Psssst....we've moved!

Thank you for visiting The Prowl Newspaper. For the 2015-2016 school year, we're changing to Seckman High School Writing Club in order to expand our offerings. Please visit http://seckmanhighschoolwritingclub.blogspot.com/ in the coming weeks to check out our progress!

The ultimate senior bucket list

By: Janese Watson

     Do you ever feel like you haven't done everything you wanted to do as a senior? Like there are more things to being a senior than graduating and getting into a good college? Have you ever thought about creating a “senior bucket list”? Most seniors plan to finish high school and then get through college, but why stop there? Why not enjoy this year not only for the education reason, but for yourself? Having a senior bucket list can fix the empty spaces you want filled. You only get to be a senior one time, so why not do it right?

● Go to your senior prom. Prom is something that everyone should experience at least once. If you choose not to go, what are you going to tell your kids when they ask how your prom went when you were a senior? 

● Go on a road trip with your best friends. There is nothing better than vacationing with the people who mean the most to you.

● Learn how to beatbox. Yeah, it’s different, but hey, why not?

● Go on a date. Not a date where you hangout and watch TV. Go to a nice restaurant and somewhere fun, something you've never done before. 

● Make new friends. No one wants to have the same friends all their life. Meet new people and do new things. 

● Run a race for a cause. You don’t like to run? Deal with it, try it out, and have fun. When are you going to get the chance to do something like this again? 

● Help a stranger. Helping an old lady walk across a street isn’t just in the movies. Take a chance and offer the help, it will be appreciated.  

● Loosen up. Take all the stress that you might be having and loosen up. Life gets easier when you want it to. 

● Tell your favorite teacher about their impact on you. Not every teacher hears how grateful their students are. Let them know that they are awesome. 

● Go to a concert. Never been to one? GO. Always go to them? GO AGAIN. 

● Have a water balloon fight. If you think they are too childish, think again.

● Go to a game for a sport you haven’t seen at school. Why? Well, why not?

● Kiss in the rain. It’s not just in movies, make it happen.

● Tell your crush your feelings. How much better would you feel if you told the one person you liked that you liked them right before you graduate. Do it. 

● Write a story. What’s a better story to read than a story you wrote?  

● Dye your hair. Change is good, right?

● Walk through the drive through. Yes, it says no walking, but when’s a better time to try?

● Have a conversation with a stranger. You could end up marrying that person!

● Plan a senior trip! Invite all your close friends and just have the time of your life, because well, it is your senior year. 

Have fun creating the best memories before going off to college! It’s all worth it. 

Music and math

By: Josh Leach

Why should students receive music education?  This question is quite valid; after all, on the surface understanding of music theory does not present any practical applications for students not pursuing a career in the musical arts.  However, numerous studies have supported a correlation between music education and heightened intelligence and improved academic performance.
Glenn Schellenberg, PhD, led a research team to find if music improves a child’s IQ scores.   The team’s results were published in the Journal of Educational Psychology .   A summary of this study was reported by PsychNet, a website which gives the public access to recent research findings.  The summary stated, “In Study 1 (N = 147), duration of music lessons was correlated positively with IQ and with academic ability among 6- to 11-year-olds, even when potential confounding variables (i.e., family income, parents' education, involvement in nonmusical activities) were held constant. In Study 2 (N = 150), similar but weaker associations between playing music in childhood and intellectual functioning were evident among undergraduates. In both studies, there was no evidence that musical involvement had stronger associations with some aspects of cognitive ability (e.g., mathematical, spatial-temporal, verbal) than with others. These results indicate that formal exposure to music in childhood is associated positively with IQ and with academic performance and that such associations are small but general and long lasting.”
The American Psychological Association commented on Schellenberg’s summary, saying, “The recent study builds on work he published in 2004, in which 6-year-olds given a year of voice or piano lessons saw a significantly larger increase in IQ than a control group that waited a year for musical instruction.  In the recent work, Schellenberg and his fellow researchers studied two groups of students: children 6 to 11 years old and college freshmen.  The younger group received an IQ test, an evaluation of their school grades and a measure of academic achievement. More than half of the group had taken music lessons, either in private or group instruction.”
The findings of the study are supported by several surveys and statistical analysis.  Wetter Koerner, a writer for Instructional Science: An International Journal of the Learning Science, said, “Statistical analysis comparing grades showed that children involved in music had significantly higher average grades than children in the control group. Moreover, the music group had significantly higher average grades in all individual subjects except sports.”  Abby Aldridge, a senior in the Seckman band program, said, “Absolutely, music makes you smarter.”  Her brother, Mike Aldridge, a junior at Seckman, said, “I think music helps coordinate the brain’s activities and make it work better.  That’s probably why music improves performance in school.”
Recently, many schools have cut their music departments due to substantial budget cuts.  If this correlation between music and intellectual success is true, then these students are losing out on these benefits.

