Year 12 Makes Vocab Keychains

Vocabulary is such a big part of biology, it's almost like having to learn another language sometimes! 

Often in exam answers certain key-words have to be included, or students will have to understand a key word in a question to be able to answer! 

Our Tamaki College Specialist Classroom Teacher suggested taking a tactile approach to learning vocabulary, so I decided to get Year 12 biology to make their own vocabulary keychains.

First, students picked which vocabulary they would like to include on their keychain from these sheets:

Enzyme properties

Enzyme functions

Photosynthesis organelle structure - chloroplasts
Photosynthesis
Factors limiting photosynthesis
DNA replication

Then they cut them out, folded them, and whipped off down to the office to laminate them with Helen.

 When they came back students hole punched and attached each keyword and it's definition to a keychain.

Then we had 10 minutes SSR becoming familiar with their keychain, flipping back and forward between words and definitons.

Students can take them away and look at them over the weekend, or attach them to their keys and keep them until the real exams at the end of the year!

These are a more tactile version of the online vocab sets found in our 12BIO quizlet class :)

Year 12 Makes DNA

Year 12 Bio have been working like absolutely superstars towards their upcoming practice NCEA exam. We have finally covered all of the content (there was a LOT!) and now they are ready to revise and refresh.

On Monday and Tuesday we made lolly models of DNA, and then used them again to demonstrate DNA replication. It seemed to work quite well, and I hope the class enjoyed getting in there and making the models for themselves. 

We used liquorice as the 'sugar' part of the backbone, and added marshmallows as the 'phosphate' - that was the best that we could do for the backbone of the double helix! 

Then we added wine gums as the four bases, making sure to only pick 4 colours of wine gums and only pair them with their 'complimentary base pair.' 

Here's an example of the finished product. :) 

My next post will be some top tips for how to study and revise for exams, both online and off! 

Girls Rugby against Avondale

On Monday I drove the Tamaki College girls first XV to Avondale College, to play a hard-hitting, hard-fought game in the most atrocious weather I have stood in for a long time!

My feet were wet, my toes were numb, the rain was horizontal... I can't imagine how the girls were feeling running around on the field! 

They played with a lot of spirit and I loved their half-time cheer of "SISTERS!"but unfortunately this day the girls were not able to come away with the victory. 

I think my personal highlight of the match was seeing Ripeka chase down an Avondale player as she broke through the girls' line... the girl was sprinting towards the line, aiming to score under the post and Ripeka was thundering after her, catching up... it looked like there was no way to save the try, but Ripeka grabbed her shoulders and tackled her to the ground, twisting her in the tackle to hold the ball up and save the try! What a tackle!