MATTAWA — The first-graders had their tents set up Friday morning, the campfire burning (or at least a paper replica of a campfire burning), but no camping trip is complete without s’mores. The question before the first graders was how to make s’mores.

“We are going to start doing writing,” Wahluke School District counselor Dulce Molina told the first-graders.

So each first grader put together a book with the recipe, writing down a list of the ingredients, calculating the amount of each, and gluing in pictures of the marshmallows and chocolate as illustrations.

“We’re writing down the steps to make s’mores, and then we’re going to make s’mores,” Molina told a classroom visitor.

And if that involved practicing reading, writing and math – well actually, that’s what Warrior Academy is all about.

Wahluke superintendent Andy Harlow said the district will sponsor four sessions of Warrior Academy in the 2022-23 school year, with Friday being the second. The goal is to help students who need some extra support, he said.

Wahluke, like other schools statewide, closed in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Students didn’t return to school full-time until the second semester of the 2020-21 school year.

“For us, coming out of COVID, we didn’t know what to expect,” Harlow said.

District officials did, however, know that the pandemic had a serious effect on learning, and they were looking for ways to give extra opportunities to children that needed them. The district started with a model pioneered by Wahluke High School.

High school principal Cody Marlow said WHS had started an extra study hall on Saturdays for those students who had fallen behind.

“The whole point was to bring in kids to get extra help with their schoolwork,” Marlow said.

Saturday school was voluntary, but it attracted both teachers and students and featured incentives for students, like pizza for lunch.

“We had about 15 different teachers that would show up to those Saturdays,” Marlow said, and by the end of the year, it was attracting about 100 students.

Looking at that, district officials thought it might be scaled up, Marlow said.

The district scheduled days throughout the year when regular classes are dismissed and children are able to come in for extra instruction. But it’s not the regular old school day.

The fourth-graders in the Saddle Mountain Elementary library also were making books, in their case pop-up books with moving parts. Their subject was the jungle and the plants and animals that live there.

Max Quiros chose to make a scorpion, stalking a mouse that had taken cover.

“I remember when I was a little kid, I got stung by a scorpion,” he explained.

He used fasteners to connect the scorpion’s tail and claws to its body, making them moveable.

The second-graders were learning all about polar bears, gluing cotton balls to bear silhouettes, making a polar bear paw from torn paper and learning about the insulating properties of blubber in two tubs of ice water.

Wahluke Junior High students were in search of clues all around the building.

“They are learning a bunch of skills associated with language (and) math, but the teachers have created these fun games,” said WJHS principal Amy Johnson. “This one is based on ‘The Amazing Race,’ so they have to go to each station and complete a task. They get points, and they have a passport that’s showing them where to go around (school).”

The junior high students were required to cooperate, being tied together in teams of two. The tasks were based on the morning classes, everything from CPR to the Constitution to current events, she said.

High school students worked on individual projects, some concentrating on catching up, while others prepared for a competition Friday afternoon.

About 20 WHS students registered in advance, Marlow said, but the final count was about 300 participants.

“Like all high schoolers, they just showed up,” he said.

Some were working on makeup projects, while others prepared for a competition Friday afternoon. Sophomores Bryan Sandoval and Valentin Quiroz were fine-tuning their presentation on a more ecologically-friendly alternative to single-use plastics.

“It was kind of a trial and error, where we went with different concepts and how they would work,” Sandoval said.

Harlow said district officials want to attract as many students as possible.

“It’s a really cool opportunity for them to understand that learning can be fun,” Johnson said. “And I think it’s good for the teachers and the staff as well. Because (students) are learning really valuable skills; they’re just having a good time doing it. And it allows teachers an opportunity to think outside the box.”

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at [email protected].