Final Blog Update

Honors biology has probably been the most stressful class I have had in my high-school career so far. Its almost over and this last six weeks has most likely been the most stressful out of any other six week grading period. It might have been because it's when we had our lab practical which was extremely difficult considering that it was a college level test and we are only sophomores. Also our final exam for the entire class falls into this grading period. I have learned that to be a college level student which is what I strive to be in the future, you have to have a great work ethic and time management. I think that my work ethic is good but it can improve, and I really need to improve on my time management skills. The most difficult part of this class was meeting every specific need that was asked of us from Mr. Vogler, because he has a set way of doing things and stretching your brain to make you think. It is extremely difficult at times. Even though the class hasn't been the easiest we had some pretty good times together. I really enjoyed doing the labs, especially the dissecting ones because hearing everyone's reactions to all of it was pretty funny. I also enjoyed the projects even though having two at a time made it seem more stressful I think every one did a great job on almost every project. That is if it didn't have a time limit on it. I have learned from the timed projects that most of us honors kids like to talk a lot, and that we really need to work on preparing for timed things because there are going to be real life situations like that for some of us in the near future and if you exceed the time limit or don't do what you're asked from it you will probably be asked to leave. I think the greatest resource I have to take away from this class is my blog because I know I will have to take a biology class in college that will be pretty similar to this class and if I get stuck or need a reminder of what we are learning about I know I can turn to this to give me a headstart on where I need to look or give me the exact answer I'm looking for. I think this class was a great experience just the way it was I don't think I would change a thing if I were teaching it but I do feel sorry for the next honors class because supposedly their class will have all projects and labs which most likely means more lab practicals. I think this class really prepares you for what is to come in all the classes ahead and tells you exactly what you need to work on personally as a student when given tasks to complete. Overall I am satisfied with my grades even though I know I should have strived harder to receive a better grade because there is always more that you can do. I hope the EOC is not more difficult than this class because I'm not fully prepared yet, but hopefully by the time it comes I will be more than ready. I had a great time in this class but I am more than ready for it to be over and relieve some of this stress.

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here is the link to my Biology website Allie and Paige

Journal Entry Week 15

This week in biology we had our lab practical which was very stressful and I'm pretty sure everyone didn't do to good on it. It was not fun to prepare for but I do think that it is a good way to prepare us for the future, especially biology in college. They require that you do lab practicals with all the labs I believe and expect way more from it than what we had to do and probably less time and it's highly unlikely that they let you go around the labs again after you have went through all of them once. From the experiences of these labs I have realized that you have to find intestines and bodily fluids interesting to want to pursue becoming a surgeon or an ambulance worker. I do not want to be either of these things I know now even though I'm not sure entirely what I want to do yet. I feel that it's good to have these experiences now though so that you are more likely to figure out what your likes and dislikes are. I hope there are more opportunities like this in my future before I graduate so that I will have a better understanding of what I want to do.

Journal Entry Week 14

This week in biology we presented our collection projects, well most of us did. We are close to the end of school and learning more about the insides of animals. Our lab practical is coming up, it is very nerve wracking but I think this will truly prepare us for a college biology class. I'm not to excited about dissecting pigs especially baby ones but I thought dissecting the worms and frogs would be much worse than they actually were. Those were very informative and interesting I had no idea what either of those looked like on the inside and I have never seen an earth worm as long as the one we dissected. The inside of the girl frog made me not want to eat oodles of noodles again, the egg sack looked exactly like them because our frog didn't have any eggs in it. I'll be glad when all of this dissecting is over with.

Journal Entry Week 13

Field Study:
Today I went to two different river spots and some hillsides to find lots of wildflowers. There were some on the river banks but I found the most on the ground near the river not necessarily on the banks. I also found some on the side of the road and on hillsides near the road. I was very successful in my findings, I found at least 20. It was a struggle to find the exact names of all the flowers I found as you can see below before I stared researching extremely hard there were some that I couldn't find the name of. I found a variety of flowers especially in color there were many colors. But also in size there were some flowers that I could barely hold onto because they were so small. I can't believe how many wildflowers are just in this small town I can't imagine how many there are in the world. Here are a few examples of the flowers I found:

Buttercup- Ranunculus repens
Purple Deadnettle- Lamium purpureum
Tall yellow flower with little narrow leaves petal groups are hard to tell but it looks like groups of three so I would guess that it's a monocot.
Prairie Phlox- Phlox pilosa
Tall yellow flower with many strands branching out holding flowers on each end, fat net like leaves on bottom of stem, groups of four to five petals on each strand which leads me to believe it is a diocot.

