How does your student "do" a biology text?

[Penguin]

I have a bio text selected.

I have a schedule.

 

Now what? :tongue_smilie:

 

How does your student "do" a biology text?

 

Take notes?

Answer the end of chapter assessment questions?

 

Both? Neither? Something else?

 

[regentrude]

Take notes on the reading.

Notes should be such that student can study from these notes for the test.

[Kathy G]

We take notes- in artistic form- lots of pictures drawn and labels etc.  Yes- chapter tests

[Greta Lea]

My ds takes notes while reading and then answers questions for each section of reading. His tests are all open *notes* tests.

[Luckymama]

My emerging plan for next fall when she'll do bio on a block schedule (her choice) so she can get to the preferred AP Environmental Science during the spring (again, her choice):

 

• readings, note-taking, and answering the book questions (using the macaw iBooks vesion) the day/night before

• discussion plus an activity or lab with me every day

• with 7 unit tests (ch 1-6, 7-10, etc) which I will write

[Penguin]

Luckymama, am I reading you correctly that she will do a full credit of bio in a semester?

 

(I am also using M-L,  and I will write my own tests.)

[LisaKinVA]

Read, take notes (outline form, usually -- underlining/starring important terms/vocabulary).  

Watch Lecture (if there is one), taking notes.

Answer questions (sometimes there are, sometimes there aren't)

Watch demonstration/do lab

Chapter tests, semester exams

 

 

 

[Mom22ns]

My kids read, watch supplementary videos, power points (these were really helpful with the MaCaw book), do related lab/labs, look through end of chapter reviews to make sure they didn't miss anything, then take the chapter test.

 

My kids are not much of note takers, but I do typically make them at least type up vocabulary or make quizlet vocabulary cards so they can study terms.

[Luckymama]

Luckymama, am I reading you correctly that she will do a full credit of bio in a semester?

 

(I am also using M-L, and I will write my own tests.)

Yep. She's had so much bio informally through Science Olympiad events that I think this will be successful. I'm planning on 10 hours a week, 16 labs (one a week, basically--though there are weeks w/o any and weeks with two), seven tests, hopefully culiminating in the SAT Bio (prob M) exam in January.

 

Bio is her least favorite science. Her favorites are environmental science, geology, and astronomy. She's excited to get bio out of the way to focus on more interesting topics ;)

[swimmermom3]

My ds is taking AP Biology through our public high school. It's definitely been a "learning experience." He started out by taking outline notes,which he's done for other classes, but for some reason, it doesn't work as well for him in biology. He prefers the study guides where he is answering specific questions and the backs of of the guides are usually covered in his detailed diagrams. When reviewing for a test, he'll go over the study guides, but will also check out PowerPoint presentations on the chapters and make up his own list of questions.

 

One thought he recently shared was that now if he were to take another AP science class, he would probably be much better at outlining the chapters after working with the study guides all year. The guides helped him learn to identify what information would be important. In hindsight, I should have worked on this more with him when we studied chemistry last year.

[Laura Corin]

When Calvin studied for IGCSE biology, we...... sat on the sofa together and read the text aloud.  We discussed it as we went along and did whatever experiments I could manage.  He would sit down to do the end of chapter questions, referring back to the text book and then we would discuss his answers.

 

When we got near to the end of the text book, I printed out past IGCSE papers.  I pulled out questions that referred to particular chapters and he would learn a section at at time (mostly just by reading it to himself) then do the exam question closed book.  We slowly built up to doing whole exam papers as we drew nearer to exam time.