I know the start of the school year is a busy time.  My goal is to take some of the pressure off of families by providing the materials students will need in class.  That said, some students prefer to supply their own and it helps to know what my expectations are in advance while the good "back to school" sales are happening.

Students will need these items with them every single day:

• A one inch binder with dividers.  We cover 5 units the first semester and 4 units the second semester so you will need a total of 9 dividers.  I recommend that students keep all of their units the full year to make studying for my final exam and the AP exam in May.  You can make your own dividers with supplies I have in the classroom or buy them.  

They will also need the following occasionally:

• device and charger (we'll use these for our end of the unit review but also occasionally for online simulations). 

• A scientific calculator.  I recommend a graphing calculator such as the ti-84 plus because it allows you to input formulas into it.  We are not given a formula page like AP Bio and AP Chem but students are not required to wipe the memories of their calculators.  I have scientific calculators to loan out in class but they do not store formulas in memory.  The school does have graphing calculators that they allow students to check out from the bookroom. 

Letter of Recommendation

Please take your time filling this form out if you are interested in having me write you a letter of recommendation. The form will close on Sunday, September 14, 2025 so you have lots of time to thoughtfully reflect on the prompts below before responding. Writing quality, thoughtful letters takes a lot of time.  In order to ensure I can do a good job, I will only be writing 10 letters this year. I will send out an email to you on September 17th confirming your letter of recommendation. If you do not hear from me by September 18th, it means I cannot write you a letter this year. 

Preparing for Assessments

1-2  times  a week there will be AP style questions that over the material we've covered.  These questions are not graded but will help you determine how well you are keeping up so that you can adjust how much time you are studying at home.  This is also a good opportunity for you to figure out whether you understood the material and can apply it to skills based questions.  Students will also have access to a progress check taken on the AP Classroom website.  In order to be fully prepared for the Unit Assessments there are a variety of ways students can study: 

1. Take Notes by reading the textbook and supplement them by watching the AP Daily Videos 

If, after taking notes, you feel you need more practice you can: 

2. Ask me questions when I check the notes or email me  your questions if you are too shy to ask in class. 

3. Answer the end of module questions and check your responses with me. 

4. Watch the Dischinger-Smedes Lecture videos linked on my website. 

5. Watch the supplementary videos linked on my website. 

Students will organize their notes in their notebooks by unit and learning objective.   Find old school paper notes annoying?  Read this study or the abstract to this one.  Bottom line, digital notes increase the volume of notes a student can take in a short amount of time but decrease retention of the material.  Yes, you'll finish with your notes faster and be able to take a lot more notes in the same amount of time, but you won't remember it and will have to spend a lot more time studying.