As well as the subject content for A-level Biology, there are several skills which students need to re-visit prior to their exam. Here are some resources to help you prepare your students.
Past ISA and EMPA papers (Biol3x/3t/6x/6t) are great practise for the required practical question. Most of the required practicals have been taken from past ISAs and EMPAs so there are a lot lurking around. Section A of the papers is great for the actual practical skills, but section B is also great for source evaluation and general AO3 skills.
I’ve also gone through all the past papers I could find and have put together this booklet of questions on the 12 required practicals which my Y13 are currently working through. It’s a bit rough around the edges but it’ll do until I get time to tidy it up and edit the mistakes the kids have found.
Required Practical Question Pack blog
Required Practical Question Pack MARKSCHEME
I also make sure I go through the practical hand book with them with a fine tooth comb; here is a booklet with the stand alone methods. I get students to think of these as transferable techniques, e.g. the random sampling technique could be used in a huge forest or on a microscopic level, or the aseptic technique method could be used to grow microbes or stem cells. Once we have done the questions we make a note of things that have come up in past papers and what the model answers are.
Required Practical Methods Booklet
This CGP book isn’t AQA specific but it’s a great way of allowing students to review their maths skills and do some practise. There are a lot of questions for them to have a go at and self-check in the back. The only thing you need to do to make it AQA specific is warn them they don’t need to be able to do the stats tests, and there’s an extra diversity calculation they don’t need to know.
I’ve also gone through past papers and pulled out all of the maths questions and arranged them by topic. This will allow them to work out what kinds of maths skills they need to work on.
Maths and Stats Past Paper Questions Booklet 2018
Maths and Stats Past Paper Questions Booklet 2018 ms
I never know what to call this skill, so it either ends up being called “Working Scientifically” or “How Science Works” which are the questions that want the students to know about good experimental design. Ideas such as sample size, placebo effect, bias, variables, correlations, causal relationships and so on. Here are some great questions to do together as a class using a visualiser. If you read the question aloud and talk through what’s going on in your brain it really helps them.
How Science Works Qs MARK SCHEME
AQA have provided this list of essay titles and associated mark schemes on their website.
I don’t have much to offer about the essay as my co-teacher covers this skills with our class.
You can find information on two of my previous posts about how I approach the exam preparation period
https://pedagoggles.wordpress.com/2019/03/16/practise-practise-practise/
https://pedagoggles.wordpress.com/2019/02/15/monitoring-independent-exam-preparation/
Pedagoggles 