since I scored pretty decently on bio last year I’m just wanting to give back to the community by giving some tips and tricks as well as rating the resources I picked up along the way.
RESOURCE RATINGS
(out of 5, based on how much I used them and if the notes/resource content was good)
!! NOTE: these ratings are based on my opinion and some resources that I liked may not be liked by others, or some resources I hated might be really helpful to someone else. If unsure about spending money on notes you might not use, maybe ask people in RL who have done the subject, or use your friends copy. If you want a resource but it’s too pricey, maybe chip in with your friends.!!
-TSFX Notes (These notes are really comprehensive, but I basically never touched them, and the lectures were not very helpful for me)
5/5 for good content but 0/5 for usage
-Biozone workbook (I really liked this, even though I didn’t use it nearly as much as I would have liked to… because I’m really lazy. Really useful before sacs or to recap content from class, as the questions are easy but in a good way)
3/5 for content (very brief notes + some irrelevant stuff) and 4/5 for usage
-Checkpoints (I didn’t end up buying because a former bio student told me that since it consists of VCAA exam questions it kinda ruins the exams. I’m really glad I never bought it, because doing practice exams in November I could still remember the answers to the few CP questions I did early in the year. The last thing you want is to be able to regurgitate an answer based on recognising the question from prior exposure. Although this is bound to happen with some basic questions, it can really hurt you on the final exam by reading and recognising questions incorrectly (I’ve done this on numerous occasions)!! However, if you know that you are not going to be doing a lot of practice exams near the end of the year, might as well do the checkpoint qs.)
No rate because I didn’t buy it
-Atarnotes (These notes are especially good if you are having trouble with a topic, since it uses basic language that is easily understood. However, I found it was missing some topics, or didn’t cover topics in depth)
3.5/5 for content and 4/5 for usage
-Heinemann Textbook (I didn’t buy it but leeched of my friends copy. Recommend having a textbook regardless of what company since their wording is very sophisticated and smooth, and that’s something you aim for in your answers. However, there’s so much extra (useless) content that it can be off-putting. The diagrams in the textbook were so pretty I stole them and pasted them in my notes)
4/5 for content and 3/5 for usage
-Notes taken in class/tutor (I really really recommend making your own notes!! This way you can reword the content in your own words and thus be more likely to remember it. When coming back to your own notes, its so much easier to revise from than other notes)
5/5 for content and 5/5 for usage
MY REGULAR STUDYING HABITS (AKA WHAT NOT TO DO)
On a week to week basis for bio I would mostly nothing, except pay attention in class and write brief dot points about the topic during class. I had bio tutoring on the weekend for an hour, and in this time, I would also be writing brief dot points from my tutor. Please do not procrastinate when you have heaps of free time like I did. Instead follow 5 steps I wish I had followed last year, so you can get a good score (with significantly less stress and way more sleep)
5 STEPS TO (BIO) SUCCESS
1) GET MOTIVATED
So, I’m pretty lazy and I love to procrastinate… but I really liked biology, so the easiest way for me to study for biology is to be interested in it. Sometimes while learning some content, I would search up stuff and read random article beyond the scope, just to respark my interest. It doesn’t matter why you are motivated to do bio (e.g. you don’t want to disappoint your family or you mum is going to kill you if you don’t do well), it just matters that you have the drive to do your best in the subject.
2) DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME BY
Imagine every minute you do nothing, lay around on bed or scroll mindlessly on Facebook you throw a dollar out of your own pocket. In an hour you lose $60, and if you only waste 1 hour per day in a school year (~200 days), you lose $12,000. I know this analogy is a bit of a push, but everyone values money so likewise time should be valued
A) DOING NOTHING
If you are bad at time management then make a schedule. Not the ones that have every hour of the day planned out, but maybe like a to-do list with what you want to achieve that day. Have daily/weekly goals like going for a run, reading a book or spending time with family. Try to minimise the time you spend doing nothing. This way when you sit down to study, you are actually focused. If all you do is sleep, eat and study, it’s really easy to burn out. If you can’t stop doing nothing, then set rewards for yourself eg. If I can stick to schedule for 2 weeks I will treat myself to _____. Being productive in itself is a reward as it makes you happy and more productive compared to doing nothing which makes you lazy, continuing the cycle of doing nothing. Balance out your lifestyle so you are healthy, physically (exercise a little), socially (talk to your friends) and mentally. This way you are in the best state to do your best in whatever you want to.
B) STUDYING UNNECESSARILY
Seriously, if you have learnt a topic, revised it, completed all the book questions on it, taught it to your friend and you still sit down to study it, take a step back and think about if this is studying smart. You can study above and beyond, but if you are studying just for the sake of it, because you are a student and this is your life DON’T. This is another easy way to burn out. If you are confident that you have understood a concept, then leave it and move on. It won’t help you to dwell on it and waste your precious time. If you really want to study maybe move ahead. As well as this, if you aren’t in the mood to study, feeling sleepy or sick, then DON’T. When you aren’t in the mood to study, your mind will naturally drift away from the work and your productivity levels will hit rock bottom. Don’t force yourself to do work at that time, and maybe relax by watching a new tv series. Later on, when you return to the work because you want to do work, you will naturally use time effectively. When you are sleepy, sleep and when you are sick, do every cold curing trick (if it’s a cold) so you can get better and then study instead of pushing yourself to the limit at the expense of your health.