Journal Entry Week 12

This week in biology we started our press conferences and they went pretty well even though my group still hasn't presented yet. We also started our unit dealing with biodiversity I believe, we also started our collection project which is really interesting to me. I'm collecting wild flowers, here are some that I found on Friday:
Wild Onion - Allium
Wild Strawberry - Fragaria vesca
Dandelion - Taraxacum
Violets - Viola reichenbachiana
Bluets- Houstonia caerulea
Wild grape - Vitis
Blackberry - Rubus fruticosus
Redbud - Cercis canadensis
Dogwood - Cornus
Our class had a great experience outside and these are only a few of the flowers I found that day. Having Mr.Vogler and Mr.Thomas as resources walking with us and being able to tell us exactly what things were was extremely helpful. To find these wildflowers we walked around in the field behind the Lyon's club and traveled trails that led us to great results. Even walking down the road back to the School I found lots of wildflowers near the baseball field and up behind them. Some were in the grass and some were on trees, their own branches, even in the ground. There were even a few of them right on school property and with the help of Mr. Vogler and some internet research I was able to find out the names and the scientific names of the ones that I found.

Journal Entry Week 11

This week in biology we used Study Island to study for our unit three exam, which was helpful but i still didn't do as well as I had hoped. We have our presidential press conference next week and I'm a little nervous but I think our group will do fine.  I haven't really grasped why we are doing this project but I'm sure it will teach us a very valuable life lesson, like every project we do. We are vastly approaching our last six weeks of school, I can't decide if that is a good thing or not, because that means it is getting closer to E.O.C. week. This week was more laid back because almost my whole class went to Merle Fest which meant that no one wanted to do anything. But we did learn some about the new unit we will be starting next week and it is suppose to be the most interesting unit of the semester. Not that I'm too excited about it though because we have to dissect animals and I don't do very good with intestines.

Journal Entry Week 10

This week in biology we had a short week but we still managed to learn lots of stuff. The most interesting thing that we are learning about now is 2045, I find it hard to believe that we will be so technologically savvy that we will be able to physically move our conscious into avatars or robots. In a way I think it's really interesting and seems fun to think about being a robot but then again why would you want to be a robot? All I have ever seen or ever been taught is that robots have no feelings no hearts or anything. Who knows what will happen with these robots though, i guess we will be finding out soon though because their project is already 85% complete. I think the Transcendence movie will be similar to 2045 in some ways like having the conscious moved into another technological device, but I also think they will contrast because in the movie i think that they are only put into computers but in 2045 you are able to move around. I also think that they will be similar in that they will take over the world, and that only the rich people will get them. Maybe eventually you will be able to switch avatars and that's how the "less fortunate" people will be able to use one, but i will never know until i experience it.

Journal Entry Week 9

This week in biology we have studied DNA fingerprinting and got to do an activity online using DNA fingerprinting, it was pretty interesting because it took us through all the steps needed to give a DNA fingerprint. I am considering forensics as a career path so experiencing a simulation of what would happen was very helpful. We also had our midterm this week, everyone has been stressing all week about it but I did better than I had thought I would. We are getting ready to get into all the crazy biotechnology things which cause lots of controversy and debates. In a video we watched it explained how in the future we will be able to put our personalities and brains into avatars and live "forever" that was pretty creepy. It has been a fun and interesting week.

