Jan. 4th, 2013

 Welcome Back !!!

     I hope you had a wonderful break and got a lot of time to spend with your family and friends. I truly enjoyed the time I got to spend with my kids, wife and new puppies we have at our home. I also spent a considerable amount of time reflecting about the first half of the year and began to sketch out the plans for the 2nd half of my classes. We did a lot of great work but a lot of it was establishment of plan we intend to implement in the very near future. We have a lot of work to do and I hope you have come back to school ready to put our plans in action.
     As many of us do as we age, ( you'll know what I mean in future years), we begin to look at our life with all of its virtues as well as flaws. We make New Years resolutions that promise to decrease our weight, increase the involvement in healthy habits and attempt to plan financially for the future of our lives. I know students in high school tend not to look into their life so in depth, but maybe we should. Maybe we should plan better study habits, challenge ourselves with more invigorating educational subjects, and look to see what effect we can have on our planet. I am hoping, if nothing else happened during the first half of our school year, that we looked into opening our eyes to the effects we have as a population on our planet. Many of you began good works with many environmental issues as well as nutritional studies that can benefit our school and living communities.
     I am looking at doing several things differently in the next few months and mostly because of the work that you as students put in during 2012. I have several articles for you to read on Monday and begin doing some analysis of how we are impacting our planet. We are no longer purchasing water bottles at our house due to the plastic oceans we studied about in December. We will look at other alternatives as I hope you will as well on how we can use water more effectively. You may notice me walking to or from school as we return mainly due to the problem that I have in the cold weather of it taking longer to thaw my windshield and let the car warm than it does to actually drive to school. My health and our environment will be better off with me walking although I know this is not an option for many of my students.
     Lets just keep challenging ourselves to see how great of an effect we can have on our school, community and our personal lives over the next few months.

Bio A- 1st Hour
     Today I will be handing back your diagrams you began in December as I want you to either get them into an electronic media or continue working on them in your colored pencil form. Lets get the plans put together and get these projects operational in the next several weeks.

Bio B- 3rd Hour
     As with first hour, I will be giving you back your project works and have you continue working with the concepts until they are competed. I want them to get into the public eye soon.

A & P 4th Hour
     Today I want you to look into a short system we will be covering prior to getting into the muscles. I want you to read on your iPad the textbook Biology by Pearson over the chapter 32.3 Skin- The Integumentary System, pages 1554- 1558. Answer the questions on page 1559, 1-5, 6a., 6b., 7a., 7b., and 8 a & b. Create the questions 6-8 on a google document and make your answers there. When you complete the assignment, submit it to me. This will be due by the end of the hour on Monday, but we will spend little time working on them during class. We will also be looking at answering some of the questions on page 1568 during class on Monday, as you might want to take a look at them prior to class on Monday.