Happy New Year to All!

It was wonderful having snow for Christmas ... a pict from our hives on the goat field north of Holland.  Most hives seem to be doing okay.

We had a good Christmas.  Our daughter, Hannah, was in for a few days from San Francisco.  Our oldest daughter and her husband Kyle was down from Champaign, IL to visit on two weekends.  Our son, John, went with us up to Ohio to see my sister's family and my Dad.

I visited my Sunday school teacher while in Ohio ... he was a WWII veteran and life long dairyman.  I ate and stayed at their house on several occasions visiting his son (my cousin) when I was young.  It was so good to visit and talk with him.  I was spell-bound by his stories of WWII when I was young and I still love to hear them.

I got some good presents for Christmas, including some great books, seeds to plant in the garden next summer and clothes.  I am reading one of my books and hope to finish before returning to school ... "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot.  It is about the HeLa cell line that is used all over the world in cell research ... these cells originated from Henrietta Lacks over 60 years ago from cervical cancer cells.  A very interesting book!

Today I worked with students preparing for the protein structure problem in Science Olympiad.  Went to the basketball games yesterday and stopped by the tournament for a sandwich today ... lots of hard work and dedication from the softball booster club to put the holiday tournament on ...

Tomorrow is suppose to warm up enough I can check some hives and I have a couple of student recommendations to write.

Wishing you all the best new year in 2011!

rr

First Semester is OVER for most!

We had some students take off early so will have their finals and presentations to make up before they can pass ... especially in Selected Topics.

We went over our final in Genetics this morning ... then danced out to Second Block.  Most students are going on to AP Biology ... make sure you do your reading assignment on Ecology during Christmas ... Lab 12 when we return!

Computer Programming ended with Josh being awarded best Final Project.  I will post his pict later this week on www.patscience.com ... that was sure a fancy trophy!

We had several students present their exit projects in Selected Topics in Science today.  A few failed to make it to school and we will have to make that up on return.  For many it was not easy to get up and talk in front of the class ... a skill to work on!

Hope you all have a great Christmas and Happy New Year ... be careful driving over the holiday ... I know that some of you don't pay much attention ... drive slow!

rr

Half way finished with finals and a Christmas pict ...

Today, we had finals in first and third blocks.  Tomorrow, our final day of school in 2010, we will have finals second and fourth blocks.

Genetics had a cumulative final this morning ... it is hard to remember all the that science from August on but, at the next level in college you will have to be able to do just that!  I am grading them as we speak and it appears they are above what I expected after hearing all that moaning and groaning this morning.  Tomorrow we will go over our last two tests in class and talk a little about our AP assignment for the Christmas holiday.  Students moving on to AP already have their textbooks, syllabus, first lab (Dissolved Oxygen and Primary Productivity Lab) and our first set of discussion questions ... all over the reading assignment - Ecology - Chapters 52-56.
Make sure you keep up or stay ahead in AP it is much more demanding than Genetics!   I have a lot of that material on www.patscience.com

We reviewed two projects today and will finish the remaining final projects tomorrow in Computer Programming.

We took our Big 100 Final today ... 100 questions over the junior CATS assessment ... Congratulations to Kellie for having the highest score and setting a new all time Big 100 high score for any Selected Topics class at the high school!  That is BIG!  Tomorrow we will finish our exit projects then head to the house for vacation!

Ms Roberts and I had our children home for the weekend ... Hannah lives in San Francisco and can only come home a couple of times a year.  Rachel (our oldest daughter) and her husband (Kyle) live in Champaign IL and John is doing a Master's program at WKU ... it is rare to have them all home at one time and those times are special ... They all went to school at ACS a few years back and I am including a picture ... Shown below ... Roberts family, Franklin and Gaye Foster and Ms. Conner (Granny, Sue Neal's mother an ACS teacher of 39 years)

See you on Monday!

