← DE Biology 101 Resources

Bio Tool #9 · DE Biology 101 · Chapter by chapter

Checkpoint Companion

Forty-eight original practice questions for DE Biology 101, one for every item on each chapter’s NVCC Checkpoint, written in the Checkpoint’s own shape. Tap an answer and you get the reasoning, a SAM question to write from the option you chose, the slides to open, and the lab that shows it. Nothing is submitted.

Every question is original, written by me for my own students. Each chapter here has exactly as many questions as its Checkpoint on NOVA Canvas, grouped under the same ideas and weighted the same way, so working a chapter of these is a rehearsal for the Checkpoint rather than a substitute. The ideas come first; the details show up inside the choices, where they belong.

Three places, in the order to use them
  1. Here. Work a chapter cold, before you study. Every miss hands you a SAM question to write.
  2. Battlefield Canvas. The slides and the lab documents. The DE Bio Shared Files folder holds the chapter decks; open it once from your PWCS account and the slide links under each answer will open.
  3. NOVA Canvas. The Checkpoint itself. Unlimited attempts, highest score kept, correct answers shown, open all year.

Two marks tell you why a question is in the bank. A core idea is one that a whole cluster of Checkpoint items depends on. A sticking point is a place where students have told me, in class or in the surveys I ran at George Mason, that the chapter stopped making sense.

Core ideaSeveral Checkpoint items rest on it. The reason is under the answer.
Sticking pointStudents have named this one as the hard part. What they said is under the answer.

Questions keep their numbers for good, so Q14 on a feedback slip or in a Canvas assignment always means the same question. The address ?ch=4 opens one chapter, #q31 jumps to one question, and ?q=3,14,22 shows just those. Your answers stay on this device until you clear them.

Turning a miss into a SAM question

A Student-Authored Module is built from the questions you could not answer, and the option you chose is the most useful thing on this page: it says which idea you had in place of the right one. The prompt under each answer is written from that option. To use it:

  1. Copy the prompt into your SAM collection as the question, in your own words if you can improve it.
  2. Answer it in two sentences written for someone who chose the same option you did, and draw whatever the prompt asks you to draw.
  3. Open the slides it names and check your answer against them, then take the Checkpoint on NOVA.
  4. Come back another day, rested, and try the question again. If it comes clean twice, the SAM question is finished.

What a SAM is, and what a finished collection looks like: Student-Authored Modules: what they are, and why you build your own.

For teachers

Use any of these freely. To assign a set, link to this page with the question numbers in the address, for example checkpoint-companion.html?q=6,10,23, or a whole chapter with ?ch=3, and students see only those. Print this set prints the questions showing, without answers. The slide numbers refer to the Campbell Biology in Focus lecture decks for NVCC BIO 101; the questions themselves are original and are not Pearson’s. The OneDrive and Canvas links are for Mr. Schwebach’s own students and need a PWCS or NOVA login.

Chapters are added as the course reaches them, each with the same count as its Checkpoint. A question is never renumbered or reused; if one is retired, its number stays retired. Corrections and suggested questions: use the address on the home page.