said.

Also don’t make your videos boring make sure you're almost always talking so your viewers don’t get bored. Some advice to not make your viewers bored is trying to always have commentary and always trying to connect with them.

Most people on Youtube don’t have a face cam and what that leads to is your viewers trying to see you and then you need to make a face reveal. But if you show your face earlier than later people in the comments won’t ask for a face reveal and you’ll be able to enjoy your career and connect with your viewers better :) .If you are a content creator and if you don’t know what that is, it's a person that makes Youtube videos about games. So if you're a content creator and you want to become big, play games that you know a lot of people like, for example like Call of Duty or Minecraft. In conclusion to that, thank you for reading my story and seeing my perspective on having a Youtube channel.

Snow in October!

By Ella Hill

November 18, 2020

Snow in October is not a common occurrence. I personally believe that it should be an impossible occurrence, because I hate the cold. I think lots of people are on my side here. I definitely would have preferred that snow to be rain. A good thing about the snow however, would be the fun activities that are incorporated with it. For example, me and my friends played in the snow together, and my mom and I went for a night walk while the snow was falling. Those would be some positives of early snow, but I still think the bad outweighs the good. The fact that trick or treating (beggars night) is most likely going to be freezing cold, is heartbreaking. And I am not being dramatic, because as I said before, I hate the cold! Anyway, enough about me. Let’s check in with Isaac Hill, a 14 year old student at North Polk High School, who just happens to be my brother.

Isaac seems to have a unique opinion on the subject of this October snow. “It’s not that bad,” He says. “I’d rather have it now, than in spring.” Isaac admits that most people probably do not like the snow this early, and he understands where they are coming from, but he simply doesn’t really pay much mind to it. Isaac says, “I’d prefer a storm to snow, but I’d prefer snow to a drizzle.” Isaac likes storms, for reasons no one knows, so he would rather the snow be a storm. But he dislikes drizzles, (light rain) so he would prefer the snow to that. A quite complicated comparison, but it shows what Isaac truly thinks about this rare situation.

Dear NPMS reader,

Hello, were very excited to be able to be apart of the Comet Chronicle writers this term. We have brought together 19 stories and 2 polls. It may have taken a while but it was worth it! We are proud of what we have accomplished in the time that we had. We had a total of 10 people. They are, Addison B, Jocelyn M, Will M, Madi P, Savannah T, Lane W, Ella H, Marley A, Mia G, and Anika S. Through-out this whole term we have worked hard to get together stories that we hope to interest you with them. We are proud of what we have accomplished and we hope you actually enjoy them! Thank you for reading our stories and doing our polls.

Sincerely,

7th grade Journalism Term 2

Book Reviews

October 2, 2020

By Brooke Sprague

Even though COVID, many people continue to read. One of those people, Meredith Watson a 6th grader at North Polk Middle School her favorite book is Making Bombs For Hitler this is her favorite book because she loves historical fiction. A quick summary of this book is 10-year-old girl Lida is separated from her sister Larissa and gets sent off to make bombs for Hitler. And she tries to sabatash the bombs. The main motivation for this character is to make the world better.

Another 6th grader who was reading over quarantine is Hallie Moelkhaus she read the book Ghost Never Die. This book is about a game called kill scream and no one can beat the last level which is the wisp and they have to try and stop it the main character beats the level. And the wisp escapes into the real world and they have to try and stop it. Hallie would rate this book a 10 out of 10.

Kaden Gilligan a 6th grader at North Polk Middle School, his favorite book series is Harry Potter. The summary of the first book is Harry Potter does not know that he has powers, then Hagrid comes to Harry’s house and explains he has magical powers, Harry goes to a wizard school saves a girl from a troll, and has to save the sorcerer’s stone. Kaden rates this book a 10 out of 10.

Letter to the Readers:

We are excited to share with you our first issue of the 2020-2021 Comet Chronicle. There were eight students on the NPMS News Team this term: Delaney Hoechst, Brooklyn Mellein, Rachel Morse, Alexis Munson, Reagan Petersen, Brooklyn Simonson, Brooke Sprague, and Furi Trout.

These students started by focusing on the changes due to Covid-19. Our world is very different than March 2020, and our school is no exception. As the journalist started brainstorming stories, they wanted to think about the various impacts of Covid-19 beyond their personal experience. This resulted in stories about online learning, teaching during Covid-19, Mr. Wolf's reactions to all the changes and several others.