We will now be going to school on Monday and Tuesday of next week to make up snow days.  Finals are scheduled for those days ... First /Third Blocks on Monday and Second / Third blocks on Tuesday.

More personally ... my own children are headed home for a early Christmas since Hannah has to work during Christmas ... she is flying in from San Francisco today ... Rachel (oldest daughter) and her husband Kyle is driving down from Champaign, IL and John will be over from WKU/Bowling Green.  We rarely have them all home at one time so it will be a great weekend for Ms Roberts and I.

Today in Genetics we took our last regular test over Chapters 15-22 and some of the labs we have done with mixed reviews.  On Monday we will have a Cumulative final for bonus and maybe get a head start on AP on Tuesday before we depart.

We started review our final Microsoft Visual BASIC projects today and will continue on Monday.  All have be good and a couple were above that.  All students should have some basic skills in programming and logic ... at least enough to know if they want to pursue it as part of their career.

In Selected Topic in Science, we started or exit projects .. John T has a good one on the Science of Muscle Fibers ... the difference between high twitch and slow twitch fibers and how they work. David gave a good summary on The Science of Black Holes.  For many of these students it is difficult to get up in front of people to speak but it is a skill that is required in most jobs.  A good time to practice that skill.

Hope you all have a great weekend and be careful!

rr

Back to School! Yeah!

Back to school today finally ... we had club schedule today and our last softball conditioning session / open hitting at BSA was after school.  Preseason conditioning starts on January 4th and our tryouts will be open to all students and from February 15-18.

In Genetics today we handed in our AP Biology test for practice ... lots of scores in the 3 range without doing all the labs and much of the AP content which is a good sign.  Tomorrow we will have our last test over Chapters 15-22.  We will have a cumulative Final for bonus before heading to AP.

I hope to the have the first installment of AP docs on google docs by tomorrow and links to my website by this weekend ... www.patscience.com

We are ready to start our assessments of our final projects in Computer Programming tomorrow.

In Selected Topics we begin our presentations tomorrow ... Next Monday is the Big 100 final and on Tuesday we will finish our exit project presentations.

I will get some picts of our posters and presentations and post them over the next few days.

rr

??? No school tomorrow ... again!

No school tomorrow, Wednesday ... I guess in anticipation of the forecasted ice storm.

Warmed up in Holland today and some of the snow melted.  Sue Neal and I spent some time getting the house ready for Christmas ... I suspect we will be going to school next week.  Our youngest daughter is flying in from San Francisco on Friday and our other children are coming in for an early Christmas.

I bottled the rest of our honey from last summer so we could we give it away for Christmas.  Graded some papers and typed our final test in Genetics.

Took a walk this evening down almost to Long Creek.  Not many animals moving around ... a couple of deer.

Finished our Christmas letter this evening and worked on my website and will publish and update tomorrow.

Hope you all are having fun in the snow and be careful driving!  Hopefully, we will get back to school on Thursday and put together a game plan to finish off the semester.

rr

Snow and No School today!

About three inches of snow in Holland and cold ... fed birds this AM and sweep the snow off the porches.  Working on some odd jobs and will grade papers after lunch and enter some grades.

Our Patriot Softball Booster Club meeting will be postponed until next Monday evening.

No Allen County Beekeepers meeting today ... I checked my hives on Sunday morning without opening them.  Made sure the bottom boards were completely in and duck taped the ventilation holes.  It is a long way to February but they all had significant honey reserves with the exception of one hive and I will continue to feed them through the winter ... hopefully they will make it.

As for schedule changes ... I don't know if they will have club schedule tomorrow but, our schedule is set ...

Genetics - we will now be having our test on Thursday if we have club schedule tomorrow.  I will finish handing out AP books to non-genetics students for second semester and giving them their Christmas reading assignment in Genetics.  Your sample AP exam is due on Tuesday still.

Computer Programming - Hope your project is getting close because we will begin checking them on Wednesday and finish on Thursday.

