AS biology revision: Morgan’s mindmap

One of my AS students, Morgan, used a free lesson to revise his Biology AS work and wrote this mindmap. I left it on the board for a while and it made quite an impact on my Year 7 and 10 classes. It certainly highlighted to the younger students the intricacies of the subject and sparked quite a few discussions on what cells are really like (and not the fried egg image we teach at KS3 and 4!) Click on the image to take a closer look. We argued over whether there should be a linking arrow from the fluid mosaic section to globular proteins. We actually spent the day with me secretely adding the arrow and Morgan secretely rubbing it off again. Yes I know…we both need to get a life!

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Video: Nitrogen cycle

Here is a short 3 minute video revising the nitrogen cycle. I am learning to use Camtasia at the moment so there are some glitches (if you make it full screen you lose resolution, plus I haven’t edited out the odd error here and there). The video concentrate sonly on the nitrogen cycle and is useful for IGCSE, GCSE and AS level revision.

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Advice for those studying IGCSE Edexcel Biology

I received an email the other day from a concerned parent trying to find help for their child studying IGCSE Edexcel Biology. Although I mainly develop resources for Cambridge IGCSE I did reply because, as we all know, many topics are the same regardless of the exam course being followed. So videos on enzymes etc will be useful whatever exam board is being used.  Anyway I thought it might be useful to replicate my email reply here in case anyone else has the same enquiry:

Hi,

Thank you for your email.

Most of the information and videos on the IGCSE pages will be useful, although the podcasts may well be specific to Cambridge IGCSE. Also the BBC Bitesize and S-cool.co.uk websites are useful. Student_room is also useful (my daughter really likes this site and they have good forums too), click on the revision tab and there are revision notes available for all subjects. For actual lessons, quizzes and audio explanations I think skoool.co.uk is great. However all of these are not specific to edexcel but if you know the syllabus then you can work out what topics are relevant. Usually most topics on these sites will be on your course.

To ensure that you do not spend time learning anything you don’t need to (for example in Cambridge IGCSE they don’t need to know anything about DNA) then it would be useful to have the specification (syllabus). You can get this from the Edexcel website plus examples of exam papers and markschemes. The edexcel site also has a student section with exam tips etc.

Finally text books specific to the course would help, if you do not already have one. Probably the most useful is IGCSE Biology for Edexcel (by Jackie Clegg) and the CGP revision guide for Edexcel biology (always popular). I would recommend getting the textbook as sometimes the syllabus is not always clear or detailed.

I had hoped to get my revision courses and online tuition set up for this exam season, in which case I could have offered to tutor via skype or email. If this maybe of value I can look at paypal invoicing if you wish and offer a couple of sessions.

Anyway, I wish your child a lot of luck in their exam.

Kind regards,
Allison Gardner

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A Level video: Nephron structure and function

This is an excellent video for A level revising the nephron. Recommend that students review structure of the kidney first so they understand how the nephron is situated in the cortex and medulla of the kidney:

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AS Level Biology: cystic fibrosis videos

I had a good look at the range of available videos and these very short ones seem to be the most informative:

Video 1: Very short introductory video explaining what CF is

Link to video on About.com (1.25 minutes)

This second video lasts for 3 minutes 30 seconds and is an excellent overview, includes symptoms, inheritance and treatment:

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