Hi! My name is Emma Loaiza and I am a senior at Notre Dame. Here are a few fun facts about me:
1. I love animals and am considering studying animal science or taking the pre-vet track in college
2. I love hiking and being outside in general
3. I have an obsession with Ben & Jerry's Half Baked ice cream
Hello everyone! My name is Bianca Baldini and I am SO excited to share my AP Bio experiences with you guys! Just to get started, here's a picture of me and a few fun facts.
1. I love to play sports and be active. I always make it one of my first priorities to exercise every day.
2. I love science and biology. I want to go to medical school after I graduate college with a Biology major!
3. I love to lead others and make everyone feel welcome!
Hey! This is Rachel and I think science is pretty darn cool :)
Some facts about me is that...
1. I really love biology and want to become a researcher and work in the lab when I'm older.
2. I'm a cat person
3. I LOVE hiking!
My name is Emily Clarke.
A few things to know about me is that:
1. I'm passionate about the environment and preserving our earth which is why I'm taking this class
2. I love hiking and being in nature
3. I have an addiction to chewing gum
What an amazing year we have had as the 2016-2017 AP Bio Rockstars! We began the year so uncertain but by the second semester, we felt like we had conquered the class! However, the second semester came with even more tasks that we were challenged to push through. I thought that the first semester was crazy but the second semester was way more intense (and fun of course).
I want to stress how many projects we did this semester! I didn’t even realize how much we had accomplished until I started reflecting on the year. Here is a quick (very long) list of all the projects and challenges we mastered this semester.Most of these have more blog posts that you can check out on our individual blogs.
From Season 8 to Season 11, the AP Bio Rockstars have had an incredible semester! While I am one of the lucky few that will be able to see some of my Bio sisters next year, everyone in the class will have some incredible memories and knowledge to hold on to. I have loved this class, especially this semester, because of all the incredible projects we were able to do!
The juniors of the AP Bio class, Keira, Veronica, and myself, have been having an incredible two days while the seniors have been off on Senior Ditch Day and Senior Day of Reflection. The first day, the juniors celebrated a year of hard work by watching Gattaca, a science fiction movie about a world were human beings are genetically modified. The story follows a young man, Vincent, who dreamed of going to space but was not genetically altered and therefore had a heart condition. His condition made him a liability for insurance to the company so no one would hire him. Vincent finds a genetically 'perfect' man named Jerome who had gotten into an accident that caused him to be paralyzed from the waist down. Jerome gives Vincent blood, urine, hair samples, and skin so that Vincent can take the identity of Jerome to reach his dream of going to space. The movie was incredible and brought up many ethical issues of genetic modification and the fear that many people have over modification of children to be perfect. The juniors had so much fun watching this movie and eating our yummy snacks! Veronica was also kind enough to make us party hats!
The second Junior day, we went to the Public Works festival in Twin Pines Park to learn about water preservation, the fire department, and sorting trash. Water conservation is incredibly important in California because of the little rain that we get. At the festival, there was a diorama of the different water storage tanks around the city. The diorama helped to show how the water travels and where it is stored in the city. There was another station about water preservation that explained how to save rain water. Although many of the activities were created for kids, the small story books were aimed to help teach kids about the importance of saving water. They also had an example sink that had a clear water tank at the bottom to show how much water a person wastes if they leave their sink on for over a minute. There were firetrucks and firemen also at the fair to explain how to prevent wild fire and how you can help to keep your home safe from fires. Simply trimming back trees and keeping landscaping clear. Another skill the firemen were talking about was learning about how to use a fire extinguisher. I learned that is a skill everyone should learn in order to help fight small fires that may occur at home. People from the company Ecology had little recycling, compost, trash and electronic waste bins along with photographs of different trash items to teach us how to sort our waste. The game was really fun and allowed me to practice the important skill of sorting trash to help our environment. The last thing that we learned was how road signs were made. We were able to touch and see the process of how the signs that we need to drive safely are made so that we can see them in the night and in the day. The signs are layered and made with specific strips so that the signs can be easily read at night. The paint on the road also has a multi strip process that makes the paint have texture and be able to faintly glow at night to keep vehicles safely in the correct lanes. These two days have been extremely fun and informative because in AP Bio we really never stop learning! I hope the seniors had a safe and relaxing few days off!