DIY: Clothesline picture hanger

By: Sadie Raddatz

Have a big empty wall space and need to decorate it? Have a lot of pictures, but no way or space to show them off? Some hemp string, clothes pins and tape or staples can help you create something wonderful.

Materials:
- Hemp string
- Clothes pins
- Photographs
- Tape or a stapler

Instructions:
1. Cut the hemp string, long enough to fill the space you are covering.
2. Apply the string against your chosen surface and tape or staple it as needed.
3. Add clothespins where you want. They can be close or spaced apart.
4. Clip your pictures to the clothespins.
5. Repeat, if you want more than one line of string.

To add extra personality to your picture holder, add some colorful flowers, paint your clothes pins, or you can even buy some floral or designed ones. You can easily express your style and show off your cool pictures.

First it was The Dress. Now it’s a math problem.

By: Bella Dalba

The world has become divided once more. This time over a test question, now affectionately referred to as “Cheryl’s Birthday,” that was first posted on Facebook by Singaporean TV presenter Kenneth Kong. The wordy problem asks readers to logically deduce the birth date of a girl named Cheryl, using only the minimal clues she gives to her friends, Albert and Bernard. Not surprisingly, it has stumped thousands.
Cheryl's Birthday was initially reported to be an examination question for 11-year-olds, but has since been attributed to a test for high school students competing in the Singapore and Asian Schools Math Olympiad on April 8. Kenneth Kong, who first posted the problem, told the BBC: "It's a really difficult question for younger kids, so that's why people were so shocked at first... but now that people know it's for older students, they just think it's quirky."
The test was aimed at the top 40% of eligible students, and was used to "sift out the better students.” Children stressed by tough examinations is a perennial issue in Singapore, but Cheryl's Birthday reignited concerns that education systems worldwide were excessively stressful. The school that administered the exam, Sasmo, defended the question, saying there was "a place for some kind of logical and analytical thinking in the workplace and in our daily lives. We are not saying this problem is for every student... But if these kind of problems can be used to stretch the better students to sharpen their analytical power, why not?"
     Others took umbrage at the wording: "I hope people picked up that the person who set the question needs to go for English grammar classes - there are at least two grammar errors," said Twitter user Clarence Singam-Zhou.
     Regardless, the question, which has been shared internationally, sparked a Twitter hashtag (#cherylsbirthday) and even a music track. Various answers and their accompanying explanations have been posted across the Internet, through a multitude of sources: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, news outlets like The New York Times and the Washington Post, as well as YouTube (particularly Georgia Tech Mathematician Matt Baker’s video), all pushing different theories as to the correct answer.
     “I’m convinced that there is no answer, and that this is all one big hoax to prove how gullible the public is,” said Sabrina Gretzmacher, a senior at Seckman High School.
So when is Cheryl's birthday really? According to Sasmo (which quickly dismissed an "alternative solution" that resulted in August 17), the correct solution is July 16. Of course, the Internet has offered other solutions: "After spending so much time together, thinking of Cheryl's birthdate, Albert and Bernard soon fell in love with each other and forgot all about Cheryl," said Elfy Bianca Hassan in a comment on Kong's Facebook page.
     Mackenzie Hunt, another senior at Seckman High School, believes that there is a simpler solution at hand: “Just add Cheryl on Facebook and you'll be notified when her birthday comes along.”