Award-Winning AP Biology Tutors

The student and I met for her first session at her family's home. After introducing ourselves, I took a few minutes to find out what her experiences were in science classes and to write down her schedule for the summer/school-year. Since she hasn't taken a biology class in over a year, I started slow and tried to kickstart her vocabulary bank, which is still very full! We discussed three main topics that usually are covered in the first week of any AP Biology class: characteristics of living things, types of biomolecules, and properties of water. She took chemistry last year so the topic of properties of water was definitely the easiest for her to discuss. Although, she certainly remembered a lot more about the other two than she gave herself credit for! We're going to meet again on Wednesday.

The student and I covered the initial foundations of biology in this first session; we reviewed the scientific method, the levels of biological organization, as well as going over basic chemistry. The student showed me that he has a good grasp of the scientific process in developing a falsifiable hypothesis on dishwashing methods, as well as providing a creative example of deductive reasoning. He also did a few practice exercises on electron shells and orbital annotation, which he did a great job on. It was a good start for him; understanding the fundamentals of biology is key to doing well with more abstract concepts down the road.

I spoke with the student before the session to get a more specific idea of what she wanted to go over during our session, which was cell metabolism and cellular respiration from her Biology book. This was super helpful for me because I own a copy of the book and was able to review the concepts to produce thorough explanations for them. As a result, we were able to cover the major topics in cell metabolism and cellular respiration, and produce great reading notes that she could refer to in the future. In the beginning of the session, most of the material was completely new to her, but I helped her gain a conceptual understanding of these topics. We went over more specific aspects of these concepts, which I suggested she review to solidify it. Moreover, we quickly went over how to identify reducing and oxidizing agents in a reaction which is useful for understanding steps in cellular respiration. All in all, this seemed to be an extremely productive session.

We basically went over introductions and goals for him as a student. We discussed what tutoring method would work best, which will just be going over material he isn't sure about and a lot of practice problems. I also got an idea of what his study habits are and what they will be covering in class. Our goal is to cover the material he will be going over in class the following week on the weekend before. I also talked to his parents and we will be trying to work out a consistent tutoring schedule.

This session focused on chapter 8 which covered metabolism. We were able to cover a majority of the material by completing a practice quiz together. Many of the questions were aimed at understanding exergonic and endergonic reactions. I believe the student has a better understanding now of the graphs that are used to display the information about the energy involved in chemical reactions. I encouraged him again to make note cards for all the scientific terms in hopes this will help him remember the material. To help him study for an upcoming exam, I also went over and left a useful guide to the "parts of the cell" that explains the function of cellular machinery. The instructor of the biology course is now having the students read the chapters prior to class lectures/labs, which is what I was going to suggest. This should hopefully make understanding the material easier.

We talked about the differences between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells. Then, we discussed cell organelle structure and how structure relates to function, focusing on the organelles that make up the intramembrane: nuclear membrane, endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi apparatus, and mitochondria. We also reviewed the fluid-mosaic model of the plasma membrane. The student needs to review the vocabulary and details more, but her understanding is good.