All of us Juniors enjoying the fun!
Kids learning how to sort trash!
Watching how much water is wasted after just one minute!
In this AP Bio Rockstars round up, I am going to be telling you about the classes from May 7th to May 21st! In this time frame, we had a lot of fun, even if not everyone was present at all times! The class had some buggy visitors, we discussed Henrietta Lacks and her cells, we had a Wolbachia lab, and now we are working on our digital sites!
Although I was absent for the Arthropod visitors, my fellow classmates Natalie and Keira all had amazing blog posts about them that I will link at the bottom! Natalie blogged about a Lubber grasshopper which was the “sickest looking arthropod” she had seen all day! From her post, I learned that this little bugger is a vegetarian and that they bury their eggs in a sandy place for protection.
Lubber Grasshopper (photo from Natalie’s blog post)
Natalie also posted about a Madagascar Cockroach, which is apparently very important to the food web because these arthropods can eat anything, and are also a food supply for others.
Madagascar Cockroach (photo from Natalie’s blog post)
Keira is seen below holding a Giant African Millipede which is very fragile! This millipede can grow to have about 300 legs and live to be 20 years old! However, they only live this long assuming they do not get eaten by other organisms! I can tell you this much…if I saw this certain arthropod in my house (or anywhere for that matter), my two legs would carry me very far away and very fast.
Keira holding Giant African Millipede next to Veronica (photo from Keira’s blog post)
Keira also posted about her favorite creature of the day, the Whip Scorpion which has eight legs and one is super long which is known as the whip! From Keira’s post I learned that this arthropod has olfactory receptors thus allowing the organism to smell, in fact, they smell with their legs!
Whip Scorpion (photo from Keira’s blog post)
We also watched the Henrietta Lacks movie and blogged about it! Basically, Henrietta Lacks was a poor African-American woman whose cells were stolen from her without her knowledge and became known as the immortal HeLa cells. These cells have since been used for quite a lot in the medical and research field, yet her family was never compensated. Watch the trailer below, and the book is available as well!
We then started working on our Wolbachia lab this week, and get this, we all brought in bugs! THAT WE CAUGHT!!! Well my dad caught mine, but I digress. Wolbachia is a bacteria that infects arthropod insects and nematodes and feminizes them and kills their offspring. We collected DNA from our little buggies and when we get back to class we will be seeing our results!!
Wolbachia Lab! (photos from Quinlyn, ME!)
Finally we will be working on our sites quite a lot. We posted videos giving advice to the future ap bio girls, and we have many blog posts to write preparing for the end of class!! 11 days until graduation, the end is near and the journey has been great!
The year is quickly approaching the last days of school. We have finally become AP Biology veterans!!!
This week, we each made videos giving our advice to the Future AP Biology Team 2017-2018. While making my video, I was taken back to the first weeks of school. Within the first week of school, Mrs. Girard presented the videos from the year prior to us. It is crazy to think that WE are now making the videos for the next bio class. I talked about being organized being engaged, and being open-minded. I remember watching the videos from Team AP Bio 2015-2016, and almost each video mentioned to be organized. I am not very proud of this, but I have always been a messy person. I started the school year very organized and on top of my schoolwork, but would become more and more disorganized as time went by. I also noticed that drops in my grade correlated to my lack of extra efforts in the class. Although I did not mention this in my video, AP Biology has taught me that it is necessary to put in extra work to get the results you want. It may seem like there is a heavy workload for AP biology class, however, taking the extra step to research and study on your own will help you later. If you have a clear understanding of content early-on, then later material and concepts will make much more sense. This brings me to my next topic of advice, to be engaged. I was very intimidated when the year first started, I felt that I was surrounded by some of the brightest minds in the school, making me feel insecure and nervous to ask questions. I later found out that this is such bogus!! Yes, my AP Biology teammates are just as smart (or even smarter) than I have assumed and expected, however, each team member truly encourages one another and wants each person to succeed! It is fine to ask a question that may seem silly; chances are, the person sitting next to you is probably wondering as well. Participating in discussions (on schoology, blog posts, and in class) will allow you to get more of a grasp on the content and make connections. I also learned that if I feel like I am falling behind, Mrs. Girard and my AP Bio teammates are willing to help me, as long as I reach out to them. My last tip was to be open-minded. As mentioned earlier, lots of things can make this class seem intimidating, and on top of that, many activities done in labs or on field trips may seem gross or weird! I learned that it is okay to be nervous. On our second field trip, we went to Pillar Point tide pools. A bunch of the girls in our class ran out and started different organisms, when I was set on making sure that my hands stayed dry. Sea anemones are cnidarians, which are aquatic vertebrae that eject nematocysts from their tentacles. When a person’s finger touches the anemone, the anemone responds by wrapping its tentacles around the person’s finger. I decided to try it myself, and although it felt weird, I am glad to say that I still tried it! Same goes with dissection. Many girls felt uneasy about dissecting the fetal pigs, but later ended up enjoying being the “surgeon” by making incisions and and locating certain body parts. I thought I would be nauseous during the dissection, but I ended up finding a great interest in seeing how the parts of the body connected, especially in a real animal. If I was not open-minded about dissections, I could have missed out on an amazing learning opportunity. To be open-minded is key, because you never know if you might enjoy something or learn something new.
