"I like physics. I think it is the best science out of all three of them, because generally it's more useful. You learn about speed and velocity and time, and that's all clever stuff." Tom Felton (actor, aka Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films)

The most important topic I want to stress this week are classroom management tips for our students and parents. The first is to please make sure your son or daughter is following me on the Remind app. I know it sounds like "one more thing", but I cannot stress enough the usefulness of this app. It allows me to instantly send, receive, and respond classroom information, solutions, tutoring help, etc. with the convenience of a text message. It also allows students to post messages to the class if they need help or ask their peers--my rule is ask three and then me!

The second item of importance is our text books! Many students forget we even have them. The website for the book is my.hrw.com and with this opens up a wealth of information students can review for topics they may be struggling with and want to review or even learn more about. A student told me this week that her mom was considering buying her a book for Physics as this student was struggling with the content, but I said, "Wait! We have a book!" The student had honestly forgotten about it. Of course, if parents want to purchase extra materials for studying, I am 100% for that, I just want to make sure all are aware we do have a book and it is a VERY good book.

This week in biology the students finalized their mini project with the driving question, "If you are what you eat, what should you eat?" The students had to create a meal plan for one day that met all of their macromolecule requirements and justify why they chose each food item. They also participated in a virtual calorimetry lab where they burn food to determine the energy release and thus calculate the amount of Calories within that food. We finished today with modeling lipids.

In physics, we have been working with position versus time graphs and understanding the the slope of a PT graph is equal to velocity. We also learned how to calculate the acceleration of gravity and that a bowling ball and  feather fall together in a perfect vacuum. If you do not believe me, you can google this and pull up the youtube video! We will end the week reading the Martian which is always a huge highlight for the students.