Books

I'm an avid reader of mostly Young Adult fiction. I especially love to read adventure and spy novels and the occasional ChickLit.

CHERUB by Robert Muchamore

Henderson's Boys again, by Robert Muchamore

Kiki Strike series by Kirsten Miller

Click by Linda Sue Park

Broken Soup by Jenny Valentine

Harry Potter series by J.K Rowling (mega-duh!)

Missing Persons by M.E Rabb

Thieves Like Us by Stephen Cole

Little Brother by Corey Doctorow

13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson

Borderland by Rosanne Hawke

Gallagher Girls series by Ally Carter

Spy Girl series by Carol Hedges

Alex Rider series by Anthony Horowitz

Bad Kitty series by Michelle Jaffe

IB Biology

Biology Past Papers (SL and HL) Download as pdf files
Biology for Life Skyline HS IB Biology site. Full of extremely useful links, syllabus notes and questions.
Biology IA Explanation of each criterion (D, DCP, CE, MS, PS) and what you should do to obtain the best marks possible. Note: when on page scroll to the middle to find the links.
Click4Biology: IB Biology 2009-10 Syllabus answers for all topics and most options (B, C, D, F and G aren't availabe).
ITS Biology Student Resources A resource page with even more links!
OSC IB Revision Guides-IB Biology Sample pages (pdf) to use as revision
Online Biology Textbook not the best resource but worth referring to for extra reading or understanding concepts
Biology Animations extremely fascinating animations, with many small notes during each animation. Covers the main topics studied in Biology (regardless of IB or not)
Intense Cogitation a variety of notes categorised by syllabus points.

One study guide which I use and would highly recommend is Biology for the IB Diploma. With simplified text and organised pages, it's a great reference to use either for revison, reinforce understanding or just to read up on some material before starting a new unit of study.

IB Chemistry

Practice Chemistry Tests multiple choice questions, excellent for test prep
Ms. Wiseman's IB Chemistry links to topics which have more links to notes and quizzes
Dr. Vernon (Skyline HS) Chemistry links to classwork and homework questions and notes (note: things here are very specific to what Dr. Vernon has taught in their class. Links may or may not help).
Data booklet MS Word document, useful for general chemistry work
IB Chemistry Wikibook summaries and notes on each topic and option in the syllabus
IB Chem a site for SL and HL Chemistry with syllabus, practical/lab design notes, chemistry EE and Group IV project help.
Intense Cogitation revision notes and practicals

Bad :(

I've been terrible towards the upkeep of this blog!
Soon, I will hopefully provide helpful links and maybe even past papers and marking schemes for IB students (for the subjects which I am taking only).
And of course, chronicle my IB journey (haha, sounds weird to me).

This is what I've done for the past few weeks

School has been hell of a lot busy. Lots of tests (due to it being end of term).
My marks were pretty good (and very surprising).
Going to work (retail assisstant or whatever the people are called who work on the registers). The money is good. Otherwise, work is pretty dull.
I'm now officially a Yellow belt at Freestyle Martial Arts.
I went to a Cobra Starship concert. Very awesome.
...and received my first ever C on a school report...for TOK (though the teacher did tell me that he wished that I'd handed in my journal earlier- because I hadn't- since my TOK journal was pretty good).

Essay Structure: TEEL

This is a pretty simple essay structure to use for most subjects. I've been taught and using it for about three years now, and it's pretty foolproof and simple. The following structure, however, is for the main body of the essay, not the introductory or concluding paragraph of your essay.

Title
Explanation
Evidence
Link

Title
Usually the introductory/topic sentence of the paragraph explaining to the reader what the paragraph will discuss. Avoid making it too lengthy and detailed.

Explanation
Discuss your ideas/reasons/argument regarding the topic sentence (whatever you had mentioned in your 'title').

Evidence
Give support and proof for your ideas/reasons/argument. If this is an essay for a novel study, give quotes and refer to the novel. If it is for a history essay, again, you can use references to back up your explanation. If it's an argumentative essay, give statistics (if applicable).

Link
A sentence or two which refers back to your essay topic or title.



A good paragraph following TEEL will have an explanation and evidence throughout the paragraph. By this I mean a paragraph will not strictly have the explanation and then the evidence in order. You can have an explanation and evidence and then another explanation or the evidence first and then an explanation. However, a good essay will include the TEEL points.

Commentary ahoy!

Finally, after about five weeks since starting school, my English class is required to do a commentary. Le gasp. I've annoted the excerpt from which we're required to write a commentary about. The only thing left for me now is to stop this procrastination and write a two hours worth commentary. Yes, that's right, not a word limit, but a time limit.