boston marathon page assignment

The two bombers took away the security we all felt but they didn’t succeed in taking away our pride in our city. This is something Boston can and will come back from and is already in the process of doing so. The victims of the Boston marathon will recover and are receiving support from people across the nation. The tragedy that took place on Monday April 15^th and in my opinion strengthened the city in a time when others would have been weekend.

Boston Marathon Tragedy

      On Monday April 15^th two bombs went off near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The Boston Marathon is a 26 mile course around Boston with the finish line by the Boston public library. The bombs were planted by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev. It took four days to catch the suspects resulting in the death of Tamerlan and the hospitalization of Dzhokhar. 

     The casualties of the Boston marathon included death and loss of limbs. Hundreds of people are in the hospital recovering from the wounds inflicted by the bomb. Luckily Boston has a lot of hospitals that could treat the massive amounts of victims. One thing people did to try and help the victims was after finishing the marathon the participants continued to run to the nearest hospital to donate blood. The wounds inflicted by the bombing were both physical and emotional.

    The emotional toll of Boston being attacked was huge. People felt a range of emotions from unsafe to patriotic. The fear of another attack and the suspect still being out there caused people to stay inside and hope that another attack wouldn’t come. The fact that the suspect was taken in to custody 4 days after the attack caused the feeling of pride that we are “Boston Strong” and can come back from anything.

       The two bombers took away the security we all felt but they didn’t succeed in taking away our pride in our city. This is something Boston can and will come back from and is already in the process of doing so. The victims of the Boston marathon will recover and are receiving support from people across the nation. The tragedy that took place on Monday April 15^th and in my opinion strengthened the city in a time when others would have been weekend.

AP Biology Changing

On May 13^th thousands of high school kids across the U.S. will sit down to take the advanced placement biology exam to try and get college credit. This year the exam has changed from past years as well as the curriculum that is going to be on it. Previous years the exam has consisted of 100 multiple choice and 4 long response essays. This year there will be 63 multiple choice a new math section consisting of 6 grid in problems, 2 long response and 6 short response essays. There is a greater weight on writing and multiple choices this year than in past years.

Mr. Henry is the AP bio teacher at Norton high school. This is his 3^rd year teaching the course but the first year the curriculum has changed. When asked if he enjoys teaching AP biology he responded “I do. It’s probably my favorite course to teach”. He also teaches regular and honors level biology, honors anatomy and physiology and honors biotech.  Mr. Henry knows what’s changed in the new curriculum and how it has affected the way teachers have to teach the course.

Not only has the test format changed but the material as well “they are getting away from memorization of the course. It’s looking more at the big picture and understanding how things connect. Focusing on science practices” said Mr. Henry. Another change is the labs “It has been a little challenging especially designing labs to be more inquiry based”. The new curriculum has caused teachers to adjust to the new test.

The teachers have had to adjust and change their lesson plans to teach to this new curriculum. “I dislike the unknown of what the new test will look like. There has been some indications but without any released tests, there’s some uncertainty of what changes there will be to the test” Jason Henry. The adjustment and uncertainty has been difficult for the teachers but they plan on having their students ready to pass the test come May 13th.