Week of April 8

Now that STAAR testing is over, we can get back to some sort of normal - at least for a while.  Expect more changes in scheduling for the last week of this month for TAKS testing.  There is a Late Start this Thursday, but that is the only anomaly.  All of the other days should be regular schedules.

Now that the final six weeks is upon us, it is more important than ever to keep on top of your work.  There will be less time than ever before to make up assignments with the last day of school now on the horizon.  This six weeks is really made up of seven weeks plus the final exam week, that happens after Labor Day.

This is Mr. Peterson's last week with us.  Make sure to say good bye to him before Friday.  He has done a great job with the classes, and his future students will be very lucky to have him.

I am altering some of the format of this web page slightly.  Notice that I have added another tab at the top, called "Internships, Work, and Summer Camps".  I had been putting that on the scholarship tab, but these didn't seem to fit.  Besides, I am getting enough of them that they deserved their own page.  If you haven't yet, check out both tabs. I will post scholarship and other free money (contests) information that gets sent to me on that page.  Hopefully, you will get some free money to help with college or, in some cases, just for doing a good job on a given project!  The new tab will host all of the information about summer jobs, internships (some paid/some not), and summer camps that should appeal to high school engineering students.  On both pages, I provide links for more information as well as applications.

If you are interested in the Dell Social Media trip on Friday April 19, be sure to sign up on this form and complete these forms (completely - all teachers must sign) by this coming Friday.  We can only take 40 students, max.  You must be passing all of your classes and caught up in your work in order to attend.

This is the first week of the last six weeks.  The year will be over soon, but it is not finished yet.  We still have work to do before the EOC exam for engineering, which is required of all students. Look for your 5th six weeks report cards to be sent home on Wednesday or Thursday.

Finally (before I talk about class this week), I have created a new site for our newest class, Aerospace Engineering.  We will be offering that class next fall, and I am excited about every aspect of it.  There isn't much to talk about right now, but as the class starts to take shape over the summer, I will update the page with new developments.


This week, we will begin our unit on Reverse engineering, starting out by learning to analyze the visual design elements of a product and then look at its functional analysis.  We will use the Automoblox cars for the reverse engineering items, so you will need to do all of your work in the classroom or tutorials as I don't have enough to allow students to take any home.