If you only check out two of these, make sure it is the first and last ones!
By now, students should be well immersed in study for the Unit 3 exam in less than two weeks time. It is essential to create a study timetable that allows time for school, work, sport and study for each subject. Make sure you understand the key terms and definitions and can apply the various concepts included in “Biological Macromolecules” and “Detecting and Responding“.
Many students find that creating Flashcards helps them to remember key terms and concepts. You can do this online at Flashcardsdb and Quizlet and use the cards for revision.
Another great way to study concepts is to create concept maps, such as these hand-drawn ones at this site. You can also create concept maps online using FreeMind, Inspiration or Bubbl.us.
Quiz Revolution (previously called My Studiyo) is another online tool you can use for exam revision. Use this site to create multiple choice questions, with or without images, to test student knowledge.
Before your examination, make sure you:
The materials you should take into the examination room with you include:
Tips for during the examination
Using your reading time: One strategy that works for many students during the 15 minutes of reading time is to:
Once writing time begins, try to stay calm. You might like to start with a question that you feel is straightforward to answer. Use your highlighter to identify the ‘action words’ (such as name/nominate, describe, outline) to help keep you on-track as you respond to each question.
Students are warned against listing or describing more examples than asked for in a particular question, if you think of a better quality response than you first wrote, it is recommended that you clearly identify (by highlighting, underlining or circling) the examples you wish the examiner to assess.
If you find yourself writing much more than the lines and space provide for in a particular question, then it is possible that you are writing too much and you should consider using dot points. It is important that you allow yourself sufficient time. Attempt all questions, even if you are not entirely confident of your answers – examiners cannot award marks to empty spaces.
(This post was adapted from an article by Hayley Bridgewood and Gerry Healy, VCE Examiners).
If you suffer from allergies, you may be familiar with the image above. This person is having a ‘skin prick’ or ‘scratch’ test, in which a tiny drop of the possible allergen is pricked into the skin and the reaction measured. Allergens can be a wide variety of substances, from pollens and dust mite faeces to eggs, milk and nuts. Up to 40 different substances can be tested at once.
This is the link to our Google Presentation on the Immune System. I have allocated one slide with a topic for each pair of students. You can add another slide if you need to, but just a few brief dot points under the heading will be sufficient.
More sites for revision of Unit 3: Area of Study 2:
Illustration by David S. Goodsell, the Scripps Research Institute
This amazing watercolour painting shows an entire Mycoplasma mycoides cell, a bacterium that causes lung disease in cows, is painted with a brilliant green membrane that brings grass to mind. Inside, bright yellow DNA curls next to protein-builders in purple and blue. In life, this bacterium is about 250 nanometres in diameter. Click on the link to identify the membrane proteins, enzymes and other protein synthesis organelles. How beautiful is this?!
“The growth and development of a plant are influenced by genetic factors, external environmental factors, and chemical hormones inside the plant. Plants respond to many environmental factors such as light, gravity, water, inorganic nutrients, and temperature.” ~ Biology Online ~ Growth and Plant Hormones.
How does a seed ‘know’ when to germinate? How does a tree ‘know’ when to start changing leaf colour and drop it’s leaves for winter? How does a plant ‘know’ which direction to grow leaves and roots and where the light is? How does a plant ‘know’ when to produce flowers and what colour they should be? Instead of having a brain, central nervous system and endocrine system that co-ordinate communication, every plant cell can produce hormones (growth substances) that are transported throughout the plant via diffusion from cell to cell and through the xylem and phloem. (How mobile are plant hormones?).
Botanists recognize five major groups of hormones:
Although plants usually appear not to move, time-lapse photography shows that plants do, in fact, move and sometimes quite quickly. There are different types of movement, tropisms and nastic movements:
Draw up a table with three columns, with each of the key concepts above in the first column, a definition in the second column and an example in the third column. You can get your information from these resources:
Use digital tools to create a labelled image showing the different plant hormones, where they act (leaves, stems, roots, fruits, flowers etc) and what they do. Copy and paste a link to the image in the comment section below.
To survive, every multicelluar organism needs a way for cells in one part of the organism to ‘know’ what cells in another part of the organism are doing. If you think about the human body as a population, with each cell an individual person, the endocrine and nervous systems
Signalling molecules are chemical compounds that receive and transmit messages around an organism. These can include simple ‘neurotransmitters’ of the nervous system, or larger hormones (protein compounds) of the endocrine system.