3) UNDERSTANDING > MEMORISING
When learning something, it seems really easy to memorise the content rather than understand it. Bio is a content heavy subject where you can get away with memorising your content. However please make an effort to understand the concept you are learning. Initially when I found a concept difficult, I would just memorise it and move on. This is a terrible idea, because if the concept was needed during a sac and the question wasn’t directly asking for it, I would have no idea what the answer was. I had memorised the content needed to answer the question but since I lacked the understanding, I couldn’t answer. However, if I had made an attempt to understand the concept, then it would be much easier to apply my knowledge. Last year’s exam clearly favoured understanding over rote learned content, thus it is well worth your time to understand each and every concept. Understanding the content is what I call studying smart. Why? At the end of the year when everyone will be trying cram content they never understood, you can breeze through the concepts. Understanding the concepts obviously takes effort and time than just memorising, but it’s worth it because all you need to then do is flick through your notes to retrieve your knowledge. Pre-exam time, those who depended on memorising will struggle as the content might as well be new to them. Time is crucial before your bio exam, so the more time you save on content, the more time you have to do practice exams to make sure you are well prepared for the real thing.
4) ASK QUESTIONS
After you have properly understood the content, you have to ask questions! If I didn’t understand something at tutor then I would go ask my school teacher and vice versa. In this process, you can find out the gaps in your knowledge and patch it up. If you keep getting gaps in your knowledge then you won’t be able to apply the content properly. You can ask questions out of the scope, based on pure interest, it doesn’t matter. What’s important is that you are thinking about the content. The more questions you ask, the more solid your knowledge becomes. Reading solely from the notes won’t ever be enough. You can misunderstand a concept and unless you ask questions, you will always be wrong. Thus, it is important to ask questions, and discuss with others so you clear up any confusion that you may have about anything.
5) PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT
So, near the end of the year after you have recalled your content easy breezily, it’s time to do some practice exams. NO! As soon as you finish unit 3, start doing unit 3 exams. This is the best form of revision since as long as you apply your unit 3 knowledge, you will continue to remember it. Have a goal (eg. do 1 unit 3 exam per week) When you finish unit 4 content you can do some unit 4 exams, but it is most important to do full length unit ¾ exams. I would say it’s about how many exams you do whole-heartedly rather than how many exams you do, thus 20-25 exams are a good amount. You can do much less or much more. Once you feel like you have done enough, don’t push yourself to do more. I completed a hell of a lot of practice exams, but I can say that beyond a certain number doing the exams don’t really help, so focus more on doing each exam and perfecting your understanding. Don’t do what I did and reach for an arbitrary goal of doing XX number of exams, when I could have stopped at 20 exams.
THE END
JKS there is still
SACS
This is where the magic happens! No kidding because I had to make up for the lack of studying within a relatively short period. In hindsight, it would have been much better to study regularly rather than cram but I am a whole lot more productive when cramming. Since these are sacs, I would recommend at least a week to study well for it
SEVEN DAYS to SACcess!
DAY 1-2- Read school/tutor/Heinemann notes on the particular topics on the sac and then make my own notes according to study design. I stole any phrases I liked and made it super simple to read. Then I would make drawings/diagrams on paper summarising the topics in a designated notes book. Depending on how many topics the sac covered it may take 2-5 days to cover all the content. (Highly recommend writing down notes, but typing is fine) Across all 7 days ask your teacher questions. You can write them down on a notepad and ask in person, or email your teacher them.
DAY 3-Find relevant questions and start doing them immediately. When you get a question wrong, read the answers, go understand the concepts behind it and then write it down in a book, type it up or do something so that you can access your mistakes closer to the sac. Biozone asks pretty basic questions that will get you into the groove of things, so start off with that or maybe even textbook questions. There are also topic tests from companies which you can also do (I really liked Lisachem and Neap). As you are now familiar with content and doing questions, if any of your classmates need help, help them! Teaching others is the best way to consolidate your own knowledge. As well as this, if anything went wrong in your understanding, others can help you.
DAY 4-5-Look at the study design thoroughly and try to understand what kind of questions they can ask you based of the key knowledge. Then write these questions down and collate them with the incorrect questions you have accumulated over the last few days. I make them in to a test style then did them under timed conditions. Generally timing is 1 mark per minute. This is where having a tutor is helpful, and you can ask them to mark, since they are more experienced. You could even have a study group where you guys collate questions.