As their teacher, I feel very proud of what they produced. I hope that you enjoy their work.

-Mrs. Stubbs

Term 4

Letter to the Readers

Here at North Polk Middle School, we are very excited that we participated in journalism and we are very proud of the work and effort that we put into the newspaper.

We learned countless things not only from Mrs. Stubbs but from each other. We have made it our goal to create meaningful, formal, and informational articles that teach our school the things they need to know, and also have opinions on topics that are heavily debated.

There are fun articles about the good news that our school should hear. Although only Reis Estey, Kayli Evans, Lilly Smith, and Morgan Eyanson-Renken participated, we are a mighty team. With the help of Mrs. Stubbs teaching, everyone has done a great job of working hard. Mrs. Stubbs taught us countless things and she was our biggest supporter. She let us have a lot of independence with the process of writing.

With all seriousness, we all had so much fun with wiring the stories and just learning new things about each other and building stronger friendships with each other. We learned things about the writing process, editing, how to interview others, and much more. There are many more things that our class has to learn and hopefully, we can take classes in the future that teach us more things about writing.

In conclusion, we have grown as people and as writers and have learned so many things that will benefit us so much in the future. We all love to write and now we love it even more. Thanks to the hard work that we have put into writing for the past six weeks, we are proud to let you read our newspaper.

Taki 183 is the king of graffiti. This is the first known tag in the graffiti era.

Graffiti:

Art or a Crime?

January 14, 2020

By Sam Mumma

First things first, graffiti can be a crime, but the way that I see it it is also art. There are a couple styles of graffiti including pieces, wildstyle, and stencils that normally assumed legal or done on a legal wall. On the other hand tags, throwies, and slaps (stickers) are more on the illegal side of graffiti because of how fast you can paint/stick them.

Most graffiti can be done with spray paint cans or markers filled with paint but they can also be done with acid filled markers, fire extinguishers, and paint rollers.

Although any type of graffiti can be both legal and illegal. People do graffiti because they feel like their life is a bit dull or boring. Also people do graffiti to “get up” or mark their territory.

Taki 183 is known as the king/creator of graffiti. He lived in New York City and was an active graffiti artist between the 1960s and 1970s. Taki was short for "Dimitraki," an alternative for his Greek birth-name Dimitrios, and the number 183 came from his address on 183rd Street in Washington Heights.

Some more graffiti artists are Resk 12 and Doke. Doke is an artist that creates legal graffiti with pieces and wildstyles, one the other hand Resk 12 is more on the illegal side and does tags/throwies, but both of them do a sort of art.

Term 3

Comet Chronicle

We are the 7th-grade Term 3 writers of The Comet Chronicle. All of us were excited to publish the third Comet Chronicle issue. We learned many things in our Journalism class and we took the things Mrs. Stubbs taught us and put them into the newspaper. Our team is Layla Arp, Ava Wessels, Jada Podey, Sam Mumma, Jakob Phillips, Rhiley Anderson, Leena Jameson, Jada Boatman, Izzy Ware, and the help of our Journalism teacher, Mrs. Stubbs! For this issue, we mainly focused on the “Students and Teachers” section. The reason why is because the teachers work so hard here at NPMS and many of the students don’t know how much they love their job and what kind of person they are outside of just being our teachers! Our issue includes stories of the Geobee, No Shave November, Comet Cup Updates, girls basketball, cheerleaders, the wrestling team, why kids decide to play sports outside of school sports, curriculum updates, and some teacher interviews such as interviews on 6th-grade teachers Ms. Halbloom, Mrs. Taylor, 7th-grade teachers Mr. Willey, Mr. Furlong, and 8th-grade teachers Mrs. Collins and Mr. Larson. We also have an exciting story on the subject of graffiti in our opinion pieces. Make sure you look at the Art and Fiction pages NPMS student’s artwork and writing.

Sincerely,

The NPMS Term 3 Comet Chronicle team

Left: By Payton LehmanAbove: By Alan W. Kling

Hunting

By Eaton Beckstrom

November 19, 2019

Hunting is a nice sport because you get to be outside and if you kill something you get to eat it. Also in hunting it has the least amount of incidents a year. A good way to hunt is in a stand or walk out in the woods and look for something. The more popular animals to hunt are deer, pheasant, and duck. For deer hunting, you can only shoot a doe or buck. For pheasant hunting you can shoot three per day, but for the year, only twelve. Some things you can take with you are hand warmers, food if you are in a stand, and extra bullets, slugs, shells or arrows. If you are deer hunting you can use a 243, 308, 30-30, 270, or 410, 12, and 20 gauge shotgun, slugs, or a bow.

