Meeting January 16

We are having a meeting on Friday, January 16. I know this is short notice so do let me know if you need a ride. We will hand out t-shirts, additional study material, and may have a guest speaker or two. Please also come prepared to give a short synopsis of what you have been studying to the group so that they can learn from you.

New T-Shirt Design

The previous t-shirt could not be printed properly so we designed a new one. Please let me know ASAP if you have any objections to the new design. The new design is also on a more urban cut t-shirt.

Make custom t-shirts at CustomInk.com

Meeting on December 22

Hello. Our meeting on 12/22 was a lot of fun. The kids worked on a Pentathlon event and Experimental Design. They then had a cookie exchange and made the school banner. (See to your right). Mr. C is our official photographer and did a fantastic job photographing everyone. Check out the pictures, he sent an email with a link to everyone on the team. All but one showed up so I was very grateful for everyone's support and pulling together. A field trip is planned over the holidays so if you are interested, make sure you respond to Mrs. B or Mrs. K's emails as to your availability and interest. The one missing student should contact me.

Next Meeting RESCHEDULED

Our next meeting has been rescheduled and will be on WEDNESDAY, 11/19.
Come prepared to discuss your progress, take tests (for academic problems), and bring rule books. You have been emailed as well. I understand there were a lot of conflict so needed to reschedule. Thanks.

Coaches' and Volunteer Training - UPDATE

I received the following message from the State Director with regards to the Training which would have been held this Saturday.

Unfortunately there is a conflict with our use of facilities for saturday's proposed training. I have tried my best to relocate our event for saturday but have been unable to find any other facility that we can get immediate approval for. We were trying to avoid the outrageous fees associated with renting our own facilities in a public school building so that this could be offered for free. I am working to find a new location with two dates in mind Saturday, November 22nd or Saturday, December 6. However there will likely be a fee associated with attending in order to offset our building use costs. I apologize for any inconvenience this will cause however in order to offer the tech and lab trainings we wanted it was unavoidable.

In addition unless more people step up to help lead event sessions the training will only include the following:

2 hour tech event/engineering training
2 hour lab event training
1 hour coaches strategies session
45 minute meeting with the Director about tournament policies and procedures

Please understand that board members and other volunteers are already committing a great deal of time to putting other things together. Trainings in other states are only successful when people volunteer to help run sessions. One of my earlier emails this year solicited volunteers to help run event sessions however I had very few responses.

First Meeting with Students

The purpose of our large group meetings is to have the team members get to know each other, answer any questions they may have, check progress, and to take care of business. We will usually not do anything with any of the problems specifically. It is also a question and answer time. The bulk of the events should be worked on by each groups of two with the mentors.

What we did:

1. Hand out Rules Book.
2. Have team members introduce each other.
3. Have team members review their event rules
4. Have team members arrange times to meet to start working on the events
5. Collect checks- thanks to the few students who remembered to bring them
6. Go over some ground rules (please review these with your child):
2 unexcused absences from the team will result in removal from the team, team members can only be excused without penalty with an email or a note from his/her parent regardless of illness or appointments (this will begin with the next meeting), the student is expected to stay for the whole meeting (especially since we will not be meeting often), and the student is expected to follow the FCPS rules. Please understand that I am volunteering my time and taking time away from work to engage in this activity. I enjoy working with the kids and love to see them expand their science knowledge. It's also a lot of fun to compete and see everyone's solutions to the problems. However, to make this a fun learning environment for everyone, I expect that each student will be respectful of each other, the mentors, and of me. If there is a problem, I will speak with the student. If it continues, I will speak with his or her parents. After that, the student will be asked to leave the team. Finally, please read the emails and check the blog often. Don't rely on your child's synopsis as to what is really happening. Many thanks to many of you who are already doing this diligently. I really appreciate it!

Goals for this week and until we meet again in 3 weeks - Monday, November 17.

1. Each group should already be contacting each other and the mentor to set a time to meet.
2. Each team member should be reviewing the problem in detail.
3. For the academic problem, they should be getting the reading material - online, library, etc. For online, see the links I posted earlier in the blog. They should already be studying the material.
4. I will be ordering t-shirts soon...I need your child's size and the name that he or she would like on the back of the shirt by the next meeting.
5. Each team member should be emailing me with progress reports on a regular basis (hopefully every week but every other week is okay).
6. Please mail me the $45 check payable to "Hughes M.S." You have an email from Shashi with the address.
7. All teams with building events must have a minimum of at least a design or prototype for the next meeting.

Once again, ALWAYS CHECK THE BLOG!

Thanks!

Events Assignment Below

Events assignment below have been revised. Please note that Michael is working on Crave the Wave and Jessica is working on Pentathlon. Also, I incorrectly typed the assignment for Scrambler. It should be Isaac/Patrick not David/Justin.