- What aspect of this course did you enjoy the most? Why?
I have always had a high liking for anything to do with the human body. When going over bacteria in comparison to viruses, learning about how the human body defends against them, a refresher on protein synthesis, and the DNA replication fork had my most attention and made me smile the whole time. Although, the plant, squid, and hydra labs were second to having my most attention, and I enjoyed them greatly.
2. What aspects of this course did you not enjoy? Why?
There was no true unit that I did not enjoy. The main thing that I did not enjoy due to it making me feel discouraged was whenever drawings needed to be done. I feel as though my creativity and skills have little to no place in fine arts, making me coming to a blank when needing to trace things, especially when needing to draw it without already a clear image of the end result.
3. Were there any topics or activities that you are interested in that were not covered in this course? If yes, explain.
My main motivation for joining Biology 11 was for the human body related units. So I was hoping to learn more in-depth about the respiratory, cardiovascular, and lymphatic systems; along with learning about the muscular, digestive, and nervous systems, rather than learning about the biology of different animals, plants, and eras.
4. What skills did you improve on during this course? e.g. studying, time management, microscopes, labwork, critical thinking, etc.
Before needing to read the textbook, I was an extremely slow reader who would feel sleepy just after reading around 4 pages. Now, I am able to read around 10 pages, memorize that set of pages completely within an hour, and read around 20 pages without feeling sleepy. I may not know what changed, but I am happy as I feel like it will do me a world of good in grade 12 and especially university. In the lab, I made a handful of silly mistakes with the focus, stage height, and where the specimen was when using microscopes. I feel a lot more confident in being able to use microscopes, being able to study an animal by dissecting it, and being able to remember larger amounts of information for short periods.
5. Do you have any recommendations for how this course was taught?
Aside from making the students draw (labelling was fine), and possibly allowing for extra time to submit assignments instead of having it due the next day, which would be beneficial, I feel like everything else was well organized and expectations were managed well.
6. If you had the chance to do this again, is there anything you would do differently?
One of the things that made me spend the most time was doing any sort of diagrams. Not the labelling part, but drawing it out. At first, I wanted to print it out, which I did sometimes, but when it came to labs, since the diagrams needed to be accurate to what was seem either outside when identifying plants, or when seeing a bacteria or fern through a microscope, I was not able to find pictures off the internet to match it, and able to draw it to scale within the space given to label, which ended up in minus marks. If I could go back, I would disregard the fact it may not look accurate, and trace the closest I can find to it, instead of trying to make the drawings look perfect.
7. Which science courses are you taking next year?
Physics 12, Anatomy and Physiology 12, and Chemistry 12
