Welcome Back to TowardsTJ!

2025 Day 40

Extracurricular Exploration Day Info

• Happening tomorrow!
• Hear from upperclassmen about
• How they found the right extracurricular for them
• Appeals of different extracurriculars
• A day to learn about extracurriculars!
• Clubs, sports, and more!

Schedule

• Move to a different Google Meet every block
• Immediately go to first block at 3, don’t hop in your regular link
• Every cluster has a different Meet link

Block 1 Clusters

3:00 - 4:15

TJ has a lot of amazing and popular music, arts, and especially dance extracurriculars.

With four 8th periods a week, you won’t want to always go to highly curricular and intensive clubs. Finding a chill/relaxing club for you is important.

TJ boasts a number of fantastic STEM related clubs (of course) so you can pursue these interests outside of class.

Block 1 Clusters

3:00 - 4:15

We have a number of clubs that work with policy, faith, and projects to help out the greater community.

We came for the sports, it’s true! These are just some of our dozens of competitive physical activities.

If you found 7th grade Life Sciences interesting, this block is for you!

Block 1 Clusters

3:00 - 4:15

TJ has many amazing and super successful debate and speech clubs. Each of them go to huge competitions around the nation.

TJ also boasts some seriously cool technology clubs - satellites, ROVs, nanotech, and winning big competitions.

TJ has some super successful and really great Computer Science clubs with cyber security and machine learning and running the TJ intranet.

Block 2 Clusters

4:15 - 5:30

Service is a big part of the TJ community and there are a lot of really great clubs here to help others especially those in need.

TJ’s newspaper, yearbook, broadcast, and literary/scientific magazines are all award-winning.

Upperclassmen here will be able to give advice not just on their sports but also the general sports tryout process at TJ and how they juggle sports + academics.

Block 2 Clusters

4:15 - 5:30

A whole variety of TJ’s really successful and fun science clubs. Some of these are more competitive while others are more relaxed.

TJ has a lot of super successful business, entrepreneurship, and economics clubs.

TJ has some clubs and organizations that really seek to foster leaders and make a real change/impact in the world.

Block 2 Clusters

4:15 - 5:30

TJ has a lot of great clubs regarding medicine and health. HOSA in particular is one of the fastest growing clubs TJ has ever seen.

Making the TJ community a better and more welcoming place is always a high priority at TJ. These clubs do an amazing job with outreach and making TJ a better place.

TJ has a great deal of Computer Science related clubs. The clubs in this group are quite chill and do some cool things.

Required

Really important everyone fills this form out!

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Fill out this form signing up for which extracurricular clusters you want to go to tomorrow: https://tinyurl.com/eedform

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Make a copy of this document and fill out the clusters and links for each block: https://tinyurl.com/eedlinks

Quick Break: Riddles

1. What five-letter word becomes shorter when you add two letters to it?
2. What is so fragile that saying its name breaks it?
3. What can run but never walks, has a mouth but never talks, has a head but never weeps, has a bed but never sleeps?
4. What can fill a room but takes up no space?
5. The more you take, the more you leave behind. What are they?
6. People make me, save me, change me, raise me. What am I?

Introduction to Biology

Course Catalog

• Comprehensive intro
• ~8 units
• Covers normal Bio 1 and then some
• Will teach you necessary lab skills
• Mix of lecture, labs, and assessments
• Dependent on teacher
• The “B” part of the IBET Project

Course Environment & Workload

• Lab-based course
• Around 1 lab every 1-2 units
• Lab report
• HEAVY reading
• 1 textbook chapter per week
• Pacing varies by teacher
• 1 chapter is roughly 15-20 pages
• Followed by daily quiz each class (dependent on teacher)
• Quiz format varies by teacher
• Tests “recall” information to ensure that you’ve read the chapter and tends to have direct questions
• Workload
• 1-3 hours per week, depending on reading pace and ability to comprehend large amounts of information

Units

Unit 0: The Scientific Method

• Designing experiments
• Data analysis
• Technology

Unit 1: Chemistry

• Structure of water and hydrogen bonding
• Elements of life
• Properties and structure/function of biological macromolecules
• Nucleic acids

Unit 2: The Cell

• Subcellular components
• Cell structure and function
• Cell size
• Plasma membranes
• Membrane permeability and transport
• Facilitate diffusion
• Tonicity and osmoregulation
• Mechanisms of transport
• Cell compartmentalization and origins

The Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell :D

Units

Unit 3: Energetics

• Enzyme structure
• Enzyme catalysts
• Environmental impacts on enzyme function
• Cellular energy
• Photosynthesis
• Cellular respiration
• Fitness

