Letter to a Biology Student

          Hi, my name is Elizabeth Kardach. I was 15 years old when I started this biology course. I went to Redwood Middle School previously. The subjects I was most interested in at the beginning of the year were my elective creative writing and English. My interests outside of school include piano, violin, drawing, painting, running, and video games. On the first day in this class, I expected a lot of hard work.
          I quickly picked up that Mr Orre's expectations for us were a lot higher than that of other teachers. The first things we were required to do when we walked into class were to take out our notebooks and planners, write down the homework, and start the Do-Now. Nothing more, nothing less. A typical class day involves reviewing the vodcast from last night with the vodcast recappers for a few minutes, and then with the entire class. Then the rest of the class is usually a lab, a blog post, or work time. The homework is daily and consists of a vodcast and CFU. The homework usually takes about 15-20 minutes, depends on how long the vodcast is. We don't get quizzes, but the tests are always very fair and if you study well, you'll do well. The notebook is the most crucial material to this class because we use them every single day. We write everything in our notebooks, and before every test we do a notebook check where we check our table of contents and vodcasts and get points if we have everything in order. The blog is also a very crucial part of class, because we make blog posts usually after every unit or lab. My favorite blog post is my first post on my 20-Time project because of the pictures I included on it. (http://lizziebio.blogspot.com/2017/02/catch-it-before-its-too-late-alzheimers.html). I felt I changed over the course of the year because of some of the presentations we got to do I feel a lot more confident in my public speaking.
          Some of Mr Orre's pet peeves are talking when he's talking, not paying attention, not cleaning up properly, not participating in mindfulness, not participating, not doing the CFU's, interrupting other students when they're talking, not doing the Do-Now, not having homework, not having your notebook ready, not doing the relate and review, etc. Getting a good grade on assignments usually relies on the amount of effort and sincerity you put in. Homework is incredibly important in receiving a good grade. If you don't do very well on tests, the homework can still help you pass. Getting good grades on tests simply requires a lot of studying and reviewing. Three mistakes I made this year was missing some second semester deadlines, since he doesn't accept late work second semester, not studying hard enough for some tests, and missing some unit reflection blog posts. I learned that all of these mistakes can really affect my grade so I took great caution after making them.
          Overall, I really enjoyed this class along with Mr Orre's teaching style. I liked it because it was fun and very informative and Mr Orre was a really nice and good teacher to have this year. I'm taking Chemistry next year because I want access to anatomy in my senior year.

      Signed
        -Elizabeth Kardach