You can expect to hear from me with the first 3 weeks of school via email. If you have a question of comment please email or call me at school. I check my phone messages every business day. You can expect a return call during the next business day -if I'm not absent the day your message is left.) I will respond to your email within 2 business days of receiving it. Even if I can't expound in my response, I will acknowledge your email. If you do not receive a response email, call me. No response usually means that your message has been quarantined by the county's spam filter. (It is very aggressive.) If your student has a question about an assignment or grade, please encourage him or her to talk with me. I'll listen.

This year I’m trying a communication experiment. I’m going to use “Remind101.com” to send SMS text messages to cellphones and/or short e-mails. As a follower you can choose which you want to receive. Longer messages will still occur through email. Remind101 is like Twitter except you cannot reply to any messages I send. It is built for educators to facilitate short bursts of communication. I plan on using it to remind anyone that follows me about upcoming projects or tests and any changes to an assignment that can’t wait until class. I expect to send out about 30 to 40 messages for the entire year. Instructions on how to sign up to follow me are on the last page of this document.

Click here to sign up.

TECHNOLOGY / NETBOOKS:

Each student will be loaned a Dell netbook on or about the 5 week of class. Each student will also be given accounts on Google Apps for Education and a school e-mail account. These tools will be combined in various ways to create a collaboration environment on certain assignments. Many more handouts will be coming.

SCIENCE FAIR & VJAS (Optional):

Participation is encouraged and remains a voluntary option for all students.  All students are encouraged to develop a project and enter the Regional Science Fair, or participate in the Virginia Junior Academy of Science Competition.  Several of the faculty members will be coordinating projects and can help find mentors who are working in the areas of student interest.  ALL students wishing to complete an independent research project, (Science Fair or VJAS,) need to complete the initial forms by NOVEMBER 3, 2008. Students wishing to participate should tell his or her teacher AND contact Mr. Curry, in room 255. The new forms and information should be available in October.  Any student wishing to begin before then can use last year’s forms.  Under no circumstances should a student begin research without a research plan approved by an AHS science faculty member. Science fair research forms involving living creatures, animal or human tissue, blood, DNA, human subjects including surveys, or controlled and/or hazardous substances are due in November. Other forms are due in February. The VJAS paper will count as a 100 point assignment and the science fair will count as a 200 point assignment.)

OTHER SCIENCE OPPORTUNITIES (Optional):

The Chemistry Olympiad is a national competition based on chemistry knowledge and skills.  [Interested students should see Mr. Curry in 255.]  AHS has an Envirothon Team, which competes against other schools’ teams in field exercises designed to test environmental knowledge and skills. [Interested students should see Mr. Chaney in 267.]  AHS students have been very successful in both of these competitions.

EVALUATION:

Grades will be based on performance on tests, quizzes, activities and labs. Each assessment will be worth a certain amount of points. Typically:

• Tests are worth 100 to 150 points
• Quizzes are worth 20 to 50 points
• Activities/Lab are worth 10 to 80 points
• Daily Quizzes (QOD) are worth 3 to 15 points
• Homework Assignments are worth 1 pt per problem 8 point maximum

Nine weeks' scores will be based on the percentage of possible points earned. Homework will be checked for a completeness grade. It will not be worth more than 15% of the final nine weeks grade. Extra credit opportunities may be offered during a grading period.

CLASS PREPARATION GRADES

Homework grades are gone. They have been replaced with class preparation grades. A class preparation grade indicates a student’s readiness to learn. This is demonstrated by having the homework or any other out-of-class assignments completed upon entering the classroom. Homework credit is given for attempting the assignment. What and “attempt” looks like is described to the students in every unit. Out-of-class assignments are assigned as a way of reviewing the day’s concepts or skills while getting mentally ready for the days class. The preparation grades cannot be turned in late or “made up.” This is because we go over the assignments in class and post answers on line to most problems. If it was turned in late then that would show that student was not prepared for class. If a student missed a class due to illness, doctor’s appointment or family business, then he or she is not responsible for the grade or the homework assigned when he or she was absent. But if he or she returns with the completed homework that was assigned in his or her absence, then I will give them credit if they take the initiative to show it to me at the beginning of class.

GRADES:

The class will follow the school's grading scale. All nine weeks' grades reported on the report card will be rounded to the nearest one's place; e.g. 89.532 becomes a 90 on the report card. However, the raw score will be used for semester averages. Semester averages will be rounded to the nearest one's place -like the nine weeks grades.

PRE-TEST GRADES:

Before each test, students are turn in a chapter in his or her 3"x5" notebooks. This summary notebook is a separate 5-point grade. Students who do not have the sheet ready before the test cannot turn it in late. He or she will receive a zero for the summary. The purpose of the summary sheet to act as a review BEFORE taking the test.

GRADE PROGRESS:

I will contact the parents or guardians via email or phone if a student receives a failing grade on a test or major lab.

EXAM EXEMPTIONS:

Exemptions are only for the final exam during the second semester. Exemption is determined by school policy in the student handbook. Since, there is not an SOL test at the end of the course, there are no additional SOL score requirements to affect exemption.

HOMEWORK:

The homework load will vary. Expect to spend an average of 30 minutes doing homework after each class. When appropriate, homework assignments consist of fewer quality problems rather than a large quantity of all possible problems. Everyday there will be a class preparation grade. This preparation grade comes doing homework. It is not a big grade. Missing one or two smaller assignments will not dramatically affect a students grade. Missing many will add up.

MAKE UP  & MISSED WORK:

When a test has been missed, arrangements must be made within 2 days of returning to school to make up the missed work. The missed assignment must be made up within 2 weeks of returning to school. Failure to make up work will result in a zero for the assignment. An "incomplete" letter grade will be given for the 9 weeks to any student with an assignment not turned in by the end of a grading period. The student then has 2 weeks from the end of the grading period to turn in the assignment.
If a student misses an assignment due to an illness, then he or she will not be penalized if they return without completion of the assignment. The assignment will still need to be made up according to school policy. Missed homework assignments due to absences may be turned in one class after returning for credit. But students are not held responsible for homework assigned while absent due to illness.

HONOR CODE:

Students are to work independently, without any outside aide, on tests, quizzes, the research component of the project and "questions of the day." Student may work with others on homework, in class assignments, labs and activities.

ATTENDANCE:

The class will follow the school's attendance policy with one exception. According to school policy, students will be assigned lunch detention on his or her second tardy.

WEB SITE:

This class will have a web site, http://www.mrwaynesclass.com. Working on the web is OPTIONAL. The web site will be a constant work in progress. The web site will contain:

• Daily assignment blog
• Documents distributed in class in either web form or as a PDF document.
• Interactive, on-line, pretests developed by the teacher.
• Related topic links.
• Animations and some lecture notes from class.
• Tutorial links to other sites. (This web site will only contain links to legitimate, safe web sites. Once a student leaves the www.mrwaynesclass.com server, I cannot be responsible for the paths they "surf" beyond the initial link.)
• Some video tutorials on how to do more difficult problem types.