Unit 4: Mitosis and Meiosis

• Cell communication
• Introduction to signal transduction
• Signal transduction
• Changes to signal transduction pathways
• Feedback
• Cell cycle
• Regulation of cell cycle

The Inner Life of the Cell

Units

Unit 5: Genetics

• Meiosis
• Meiosis and genetic diversity
• Mendelian genetics
• Non-Mendelian genetics
• Environmental effects on phenotype
• Chromosomal inheritance

Unit 6: DNA and Protein Synthesis

• DNA and RNA structure
• Replication
• Transcription and RNA processing
• Translation
• Regulation of gene expression
• Gene expression and specialization
• Mutations
• Biotechnology

Units

Unit 7: Evolution

• Natural selection
• Artificial selection
• Population genetics
• Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium
• Evidence of evolution
• Common ancestry
• Continuing evolution
• Phylogeny
• Speciation
• Extinction
• Variations in populations
• Origins of life on Earth

Unit 8: Ecology

• Responses to the environment
• Energy flow through ecosystems
• Population ecology
• Effect of density of populations
• Community ecology
• Biodiversity
• Disruptions to ecosystems

3-Minute Break

Optional: follow along to this mindfulness session made by Smiling Mind, used by Mrs. Holman at the start of every class to ease students’ minds before their day

Ignore the “for teachers” part

Teachers

• Dr. del Cerro
• Mrs. Holman
• Ms. Fisher
• Dr. Morrow
• Dr. Larson

Strategies

1] PLANNING

• Calendars given at the start of the unit/course
• Plan which days you will focus on biology
• Do not push until the last minute
• BIO != memorization, but BIO == UNDERSTANDING PROCESSES

2] LEARNING

• Watch a video that summarizes the chapter or sub-chapter
• Read introduction of the chapter
• Break reading the chapter into sections and take a break between each - explain to yourself what you just learned before moving on

Strategies

3] NOTE-TAKING

• Avoid re-writing the textbook
• Writing down word for word everything in the textbook will not help you learn unless you pause and internalize the information
• Focus on diagrams, overarching processes
• Worry about fine details after that are not essential to the overarching idea

4] QUIZ/TEST

• Always guess if you don’t know since there’s never a penalty
• Pace yourself - over time you will find whether you do MC or FRQ first and how long you spend on each

Pathways

10 Minute Break

Sample Text for Annotating

Short doc link (view-only, no school account):

https://imagen.click/d/cje3E7

Sample Text for Annotating

The term “hybrid” refers to the offspring of crosses between organisms differing in one or more characters. In Mendel’s first experiments, he crossed parental (P) varieties with contrasting traits for a single character, producing monohybrids (from the Greek monos, “single”) in the F1 generation. He subsequently planted the F1 seeds and allowed the resulting plants to self-pollinate to produce the F2 generation. This technique is referred to as a monohybrid cross.

Sample Text for Annotating

Mendel performed the same experiment for seven pea characters. His method is illustrated in FIGURE 8.1, using seed shape as an example. When he crossed a strain that made round seeds with one that made wrinkled seeds, the F1 seeds were round—it was as if the wrinkled seed trait had disappeared completely. However, when F1 plants were allowed to self-pollinate to produce F2 seeds, about one-fourth of the seeds were wrinkled. These observations were key to distinguishing the two theories noted above:

• The F1 offspring were not a blend of the two traits of the parents. Only one of the traits was present (in this case, round seeds).

• Some F2 offspring had wrinkled seeds. The trait did not disappear.

Sample Text for Annotating

These observations led to a rejection of the blending theory of inheritance and provided support for the particulate theory. We now know that hereditary determinants are not actually “particulate,” but they are physically distinct entities: sequences of DNA carried on chromosomes (see Concept 8.3).

Quiz on Sample Text

Don’t stress it’s a Kahoot

Video Resources and Final Words

Mrs. Holman’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtWQ6_pcQb-y2tetnIh8pfg/videos

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Bozeman Science: https://www.youtube.com/user/bozemanbiology

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Crash Course Biology: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3EED4C1D684D3ADF

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OpenStax Bio Textbook: https://openstax.org/books/biology-2e/pages/1-introduction

Escape Room Competition

Competition between the rooms! Whichever group gets it done the fastest gets a prize (free food during orientation)

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Random groups of 6!

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https://forms.gle/Qk5RdLyaAQJ1bQYC8

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Made by lovely SGA and Escape Room Club in 2020 :)

Questions??