Back to School 2021-2022!

 Hello Students!  First of all, I want to apologize for not further updating this site!  I realized that I said I would give you instructions about the Internal Assessment and I did not.  

We will be meeting back in the classroom this Thursday 9/2/21 since all my 3-4 classes are on B days.  It will be great to see those of you that I taught last year and to meet the students who had Ms. Lisensky.  About a month ago, I was assuming that this school year would be pretty normal, but with the recent surge of the Delta variant, we will just have to see.  I am hopeful that it won't make many inroads into our school since most of us are vaccinated and we are good at wearing masks.  But if there is one thing COVID has taught us, it is that we can't get too comfortable with how we think it behaves.  I'm all about getting back to some normalcy and learning this fantastic biology curriculum in-person, but the safety of all of us and our families needs to be front and center as well.  I will do my best to communicate with you and keep teaching biology regardless of what happens, and hopefully we will be mostly in-person.

Many of you may be wondering about the summer work.  I will have you submit it through Canvas once I get that site going, but I will spread that out over the first 2 months.  I would like you to do your first science article and submit it by Friday, 9/10.  That way I can give you some feedback before you do the second one.  I will have you submit the review in pieces so that it doesn't all have to be done at once.  Finally, I will talk to you a little about the Internal Assessment in the first 2 weeks of class, but I will give you the "official" information about it in early October.  I'm sorry if you have been stressing about this work all summer and now you see that you have more time.  But if you already did it all, that is fantastic because you can put your energy towards other assignments and tasks.  

Tomorrow I plan to work a lot on my Canvas pages and possibly even get yours published.  It will probably have a message like this one and some of the early documents that we will be using.  If you have any questions, feel free to send me an email at mkenny@pps.net.

I am so excited to get this year started and meet all of you!

Welcome to the Summer Class Website for IB Biology HL 3-4!

 Welcome to Ms. Lisensky's students and hello to the students I taught this last year!  I'm directing you to this blog because I don't think that Canvas will be available all summer.  This is one of the sites that I have used for my class over the years, so you can look back at previous entries if you would like.  I will be updating this site so that it is more tailored to your needs this summer.  I will be adding textbook sections and resources that are applicable to what I will be asking you to do.

Higher Level IB Biology is a very dense course with lots to learn.  I always feel like the 2nd year is a constant sprint just to keep up, and this year might seem especially busy because we missed so much of the valuable in-person work that we typically do.  At the same time, IB has adjusted their expectations for the coming year by cutting out the usual option and removing one of the tests (Paper 3), which is good.    With smart planning, perseverance on your part, and the inherently interesting curriculum, I expect that this coming year will be challenging, engaging, and rewarding.

I am going to be asking you to do 3 things this summer to help review this past year and prepare for next year.  They are:

1. A Personal Review Guide of the Chapters that we have covered (1, 2, 3, 7, 9, and 10)
2. Written Reviews of 2 Current Biology-Related Scientific Journal Articles (at least 1 of them should have strong connections to a topic we covered during the first year)
3. Preparation for the Internal Assessment Lab Investigation

In addition, there are some excellent biology-related popular books that you can read and review as an extra assignment (not extra credit, but could potentially replace a future assignment).   

Each of these items will be explained in more depth in a document that I am currently developing.  In addition, I will be adding supporting documents and links on this site that should be able to help you with your summer work.  In addition, feel free to email me at any time this summer.  It may take me a few days to get back to you, but I will be around for most of the summer.  My email:  mkenny@pps.net