A2 Level Biology worksheets: Plant coordination

This set of worksheets are designed to help students work through the textbook on the topic of plant hormones, particulalry auxin. Works well with the interactive tutorial found on www.newsnab.com activity

Worksheets: Coordination in Plants

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.

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

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)

Living with CF videos:
1: This video 8.22 minutes. I found this a very useful video to show the students so the appreciate the seriousness of the disease. It is quite emotional.

Dying Young

2. This video lasts about 9 minutes and outlines the treatments and medications required in one day for a 10 year old girl. Again it is useful to show as it highlights to the students all the medications, and the reasons for them.

Day in the Life

This video lasts for 3 minutes 30 seconds and is an excellent overview of  how CF is inherited, symptoms and treatment:

IGCSE Biology Podcast: Air pollution

This podcast covers air pollution by carbon dioxide and methane (the greenhouse gases) and sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, which cause global warming.

I have slightly over-edited it so a couple of words are truncated. So where it says “contributor are”, I really mean “contributers are”. Also I am saying “acidified lakes” not “lake” and “birth defects” not “bird defects” (which is what I think it sounds like). I know I should change it but honestly I already sound like three different people on it I have corrected it so often.

Anyway the information is what is important, enjoy!

Air Pollution

allison gardner’s Podcast

Download the MP3 file here  air-pollution