Biology help please

Louiseh714

So I'm going into 6th and in 5 th I maintained a high c grade which isn't my best and my teacher said I can go up and haven't reached my full potential! Anybody have any advice or tips please

EoghanIRL

Louiseh714 wrote: »

So I'm going into 6th and in 5 th I maintained a high c grade which isn't my best and my teacher said I can go up and haven't reached my full potential! Anybody have any advice or tips please

Study?
Put time aside to learn the material piece by piece. Practice the exam papers = vital.

aimzLc2

Louiseh714 wrote: »

So I'm going into 6th and in 5 th I maintained a high c grade which isn't my best and my teacher said I can go up and haven't reached my full potential! Anybody have any advice or tips please

I took it chapter by chapter , once i learned a chapter i answered questions on it from every year in the exam papers. Group chapters together ,example the 5 plant chapters and tick off as you go.

keith16

Hi Louise,

Biology is one of those subjects that feels like it can be heavy going and it can be easy to get bogged down in it.

As Eoghan says above piece by piece is the key to overcoming this. Keep an A4 sheet with all the major themes listed on it (with perhaps some bullet points underneath breaking down the theme a little further).

This will help you keep track of your strong / weak themes.

Finally, use each class as a study session - by paying full attention in class and soaking up the information as it is delivered, it will make revision all the easier. I know that sounds a little obvious, but it can be easy to become bored during double Biology class after lunch on a Monday!

Peregrine

As Keith said, paying full attention in class is crucial for revision. I can't stress how important this is, especially for Biology.

Keith, funnily enough, I had double biology after lunch on Mondays last year :pac:

keith16

Nimrod 7 wrote: »

As Keith said, paying full attention in class is crucial for revision. I can't stress how important this is, especially for Biology.

Keith, funnily enough, I had double biology after lunch on Mondays last year :pac:

Didn't we all :pac:

My god, the absolute nothingness I would see outside the window while a teacher went on and on about the bloody nitrogen cycle! Having said that, of all the cycles, nitrogen was probably my favourite.

Sunny!!

Exam papers are essential for this subject you would be surprised how they keep repeating the same questions over and over.

Make sure you know ecology, genetics, and plants off by heart they make up a huge part of the exam paper up to 45% of the exam paper for the long questions alone.

I would recommend covering the whole course this is particularly important for the short questions.

Know your experiments really well and know them all. The marks in this part of the paper are gotten easy even at higher level.

Try and understand a concept rather than rote learning it sticks a lot better. The concepts in biology are not overly difficult really.


Constant work and revision are essential revising topics every couple of weeks. Biology requires a lot of work. Its not an 'easy' subject which people think but constant work really does pay off.

Good luck! I hope you'll enjoy biology as much as i did its a great subject!

Kez1

Got an A1 in my Biology, studying Medicine in Trinity now, and give biology grinds here's a few tips I give to all my students...

1) PRACTICE THE PAPERS TILL YOU KNOW THEM OFF BY HEART!!!! Use the examinations.ie website and print them (cos we all know you've scribbled the answers onto your book version and that's not helpful). PRINT THE MARKING SCHEMES! There is no point in doing the questions and not correcting them or waiting til the teacher gets around to it in class. Leading to my second point...

2) I've got news for you, you and only you can achieve your goals, don't expect your teacher/parent/friends/boyfriend/girlfriend to be pushing you and making you study, while it's helpful short-term, how will you fare come midterm or in college without someone pushing you? Be your own boss!

3) Bullet point your answers whenever you do a long question (and all other questions for that matter in Biology). Notice how the paper does NOT call the longer questions ''essay questions'' yet many students fall into the trap of writing too much! The more you write, the more mistakes you can make!

4) Guys the examiners correcting 100s of papers each day, they're not exactly in the best of moods eventhough they get paid for it, so don't make up your answers to humor them, write what you know!

5) Back to the marking schemes, know it as well as the alphabet. If you see a question that has 3 parts and is overall worth 27marks that means it's worth 9marks each right? WRONG. Unless each question seems equal then yes, but most of the time it's not. So get used to figuring out how many answers are needed.

6) The obvious part is study, I personally done this AFTER practicing questions, then I did more questions. If I got anything wrong I'd learn it and a few days later practice the questions again.

7) Even if you're doing higher level, the ordinary papers can be quite helpful for studying, sometimes the ordinary level questions are very specific which can be more challenging!

Good luck to you all, hope 6th year goes well for you.

oncex

Kez1 wrote: »

Even if you're doing higher level, the ordinary papers can be quite helpful for studying, sometimes the ordinary level questions are very specific which can be more challenging!

Cannot agree enough, still waiting on my results and think I got the A1 after only getting a C3 in the pre. Eat sleep and breath the papers, topic by topic. Make sure not to forget the ordinary papers as the others said. This years paper was far more challenging for most good students as it was very precise on small details and chapters which surprisingly comes up in ordinary papers.