ATAR Notes: Forum
VCE Stuff => VCE Science => VCE Mathematics/Science/Technology => VCE Subjects + Help => VCE Biology => Topic started by: Aye Bay Bay on December 22, 2007, 03:32:26 pm
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Hi, i'm doing Bio next year? To people who did bio this year, how did you find it?
Any advice?
Oh and can someone post some bio 3 and 4 notes? Please?
Thank you in advance :)
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bio was good, if u enjoy it ull do well but u gotta read alot and highlight and keep notes and yea do alot of practice exams and i hope u get a good teacher who can explain things to you properly xD
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prac exams prac exams prac exams. Linking concepts is the key. Seriously, u probably hear "linking" and think "yer wateva" but it helps so much. I say prac exams cos by doing like 5 exams the day before my end of year, without studying a single topic during the semester, I managed to get the state average, muahhaha!!
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Biology 3/4 was one of my favourite subjects. I think the most important thing is to be highly organised. This is what I did:
1) I had a Biology folder for school and a Biology folder for home. In my biology folder at school, I'd put my handouts in, my notes (which I wrote in an exercise book, but you could tear the pages out) and anything else I recieved in class, as well as completed assignments or research I'd done myself, plus I'd date all my notes and work. Then after each topic's conclusion, or every 3-6 weeks, I'd get the folder I'd kept at home take out all of my notes and then group the notes, assignments, research and handouts according to topic and place them in a folder underneath a divider with the title of the topic (and if I could be bothered, in order of dates). As I did this, I was revising everything I'd learnt. I had around 10 or 11 different dividers with huge amounts of information. Then at the end of each topic, I'd write a small conclusion for each topic, and occasionally mind maps and a selection of dot points. It was very easy to study for exams and SACs. (Hopefully that makes sense!) :)
2) While I was studying (and lots of people do this), I highlighted key bits of information, and use god-knows-how-many post it notes. This also assisted me in finding the most important information to study etc.
3) Page refrences for my text book. When we were told to read something in class on a certain topic in our VCE Biology text book, I'd note down which page it was on in my excerise book, and write a summary or a quick sentence or dot points on what was within the pages so I could refer to the information and find it easily. For example;
~Pgs 45-47
-structure of DNA
-blah blah blah blah
-Blah blah blah
etc...
This all doesn't take as long as you may think!
Also, really listen in class, enjoy and take a keen intrest in your learning and discuss things, and take really good notes, because it all pays off! (But make sure you allow equal study time in all of your subjects)
:)
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You just got to memorise a lot for bio and do a lot of practice questions.
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i would post up some "free study notes" (my unit 3 and 4 summaries), but apparently you can't upload word docs to this forum....how ironic?? ??? lol
pm me an email and i'll send them to you.
my advice, though, would be to make your own summaries as well. i find that this type of learning really works for me (maybe not for everyone).
my other advice would be to try to utilise multiple resources - your text book is obviously going to be a main one, but there are also lots of good study guides, other text books (from a school or local library), the internet etc. admittedly, i used wikipedia as a resource a fair bit this year...which is probably bad, but whatever lol. i also used my brother's uni text book as a resource, which i found to be quite good (uni biology is taught without any assumed knowledge so everything is "from scratch" but just in a greater level of detail). also, i'm not saying you need to go out and buy 20 million study guides to do well...just borrow them off friends or libraries or whatever.
also, bug your teacher whenever you come across anything you aren't sure of. when i say this, i don't mean if you don't understand a concept, because that would seem fairly obvious. i mean, a lot of things in the bio study design (i found) are really ambiguous, so don't just assume you've interpreted something correctly. if you are in the tiniest bit of doubt, clarify it with your teacher. that's probably really obvious anyway...sorry.
do heaps of practise exams too...that's also an obvious one.
sorry, all of my advice seems really dumb and captain obvious. i'm not really as dumb as i sound from this post...lol. i can't really think of anything else i did that helped me do well. but let me know if there's a way to attach word docs to posts/your email address so i can hook you up with some summaries.
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i would post up some "free study notes" (my unit 3 and 4 summaries), but apparently you can't upload word docs to this forum....how ironic?? ??? lol
I'll upload them for you if you don't mind. All credit given! I think I downloaded them off BoS.
Astarael's notes:
Unit 3 notes
Unit 4 notes
Here's some I have:
Unit 3
(It's incomplete though, sorry!)
I updated this thread with these notes here: http://freestudynotes.com/VCEforum/index.php/topic,1381.0.html
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Thanks a heap Toothpick! Awesome definitions in Astarael's notes.
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Wow... thanks for sharing those Asterael... i am doing year 12 biology this year and we are coming up to our mid year exam and im doing all this studying but not getting the results i think i deserve for the hours i put in, these should help hopefuly. thanks again.
Aimee :)