I am very excited for those who are lucky enough to take AP Biology next year! For now, I will reminisce on the days where I felt very new to the AP Bio setting! It is such a great feeling to look back on the school year and remember everything I have learned; I hope the future Team AP Bio will be able to do the same! Click here to check our my advice to the future Team AP Bio!
\
Some of my favorite memories from this year:
With the AP Exam soon approaching material is coming to an end!Before spring break we were placed into our CSI NDB groups.During CSI NDB students got the chance to create their own murder mystery and were given a body system to which had to be the source of death.Even though this project might sound gory and depressing the students all did amazing jobs in making the material engaging and humorous at the same time.Students used any type of media platform that they wanted.The most common media platform was a combination between a PowerPoint for the educational portion and videos, which walked you through the murder mystery like a movie.The three body systems that were addressed were the endocrine system, nervous system, and immune system.
Team AP Bio cracking some unsolved murder mysteries!
Lindsay having fun reviewing for AP Exam :)
We also had our last practical of the year, which was our Animalia practical.The practical started off with a short answer and station portion.Students went from station to station observing the fetal pigs from our fetal pig experiment.Parts of the pig were labeled with numbers and students had to determine the body system and answer some follow-up questions.Other stations consisted of labeling diagrams or writing short answers.The next class we did the multiple-choice section of the test.After the multiple-choice section was over we began our review for the AP exam.The next class we played a review game.Mrs. Girard would hand you a sheet of paper with AP questions and the goal was to answer the all the questions correctly and then try to throw your game figurine into a bin for extra credit.The goal of the game was to collect as many sheets of papers in a short amount of time.This game helped with staying calm in pressure situations and working at a fast pace but being able to get the correct answers at the same time.For our final review day, we did a class review session where we picked out major topics and created a web of information. Good effort to all my teammates taking the exam tomorrow, you will all do amazing! :)
My name is ZoƩ de Bretagne. A few fun facts about me are:
My name is Sophie Lamb. This is a picture of my older brother and I. A few facts about me are:
My name is Emily Clarke.
The juniors of the AP Bio class, Keira, Veronica, and myself, have been having an incredible two days while the seniors have been off on Senior Ditch Day and Senior Day of Reflection. The first day, the juniors celebrated a year of hard work by watching Gattaca, a science fiction movie about a world were human beings are genetically modified. The story follows a young man, Vincent, who dreamed of going to space but was not genetically altered and therefore had a heart condition. His condition made him a liability for insurance to the company so no one would hire him. Vincent finds a genetically 'perfect' man named Jerome who had gotten into an accident that caused him to be paralyzed from the waist down. Jerome gives Vincent blood, urine, hair samples, and skin so that Vincent can take the identity of Jerome to reach his dream of going to space. The movie was incredible and brought up many ethical issues of genetic modification and the fear that many people have over modification of children to be perfect. The juniors had so much fun watching this movie and eating our yummy snacks! Veronica was also kind enough to make us party hats!
