Taking Bio Notes

[homeworkisapotato]

Hey everyone 
I'm really worried that I'm not taking down enough notes on each dot point in the study design and that I might not know everything we're meant to know about each dot point. How much should I write per dot point? Sounds like a dumb question but I'm kinda scared to compete with Year1 2's

Thank you in advance!

[colline]

I guess the best answer is as much as you need. There’s no set amount on how much notes you need to take. Also for bio it’s important to not only know your content but also to apply. To be honest, I’ve looked at the notebooks of high ranking bio students at my school and many of theirs are incredibly short and brief; funnily enough those with pages and pages of detailed and beautiful colour coded notes don’t seem to do as well on SACs and exams.

Also don’t worry about competing against year 12s. If you’re doing it as an early 3/4 you actually have an advantage as you have less workload in comparison to them.

[Erutepa]

Adding onto what colline had said, a great way to figure out if you've got everything you need to know in your notes is to do practice questions. If you get a book of exam style questions like atar notes topic tests or checkpoints, after you make some notes on a topic you can do some of these exam questions, mark them harshly and identity things you didn't know and things you need to get better at. Knowing these weak areas you can then go back to your notes and add stuff and gradually improve your notes.
You're not going to make perfect notes the first time around, you're only going to make a good set of notes through continually editing as you do practice questions. And don't be afraid of going into a bit more depth on some topics as doing so can really help your understanding. Just remember that in exams you will only be examined on the course content.

However, if there are any specific study design points you see confused on, feel free to ask questions in the bio question thread.

You can also identify areas that your notes might be lacking in by comparing them to other people's notes which you can find in the note section of AN. While it's important not to copy from the notes blindly, they could very well be wrong in bits, they can be a very good resource.

It's also important to realise that your notes aren't everything. They are an important foundation to understanding content, but at the end of the day it's revision and constantly doing exam practice questions that's going to help you really understand biology and get that information in your brain. After all, you're not brining your notes into sacs and exams, you'll be bringing you brain and a pen.

And just to reinforce what colline said about doing a 3/4 in year 11, at our school often the year 11s doing a 3/4 get some of the best results. So if you're willing to work hard, being a year 11 isn't going to prevent you from succeeding in bio.

Good Luck with your study!

[Sine]

Hey everyone 
I'm really worried that I'm not taking down enough notes on each dot point in the study design and that I might not know everything we're meant to know about each dot point. How much should I write per dot point? Sounds like a dumb question but I'm kinda scared to compete with Year1 2's

Thank you in advance!

Like others said it is always going to depend on the person. For biology, the only notes I personally made from scratch were during the summer holidays going through and summarising parts of the textbook and outside of any study during that holidays I didn't even end up using those notes that much. The actual understanding of the topic/memory in your own mind is always going to be better than having a perfect set of notes at home.

Also for a subject like Biology it is pretty much impossible to know everything (especially having that information on hand in your memory)- obviously there is a study design but that VCAA focuses on but it is really important that in addition to simply focussing on notes and what you need to know you develop good critical thinking skills to answer the difficult questions. Usually, the questions in Biology (and really any subject) that students find hard are the ones that don't solely rely on knowledge but actual application and making connections and extensions of one's knowledge in the exam.

[therese07]

Hi there!

I didn't do VCE (I did HSC!), but the way I would set my notes and how much I wrote my notes would be based on the verbs given on each dot points. I don't know if this is similar to HSC, but with each dot point, there was always a verb at the start. For example, the HSC Biology dot points for module 6 would be "Evaluate the effects of mutation, gene flow and genetic drift on the gene pool of populations". In this dot point, the verb is evaluate, which means "Make a judgement based on criteria; determine the value of". In other words, evaluate is to explain both the positive and the negative aspects of the subject, and give an overall judgement. Because 'evaluate' is a high order term (high order terms can include assess, synthesise, examine etc), this means you would need more extensive notes because questions revolving around this dot point, could have a higher mark allocation (5-8 markers). In contrast, low order terms such as outline, identify and describe would not require as much notes written since a basic understanding is required and questions revolving around these low order terms could be 2-4 markers.

To add on what the others say, do as many past paper questions as possible consistently. Even if you're learning the start of the module..do questions! By keeping this as a habit, you are able to consistently practice your own application of your own knowledge and what you can recall. Because you are also marking your practice questions, you are able to seeing what you should or shouldn't add for later times when you encounter similar questions or even do the same question. As a result, you are able to write concise and logical response whilst also maximising your marks. You familiarise your understanding of the topic you are testing, thus, you begin to shorten and summarise your own notes! And, as you near your own VCE Exams, you will have limited amount of pages to revise over because you have done past paper questions consistently throughout the year

Hope this helps!

[homeworkisapotato]

Thank you all so much for your advice! My school hasn't given out our textbook yet as we are trialling Edrolo's textbook and they haven't updated the chapter pdfs on the website with their videos. How do I learn the content without our school textbook?

[Bri MT]

Thank you all so much for your advice! My school hasn't given out our textbook yet as we are trialling Edrolo's textbook and they haven't updated the chapter pdfs on the website with their videos. How do I learn the content without our school textbook?

There's lots of bio info in the free notes section which you might be able to learn from

You could also look up videos etc but be wary of studying content outside the study design

[Sine]

Thank you all so much for your advice! My school hasn't given out our textbook yet as we are trialling Edrolo's textbook and they haven't updated the chapter pdfs on the website with their videos. How do I learn the content without our school textbook?

It is definitely a challenge to try to study a vce subject without guidance. Even with the school textbook, it is often difficult to work out what exactly is required to learn. As above you could use the AN notes section to see what sort of stuff is taught and then go elsewhere to actually form an understanding of those topics (because, usually, notes don't really teach students). You could also buy a set of notes from a company such as ATAR Notes, connect education, A+ notes which usually include only stuff at the required level - again not using those summary notes to learn the course but to see what sort of level the vce subjects tests and how in-depth you understanding has to be.