DAY 6-7- Continue doing questions but also read your notes, and whenever you feel like there is something missing from your notes consult the internet. (make sure to use reputable sources and verify with your teacher, since the vce bio scope is quite small). Make a mistakes book, and find your common errors
SAC DAY- Generally on sac day it’s good to chill and not stress yourself out by talking to others about the sac, or about how much/little they’ve studied. Bring a highlighter so you read questions easily. Don’t be overconfident or too nervous walking into sac, just be chill and remind yourself that you studied so you should be able to kill it.
General Bio Tips
-KEY WORDS- bio is all about key words. If you miss the key word, then you miss the mark. At the end of the day, even if your understanding is solid, and your answer is correct, teachers and examiners will be hesitant to give you marks. At the beginning, it will be hard to figure out what is the particular phrase or word that gives you the mark in the question, but as you do more questions and make your own questions, it will be easier to find out what they are.
-DIRECTIVE TERMS-I’ve attached a directive terms list, which can help you understand what the question wants you to do. Make sure you read question properly before attempting it. Early in the year, I found it good to plan a response especially if it was 3 marks or more, or a comparison statement. Eg(this is a random example I just thought of so don’t judge) . If the question was; Distinguish birds from bees (2 marks) I would make a small table such as this,
birds- bones, bees- no bones, exoskeleton
“Birds have bones as opposed to bees which have an exoskeleton for body structural support.”
Notice how I do not mention how they both fly because it is not relevant. Make sure you stay on track of what is needed by planning your answer. Later on, in the year, this will come to you naturally.
If the question was, Outlines one similarity between birds and bees?
Then you could answer; Both birds and bees have wings. You could say they both fly as a result of having wings but it’s a riskier answer as penguins are a bird species and cannot fly. If you know your answer/statement is incorrect or has exceptions try to play it safe. Keep in mind that less is more, as the more you write, the greater the chance of you writing something that incorrect. If you write something contradictory, and a portion of the answer was correct then you receive no marks. Only time I would advocate for waffling on in an answer, is when you have completed all other questions (in sac/exam) and have no idea as to what the question is asking for.
-OUT OF SCOPE OUT OF MIND-steer clear of stuff that’s out of scope. It’s fine for purely interest, but most of the time it can negatively impact your vce bio understanding. A quick google search shows that most of the set knowledge learnt in vce bio has exceptions or just isn’t very correct. Stick to the study design and read each dotpoint carefully to see what they want you to know. Sometimes they even tell you what not to know, so pay attention and don’t waste time and effort learning content that is unneeded and can confuse you
-DOING IRRELEVANT QUESTIONS obviously doing irrelevant questions from past study designs won’t really help you. However, when doing practice exams, you will inevitably come across these. It’s fine to cross them out and continue, but I always attempted the VCAA ones. WHY? Even if you have no idea what the answer could be, just use the concepts that you have learnt throughout the year, and apply them to the question. If I got the question right; good for me, if I got it wrong; then I would check the answer to see if I could have possibly gotten it right. By doing these questions I was building a skill that is really useful Questions out of the current scope throw you into to unfamiliar territory, where you have to use common sense, context and the bio concepts rather than actual content.
At the end of the day, no matter how much you study for your sac or exam, there can still be one question that throws you off. Even if you don’t understand the question, you can make up an answer and hopefully still get a mark out of it. By doing questions that which may not be related to your content, you can still build an useful skill
-FIND HOW YOU STUDY BEST-just because your friend spends ages writing super pretty notes and gets good marks, doesn’t mean that you do. Likewise, my studying style will not necessarily suit you. Instead take bits and pieces of how I studied that you think that will help you study. If you are a visual learner, draw diagrams connecting everything (really good for big interconnected topic of immunity). Maybe note taking is useless for you, but doing questions really helps you. Whatever your style, make sure it means that you are regularly and cram as little as possible.
-NOTE DOWN ALL THE QUESTIONS YOU DID WRONG-maybe in a notebook, or type it up like a test. I did this in the second half of the year and ended up with a 'practice exam, which I can't attach bc its too big, but pm me if you are interested.
-DEALING WITH MARKS/RESULTS- you studied your best but you aren’t happy at all with your marks/results. If you feel like you got lower than you deserve, just try harder the next time, don’t beat yourself up about it (it doesn’t help). The way I felt great about my marks/results in any subject is to have my expectations low, then when I got my results back I would be so happy! AIM HIGH AND EXPECT LESS; this way you will always feel happy with your scores. Try not to compare yourself to your peers, just make sure throughout the year you can feel yourself improving. I know people who will sulk about 99% but I would be grateful to get 80%. I got a 49 this year, and I’m really happy with my score. I know people who sulk about not getting 50, but it’s not worth sulking about something that’s already done. No matter what you get, I hope you are happy with it bc that’s what’s really important!
(shameless self promo, tutoring this year as well have some notes which are pretty to look at so pm if interested)
BEST OF LUCK FOR BIO!!!
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