#katstudies

hey everyone! last year I made a post on how I take notes in general, which you can check out here, but I just wanted to update it a bit since my science course is more specific this semester!

**just pointing out that everything I do works for me but may not for you which is completely fine :)**

1. travel notes

as an ib hl bio student, the website bioninja is a godsend! not only does it include all the information necessary, it also lists the course/curriculum expectations and has some really cool pictures, animations and funky pneumonic devices to help with memory!! I usually start taking notes from this website a 1-2 days before my tests because as a visual/linguistic learner, I find that this is extremely effective in that I can retain the information quickly and easily

anyway, my travel notes consist of simple notetaking but in a really small font size so that I can fit as much info onto one page as possible! I usually fold the piece of paper in half and use two columns. I call them travel notes because before, when I used this method for other subjects, my notes would end up being 1-2 pages or less, which made them easy to carry around with me. however, that is no longer the case with this course!! some of my travel notes have 5 pages!!

materials that I use:

scrap paper (good on one side)

dark blue ballpoint pen for titles and subtitles

any light blue pen (I think the one I’m using is from the dollar store) for normal text

2. this method created by the lovely @studywithmariana !

I found this method to be extremely helpful when taking notes from my textbook! I use pages (the equivalent of word but on macs) to type these notes using the same/similar format as shown in her video and tbh it just looks so sleek!! I organize each file by section in the unit and print all pages double sided to not waste too much paper. now you may be wondering what I do with the pictures I come across on bioninja and the answer is that I copy and paste them into these notes!! and finally, with the pictures and the notes printed, I usually go through it with a pen to correct typos or make comments on the side.

materials that I use:

device to type with

light blue gel ink pen (muji 0.5)

3. watching a bunch of videos

like I mentioned, I am a visual/linguistic learner which means that I also learn quickly when I can see different processes or am presented with information in a visual manner!! I have found that these two channels (1, 2) are extremely helpful!!

the first channel linked is similar to bioninja, in that all the information is broken down into sections outlined by the ib curriculum. this makes it a lot easier when you are trying to retain a specific piece of information because you don’t need to comb through a million videos to find it!! it helps that there are different playlists as well that are divided by units.

the second channel is one that everyone knows and that I have talked about frequently!! the amazing animations presented combined with Hank’s voice and humour make all videos entertaining and interesting!! however, I do find that sometimes the information does not belong in the curriculum or I am not finding what I need. regardless, I usually watch these videos the night before my test or during my lunch break to quickly refresh myself on a couple of concepts.

4. (re)doing questions and activities

I recently went through a unit about genetics where I had to deal with blood types and punnett squares which became quite difficult when more complex concepts (like linked genes and recombination) were introduced!! in order to master this, I kept redoing the questions I got in class as well as the activities I found in my other textbook (biozone).

5. going through the curriculum expectations

the last thing that I usually do is go through a list of the expectations and mentally check off whether I have met them or not. my teacher made a pdf of our curriculum available so I printed it out and put it in a binder! (I also store my textbook notes right after the same unit in the binder) while viewing the youtube videos and taking notes from bioninja ensure that I have met all the expectations, I just do this to make sure there’s nothing that I missed and nothing that I am not confident in!!

and that’s it for how I study for biology!! I hope this was helpful to some of you and that maybe you’ll implement some of these methods in your own studying :) I hope y’all have an amazing day <3