A good time to start is at sun rise because there is not as many people out and you have more time to hunt. To hunt you have to be patient and keep watching for something. For safety, you have to take firearm safety and wear blaze orange. In order to hunt you need a license, or you could be fined or arrested. If you are traveling with a gun, it is illegal to not have it cased. Hunting is a good sport because it keeps the animal population under control and it is not very popular so it’s not so crowded.

Comet Chronicle Crew #2

NPMS Comet Chronicle Introduction

November 19, 2019

We are the 7th grade Journalism exploratory, and we created the second issue of the 2019-2020 Comet Chronicle. Our team includes: Lucas Bakken, Eaton Beckstrom, Riley Doll, Alan Kling, Payton Lehman, Solene MacLean, Addison Ollendike, and Grace Wedig. Our first story is about the 6th grade field trip to Gardening for Good. Some of the other stories in this issue are the 7th grade play & 8th grade play, Middle School Volleyball recap, Comet Cup Updates, the Middle School Dance, Middle School Wrestling, Middle School Cross Country recap, Middle School Football recap, and more, and more! We want to thank the Yearbook staff and Ms. Seligman for sharing their photos and camera. We used a lot of their pictures to share more about our stories.

In our class got to learn about the news, how to create headlines, interviewing, and editing. We also learned more about Gardening for Good and our school when we interviewed Ms. Seiligman for our stories. Last year the student council created the Comet Chronicle, and we are happy that journalism was welcomed into the North Polk Middle School for an exploratory taught by Mrs. Stubbs.

Even if you don’t think you are good at journalism, we hope that you try it, and we hope you enjoy our newspaper.

Thank you,

The NPMS Journalism Team

Hallway Pet Peeves

By: Olivia Canavan and Ruth Turczynski

Do you hate when you have been having a perfectly good day, you’ve been doing great on all of your tests, you got praised by all of your teachers, and lunch was awesome? Of course not. We love days like that. What you should hate is that wonderful day being ruined by crazy people in the hallways.

The hallways are a problem, when you are going to a different class there are people walking on the left side of the hallway, people talking about “last night's football game” in big mobs , and you can’t get anywhere without someone stopping just for no reason. Teachers should give us more time to get to class because we’re constantly being trampled in the hallways, but, “Sorry I’m late, I just got trampled.” Probably isn’t a good enough reason for being tardy. Everyone needs to learn the hallway rules so everyone gets to class on time.

Rules for the hallway.

DON’T RANDOMLY STOP BECAUSE YOU FEEL LIKE IT! THERE’S NO REASON TO!
RIGHT SIDE OF THE HALLWAY!
IF SOMEONE SAYS “Excuse me..” MOVE OUT OF THE WAY!
BOYS, THE HALLWAY IS NOT A FOOTBALL FIELD. DON’T ACT LIKE IT!!!
GIRLS, THE HALLWAY IS NOT A CENTER FOR DRAMA, DON’T STAND IN BIG MOBS!!!

So now that you know the rules, please follow them for the sanity of others, thank you and have a nice day, AND please don’t get trampled in school!

Comet Chronicle Crew #1

NPMS Comet Chronicles Introduction

We are the 7th grade Journalism exploratory, and we created the first issue of the 2019-2020 Comet Chronicle. Our team includes: Elyse, Marissa, Ali, Ariana, Olivia, Lane, Ruth, Katelyn, and Jenna. Our first story is about Mr. Wolf stepping up to being the assistant principal. Some of the other stories in this issue are the changes to the school, updates on the fall sports teams and music department, new students, teachers doorways and more, and more!

We want to thank the Yearbook staff and Mrs. Seiligman for sharing their photos and camera. We used a lot of their pictures to share more about our stories.

In our class got to learn about the news, how to create headlines, interviewing, and editing. We also learned more about Mr. Wolf and our school when we interviewed for our stories. Last year the student council created the Comet Chronicle, and we are happy that journalism was welcomed into the North Polk Middle School for an exploratory taught by Mrs. Stubbs.

Even if you don’t think you are good at journalism, we hope that you try it, and we hope you enjoy our newspaper.

Thank you,

The NPMS Journalism Team

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