Journal Entry Week 8

This week in biology everyone presented their projects on diseases directed towards fourth graders. I thought that Luke and I did a pretty good job with this but it was very difficult to stay under the ten minute time limit, I'm not sure that anyone actually stayed under it. Our projects did teach a very important lesson though, the reading level that is most easily comprehended around the would is fourth grade reading level. So that would be the target audience you want to talk to, even though it is difficult to do that I think it taught us that things won't come easy and that time management is key because fourth graders do not have long attention spans which means that everyone on that reading level is most likely at the same place. Also in biology we are working with figuring out off springs blood types with the blood types of the parents that are given, and we have to figure out who the dad could not be using blood types because it won't show you who the dad is. It was difficult to understand at first but it is getting much easier, just as the punnett squares and x linked things are becoming easier to understand.

Journal Entry Week 7

This week in biology we have gotten the concept for monosaccharides down pretty easily I think, but now we are moving to disaccharides and they are harder to comprehend. Especially when making a punnett square because instead of four possibilities there are now sixteen and finding the possibilities for the parents even before the children is tricky because there are four letters in each parent. We have had two snow days this week which have been great but now we don't have a spring break, except for "good Friday" and "good Monday". Also we have been doing StudyIsland some this week, and on Tuesday we have to present our projects on diseases. Luke and I have Huntington's disease, I'm a little nervous but I think we have this one.

Journal Entry Week 6

This week in biology we learned about DNA and the process of protein synthesis. It is a very interesting subject to talk about, but I do think that this will be a difficult six weeks. Attendance will be necessary! It is a process of steps and if you miss one step you will be behind for the rest of the process. I think converting DNA into mRNA and tRNA is fun and is not as difficult as I thought it would be and I'm excited to see what will be next, I know it won't be easy but at least it will be interesting.

Journal Entry Week 5

This week in biology we had a lab on mitosis and got to look at onion root tips to see all of the processes. It was pretty interesting and looked just like it did in the pictures, I thought that was a little unusual because most of the time it's the exact opposite to me. We also had our second unit test and I did much better than last time, even though I would still like to raise my score some more. It was a productive week and a great way to end the grading period, because now I have an A.

Journal Entry Week 4

This week in biology we watched Jurassic Park and did a webquest on it, it was a pretty interesting movie and it does connect with DNA and other things that we are studying right now. It also shows all of the things that could possibly go wrong when creating dinosaurs. I believe that if we were to be able to do this at some point that it would become a reality. I don't think that will ever be possible though because in the movie when they make the DNA strands for the dinosaurs they fill any gaps with frog DNA. We all know that it would not be possible to do that, and that finding dinosaur DNA, an egg to hold the dinosaur until it hatched, and other major things needed to create one would be nearly impossible to find.

Journal Entry Week 3

This week in biology we had a test about the organelles and all of their different functions. Then we did a lab using the microscopes to look at onion cells, cilantro cells, and for practice before we looked at those cells Jade and I got to look at a larvae on a mammal muscle. It was pretty cool, and it was interesting to learn how to use a microscope since I haven't touched one since 7th grade.. It was also neat to realize what you're looking at and what to look for in cells when looking through a microscope. It was a productive week and I feel like I have learned more about what cells look like.

Journal Entry Week 2

This week in biology we had a unit test, that I thought I was going to make a 100% on but sadly no. The week has gotten better though! Alex and I presented our cell project and it went great! We also did a lab today finishing up the previous lab including the chicken liver. It was very gross but interesting and we got to watch the reactions happen in different substances. All in all it was a very successful and a great week.

Journal Entry Week 1

In Biology we learned about the four major types of organic compounds. Which are Carbohydrates, Proteins, Lipids, and Nucleic Acids. I remember watching a video about it but I don't remember much about it, I like to do more hands on things and writing it down multiple times. Yes it is very unusual but it's how I learn things. Such as the project that we did on the organic compounds, my partner was Alex and we did Carbohydrates. Personally my favorite, i learned a lot about them, such as they are made up of Carbon Hydrogen and Oxygen and that they are the main source of energy that our bodies receive. There are simple sugars and complex sugars. I also learned what the glucose molecule looks like. It took a while for me to completely understand each of the four major organic compounds, and I still have lots to learn about them, but as of now I can understand most of what is needed to know about these compounds Here is a great video about photosynthesis

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