Picture this: you’re sitting in your room trying to start your biology homework. #1- Where does cellular respiration occur in the cell? You’re drawing a complete blank. The cytoplasm? The chloroplast? Mitochondria? What about the endoplasmic reticulum – smooth or rough? Wish you had some help? You can find great biology tutoring in Torrance here, at Study Hut Tutoring.
The cell cycles are the most challenging part of the year for many biology students. Here are all of the cycles listed in chronological order and grouped by function and location:
Daytime – chloroplast (plant cell only)
Photosynthesis (thylakoid)
Calvin cycle (stroma)
Nighttime (aerobic – with oxygen) – mitochondria
Glycolysis (cytoplasm)
Krebs/Citric Acid cycle (matrix of mitochondria)
Electron Transport Chain (inner membrane of mitochondria)
Nighttime (anaerobic – without oxygen) – cytoplasm
Glycolysis (cytoplasm)
Fermentation (cytoplasm)
BEFORE YOU LOOK AT THE PICTURE BELOW, try this on your own: draw a big rectangle. Inside the rectangle, draw a chloroplast (circle with smaller circles inside of it), then draw a mitochondria (jelly bean-shaped oval with a squiggle inside of it). Now try to place all of the cycles above on the drawing, connected by arrows. If you can, add some important inputs/outputs of each cycle (H2O, CO2, O2, ATP, sunlight, glucose, etc). Does it look something like this?
1) During the day, the plant
– uses the chloroplast to make ATP (via photosynthesis) and
– glucose (Calvin cycle) to store up energy.
2) At night, the plant will take the glucose it made during the day (via Calvin cycle) and
– break it down (glycolysis) to
– make energy (Krebs/ETC).
3) If the plant does not have access to oxygen, it will do
– glycolysis and
– fermentation (instead of Krebs and ETC).
Need someone to help you draw it? Look no further. Biology tutoring in Torrance is easy to find, affordable, and easy to schedule. Within minutes of calling, you’ll be able to schedule one of our many experienced tutors for a one-on-one tutoring session to help you with that tough bio homework or study for an upcoming test.
Study Hut tutors could not be more excited for the big Finals push. We have students from AVID coming in for private tutoring all week, but we also have a huge event scheduled for Saturday. As in years past, we will be hosting an all day tutoring and study session on campus at Palos Verdes High School. We will have access to multiple different classrooms, and tutors will get to go into different rooms and help students with the specific subjects they need most help with.
This year, there will undoubtedly be math tutoring, science tutoring (including biology tutoring and chemistry tutoring), history tutoring, from World History and EHAP to U.S. History, Government, and Economics tutoring. Math tutoring will include algebra tutoring, geometry tutoring, algebra 2 tutoring, pre-calculus tutoring, trigonometry tutoring, and maybe even some calculus and FTS tutoring.
We will also, of course, have English tutoring, writing tutoring for students with an upcoming final paper, Spanish tutoring (all levels), and probably a few other subjects as well.
The event is free (and required!) for all AVID students, and speaking from past experience, it is an extremely productive event for all students involved. The teachers always come to support, supervise, and offer their knowledge as well.
And best of all, we are getting El Taco Man ordered, so he will be showing up with his cart, and all the tacos any young man or woman can eat. Does it get any better than this? I think not. See you on Saturday.
I don’t know who manages the Hut’s Facebook page, but could you forward this picture to him or her? It’s Alex’s awesome cell diorama for her bio class . . . and it’s a cake!
Here at Study Hut, we’re more than just good tutors: we pride ourselves on being good human beings! After all, the same qualities that make a good teacher–passion, care, dedication, responsibility–also make a good person. That’s why I thought it was perfectly fitting that Study Hut participated in and had a team at last Saturday’s Relay for Life event in Manhattan Beach.
It was truly impressive to see my coworkers stay late and long after work in order to plan out team activities, and even more admirable to see them put in all the extra hours needed to fundraise for the American Cancer Society. After a long day of leading SAT prep, correcting Chemistry and Trig problems, and editing students’ essays, a box of whole grain crackers and a jar of natural peanut butter practically beg you to their side; however, my fellow tutors met up at 10 PM to figure out how we could raise money for such a worthy cause, and then took their usual day off to put on a car wash at Mira Costa High School. I was so proud of them for working to make a difference!
