Extra Credit Opportunities

Rationale for Extra Credit

Life happens. I understand that there are many demands placed on students these days - family expectations, academic responsibilities, work schedules, extracurricular commitments - that might make getting every homework assignment turned in on time tough. I do not accept late work for a number of reasons, including providing feedback to students in a timely manner and reducing student stress. Therefore I provide extra credit opportunities each semester that enables students to recover points for missing a few assignments.

Rules for Extra Credit

• Students may complete any combination of the following options to earn up to 15 points in the homework category and 30 points in the lab category in a single semester. For example, a student may watch one movie and listen to one podcast and take pictures of five scavenger hunt items and earn up to 45 points for a semester.
• A student may NOT complete the same extra credit option both semesters. For example, he/she may not submit the book, My Sister's Keeper for extra credit in both the fall and spring semesters or listen to the same podcast both semesters.
• Students are to work on projects individually. If they want to travel together for the scavenger hunt or watch movies together, that's fine but each student must turn in his/her own scrapbook with pictures of himself/herself and answer the movie questions individually.
• Extra credit points will be awarded in either the homework or lab categories. The only way to earn extra points in the test category is by completing the progress checks on AP Classroom or retaking the multiple choice tests.
• Projects are due by 11:59pm on Tuesday the week before finals. There is NO GRACE day for 10% off with extra credit.
• If you have any questions, come talk to me or email me prior to the night before it is due. I will not help you if you have waited until the last minute to throw together a haphazard project.

Extra Credit Projects

• Go on a scavenger hunt: You can explore nature and the greater Portland area while collecting points for AP Biology. Each item on the list counts as one point. In order to earn those points, you need to take a picture of yourself or a photo ID with the item. You then need to present those pictures in either a PowerPoint presentation or a scrapbook. Each photo needs a caption that contains the title of the item pictured and the location where the photograph was taken. Each pictured item earns one extra credit point. Follow these rules when working on this project.
  • Please be careful to NOT DESTROY any habitats as you visit and collect your pictures.
  • Plants that have red spots or red areas on the stem or leaf may be poisonous...DO NOT TOUCH!
  • A photograph of you with an item can only count for one point once. For example, if you take a picture with a mushroom, that can be used to earn a point for EITHER mushroom OR fungus, not both.
  • Do your research beforehand to determine what a specimen should look like and where to find it.
  
  Here are some ideas for places to visit to find items on the list.
  • Oregon Museum of Science and Industry
  • Oregon Zoo
  • Portland Rose Test Gardens
  • Japanese Garden
  • Hoyt Arboretum
  • Clark County Parks and Recreation
  • Powell's Books
  • Portland Art Museum
  • Oregon Coast Aquarium
  • Bonneville Dam and Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center
• Watch a movie: You can watch one or two movies a semester and answer the questions linked to the movie title in essay form (typed). Each movie is worth 25 points. If you can't find a way to watch the movie on your own (via streaming serivce or library rental), I also own all four movies, so you can stay after school a couple of times to watch them.
  First Semester Movies
  • Medicine Man
  • Lorenzo's Oil
  Second Semester Movies
  • GATTACA
  • Outbreak

• Listen to a podcast: You can listen to as many RadioLab podcasts as are listed below. Each podcast has an accompanying worksheet to complete while you listen, worth up to 15 extra credit points. The podcasts are only an hour long and EXTREMELY interesting.
  
  • Stress, Season 1: Stanford University neurologist (and part-time "baboonologist") Dr. Robert Sapolsky takes us through what happens on our insides when we stand in the wrong line at the supermarket, and offers a few coping strategies: gnawing on wood, beating the crap out of somebody, and having friends. Plus: the story of a singer who lost her voice, and an author stuck in a body that never grew up.
  • Sleep, Season 3: Every creature on the planet sleeps--from giant humpback whales to teeny fruit flies. What does it do for us, and what happens when we go without? We take a peek at iguanas sleeping with one eye open, get in bed with a pair of sleep-deprived new parents, and eavesdrop on the uneasy dreams of rats.
  • Memory and Forgetting, Season 3: Remembering is an unstable and profoundly unreliable process--it’s easy come, easy go as we learn how true memories can be obliterated, and false ones added. And Oliver Sacks joins us to tell the story of an amnesiac whose love for his wife and music transcend his 7-second memory.
  • Laughter, Season 4: If you look closely, you'll find that humor has very little to do with it. We ask what makes us laugh, and how it affects us. Along the way, we tickle some rats, listen in on a baby's first laugh, talk to a group of professional laughers, and travel to Tanzania to investigate an outbreak of contagious laughter.
  • Race, Season 5: When the human genome was first fully mapped in 2000, Bill Clinton, Craig Venter, and Francis Collins took the stage and pronounced that "The concept of race has no genetic or scientific basis." Great words spoken with great intentions. But what do they really mean, and where do they leave us? Our genes are nearly all the same, but that hasn't made race meaningless or wiped out our evolving conversation about it.
  • Inheritance, Season 11: Once a kid is born, their genetic fate is pretty much sealed. Or is it? This hour, we put nature and nurture on a collision course and discover how outside forces can find a way inside us, shaping not just our hearts and minds, but the basic biological blueprint that we pass on to future generations.
  • Bigger than Bacon: This story starts with a sound around a dock in South Carolina, and then goes from submarines to superheroes, from the surface of the sun to the middle of the brain. It is a mystery, shockingly hot, and vanishingly tiny. I couldn't find it in the archive, so here is the link to it.
  • Intelligent Plant, PRI interview: Michael Pollan wrote an article in The New Yorker with this title. This interview by Ira Flatow for PRI Science Friday discusses the new research into plant intelligence. Use this link to access this interview, as you won't find it on RadioLab.

• Read a book: You can choose a book from the list and earn up to 45 points. Be sure to complete EACH of the following steps to earn full credit:
  
  1. Read the book.
  2. Answer the questions on the worksheet linked to the title of the book in your own handwriting. (Answers can NOT be typed).
  3. Complete the supplemental reading verification form and have your parents sign it.
  4. Turn in completed papers by 11:59pm Tuesday before finals. I will NOT accept it on the last day of the semester.

Brianna Abraham
Biology teacher
Camas High School
26900 SE 15th Street
Camas, WA 98607
email: mrsabraham@hotmail.com