Selected Topics in Science ... we will start our Exit Project presentations on Wednesday ... Poster or Powerpoint, verbal summary (3-5 minutes), and written summary in the form of an article for a school newspaper or website.  Be ready to go!

Hard to predict if we will go to school next Monday or Tuesday in which case, we will move some of our project deadlines back a day or two.

Hope you have a great day ... be careful if you have to drive!

rr

Have a good weekend!

Basketball at Cumberland tonight ... good luck!

Several BETA from my first block class were in Louisville to a state meeting today.  In Genetics, we reviewed for our test on Monday.

In Computer Programming we continued to work on our exit project.  I checked several of the programs today and they look great so far ... some of the best Microsoft Visual BASIC programs we have ever had!

Selected Topics in Science - We did some reading in Current Science then worked on our posters for presentations that begin on Tuesday.

I have a Kentucky Softball Coaches Association meeting tomorrow ... softball is just around the corner!

rr

Starting to wrap up activities for the semester!

This morning our Genetics class had our monthly breakfast in first block.  Barnyard, biscuits and more with Sourwood Springs honey.  Afterwards we went over our review sheet for our last chapter test on Monday. We also handed out and started on a sample AP Biology exam to see where we stand ... the last 20 questions are lab set questions and will be good practice for Saturday's ACT exam.  Tomorrow we will have 5 students out to the BETA convention.  We will continue on our practice AP Exam and do a practice test of Monday's real test.

My Introduction to Computer Science continued to work on the exit projects ... appears to be some of the best ever!  We had some volunteers in this class clean up the leftovers from our first block breakfast.

We finished our population genetics lab in Selected Topics in Science and wrote up the lab report.  Tomorrow we return to our Exit Projects with some computer time and making our posters.

GSP applications were due today so a lot of teachers were writing recommendations ...

Club Schedule has been moved to Tuesday of next week with finals on Thursday and Friday.

rr

Population Genetics Lab and more ...

Faculty meeting after school today and softball conditioning was conducted by Coach Bunton.

ILP day for my home room ... IMHO I don't think most students get much of a vision where they stand and where they can go from a piece of software.  In any case, my homeroom missed class to update their ILP - Individual Learning Plan.   Someone in some country made a boat of money with this software .... maybe that is the lesson.

Class review for today ...

In Genetics we finished out book today with discussions questions on human reproduction treatments for infertility ... IVF, GIFT and ZIFT and questions centering around the human genome program and model organisms.  We finished our class with our review game.

In Computer Programming we started a web search on the history of computer science and the people that made it happen, early home computers and programming languages.  Several students continued to work on their exit projects.

In Selected Topics in Science we added a population genetics lab to understand how the changing of organism over time (evolution) works ... natural selection.  We will finish this lab tomorrow and give students time to work on their exit projects.

Don't forget that the ACT test is Saturday at the high school ... good luck to all!

Next week will be busy ... Genetics test on Monday ... Club Schedule on Tuesday ... Finals on Thursday and Friday next week before leaving for Christmas vacation.

rr

Cold, Cold and ACT on Saturday!

Good luck to the Patriot basketball teams at Barren this evening!

Students received their PSAT scores today ... you need about 207 to qualify for national merit semi-finalist in Kentucky out a possible 240.  You can only qualify as a junior.  Hopefully we will have someone qualify ...  being a National Merit Semifinalist is a BIG honor and results in $$$ when you apply to college!  Something every serious student should work toward from their freshman year on to junior year.

Good luck to all our students taking the ACT on Saturday.

In Genetics today we finished our lab report and graphs for the data we collected from our mini-lab using a spectrophotometer yesterday.  We did some research on the absorption peaks of methylene blue across the visual spectrum of light.  Our transmission of light data fit perfectly with the absorption rates of methylene blue ... data was perfectly inversely proportional.  We also started on our last set of discussion questions and should finish them tomorrow.  Mostly genetic testing and human reproduction problems today.