Because here at Study Hut, we are well-versed in the science of cancer: we pride ourselves on knowing and teaching biology, AP Chemistry, psychology, and anatomy. But we cannot know or explain the actual experience of having cancer. Instead, we can come together to support our community, whether in Manhattan Beach, the greater Southbay, or the nation as a whole, of cancer survivors and help fund research that will ease or prevent future suffering. I’m glad Study Hut got the chance to prove that it doesn’t just have the best tutors–it has the best people!
So you have a huge end-of-the-year comprehensive biology test coming up, and since you’ve been cramming every chapter test since the beginning of this year, you don’t remember anything. What do you do? Where do you even start? To begin, you should realize that for a huge subject such as biology, cramming all the details just isn’t going to work. There are way too many intricate details to be able to memorize each and every one from all the chapters. And before you think about cramming again for this final, consider this: most science majors require at least a year of biology in college, and a good chunk of the information is overlap from what you learned in high school. Therefore, the better a foundation you set for yourself now, the more it’s going to pay off not only now in high school, but in college, and maybe for the rest of your future as well.
To begin, break down biology into manageable chunks of information. Don’t just rush through reading every chapter and then realize you’ve already forgotten everything, but break it down by paragraphs and really try to visualize what’s going on. Carefully analyze the diagrams, draw your own pictures, watch (relevant) youtube videos, etc. There are lots of excellent visual resources online that can make understanding the material much easier, and they’re free! After visualizing the information, you’ll find it a lot easier to memorize, and then it’s just about reviewing the information consistently to reinforce what you’ve learn, while slowly adding more details to your knowledge.
Another great way to study biology is to review the information with your friends. Choose a topic, and popcorn each other to begin describing everything you know about the topic. Everyone always focuses on different aspects, and you’ll be able to take notes on what points you forgot to pay attention to.
Remember: there’s something in biology for everyone! Whether or not you love or hate science, biology plays a very relevant part to our everyday lives. Whether you want to learn the most effective way to work out, want to learn what to do to eat healthy and stay fit, or just how to prevent breakouts, biology will teach you the basics of how the human body works and allow you to make educated decisions to improve your health!
Today was a little bit of a difficult day. I worked with Peter, and he has a Biology test
tomorrow. Peter’s teacher was nice enough to provide him with a study guide, but Peter
decided to wait until his session at Study Hut the day before to fill it out. I was hoping Peter
had a strong understanding of the material and that’s why he waited so long, but unfortunately
that was not the case. Peter was confused with some of the questions, and tried to answer
them just to get the questions done. I could tell Peter really didn’t want to be here and just
wanted to finish his study guide so he could get out of here. So, we went over each question
together and found the answers to the questions in the text. Peter also, would try to answer
each question with only one sentence. That’s not gonna suffice in a High School Biology class,
so I tried to get him in the habit of writing at minimum 5 sentences. By the end of the session I
still wasn’t confident that Peter had a solid understanding of the material, so I emailed Rob and
told him about our session. He also felt Peter would need some more help and we’re trying
to get him to come back in for some extra help. I tried to tell Peter that he’s so lucky when the
teacher gives him a study guide for his tests and he should take advantage of that. It narrows
down the amount material, and half the time they use the same questions. It doesn’t make
sense to not complete the study guide or wait until the night before the test to study. You can’t
really retain all the information if you study the night before. Hopefully Peter can make it back to
Study Hut tonight so we can prepare even more for his test tomorrow.
Fewer than three weeks remain until the AP Biology Exam. Are you ready? Yes? No need to read further, then.
Still with me? Then I suppose you’ve answered no. That’s an excellent, honest first step. Maybe you’re worried that the facts and skills aren’t set firmly in your mind, that you’ll go into the test less than prepared. Doubt and anxiety are normal feelings for everyday life, but disastrous ones for tests – they can make all your brain’s resources collapse like a half-baked soufflé. Obviously there is no reason to let this happen! AP Biology is a rigorous course, and you’ve probably worked harder at it than at any other class this year. You deserve a score to show that! Read the rest of this entry »
Biology can be one of those subjects that you either get or you don’t, but everybody from grade school to high school has to take it and not just once. The problem most Biology students face is that they get lost on a specific part of a lesson and don’t get the individualized attention they need to get it cleared up. So when the teacher moves on and builds on the information he has just taught the student gets even more lost. The cycle continues this way until the student eventually just gives up, saying, “biology is too hard.” Read the rest of this entry »