Our projects in Introduction to Computer Science continued today.  Projects are coming along well.  Tomorrow we are going to take a break from our program to do a little history of computers and computer science.

In Selected Topics, we did a graphing problem in our comp books.  Following this we finished the write up of our Super Structure Lab.  Tomorrow we are going to do some ACT practice and our weekly reading.

rr

Super Structure Contest ... 207 pounds!

We had softball conditioning after school today ... free weight station work and our wall ball (Allen County Handball) tournament began.

Genetics - We did a spectrophotometer lab today ... since we have only two specs it took some time.  We are going to analyze our results tomorrow class and work on Chapter 20 discussion questions.

Introduction to Computer Science - Exit projects are coming along really well ... several students have animated objects as part of their projects.  All projects are in Microsoft Visual BASIC.

Today in Selected Topics in Science we tested our super structures build of popsicle sticks ... 8" tall structures weighing only 34 grams.  Our winners ... Ben White, Tyler Bullington and John T Williams built a structure that held 207 pounds ... students learned about laminations, load bearing members and other physics/building principles.  We will finish this lab tomorrow and work on some ACT practice questions.

rr

Great Game - You did well!

Having coached in many state competitions I know the pressure on both the coaches and players.  AC-S comes to state competitions as the country kids and we never have some of the opportunities the suburban and urban school and communities can provide.  What has been the case for our teams and the football team last night is playing as a team.  Not wanting to let your teammates down. That team dynamic was in the mix last night and it got ACS to within on big play of a state championship.  It was an inspired game and I for one, was proud of you!

Regardless of classes or lack thereof ... there has never been a state champion or a state runner-up at our high school.  You can now mark off state runner-up.

For Monday -

Genetics - Chapter 20 and 21 questions ... we plan to finish the book by midweek and have a final test.  We have a Spec lab sometime next week ... maybe Monday or Wendnesday

Genetics - We are doing an extra animation problem on Monday but most of the week will be dedicated to your exit project.

Selected Topics in Science - Super Structures will be tested on Monday in the field house ... Good Luck!

Next week there is a lot of distractions  ... Club Schedule on Tuesday ... ILPs the middle of the week and more.  We may juggle some assignments around.

Christmas Parade today ... Girls Softball will be the Grand Marshall ... The team was third in the state tournament last year, losing in the finals of the winner bracket to the eventual state champion ... as I have said, we know your pain.

rr

Big Football Game Tomorrow - Good luck!

In Genetics we went over Chapter 19 Discussion Questions and prepped up a lab with out spec-20s which will now be pushed back to Monday ... We are working to finish our book by Wednesday next week ... ACT practice and some AP questions tomorrow ...

Computer Science projects are coming along ... several will add animation which is new for our exit projects.  Work on these project continue tomorrow ...

Final full day on our Super Structure Lab/Contest today ... several look like they will hold over 25 lbs ... we will test these on Monday.  Tomorrow we are in the computer lab for half the block then wrapping up our structure building efforts.

rr

Projects continue

In Genetics, we are wrapping up the last few chapters of our Ricki Lewis textbook.  Today the discussion questions centered on Chapter 18 - Cancer ... oncogenes, proto-oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes.  Tomorrow Chapter 19 Discussion questions are on the tools of biotechnology - bacterial transformations (a lab we have completed), PCR, and more.

Computer Science - We are spending the week working on our final projects ... today we worked on animation of objects in Microsoft Visual BASIC, an area we usually do not get to ... will help some of our gaming development programs.

In Selected Topics in Science, we are wrapping up our structures to test on Friday ... several are really taking shape after a few failed efforts.

Tomorrow we have softball conditioning after school

Friday is the big game at WKU - the 4A state football championship - Go Pats!

Saturday is the Christmas Parade - the 2010 Pat Softball Team are the Grand Marshall.

Closed done some of my hives this evening in the dark ... most of the hives have lots of honey for the winter ... hoping for the best!

rr