AQA A Level Biology Practical Skills Scheme of Learning

A Level Biology student are required to demonstrate that they have developed a specific list of practical skills throughout the course. These are assessed during Required Practicals and the final examinations, and I’ve always found it challenging to teach these explicitly as part of the course, alongside all of the other knowledge and skills, so I have created this resource which can be used during the Year 12 course to ensure Required Practical skills are clear, and during Year 13 as part of revision for the final exams.

Some of these skills are guaranteed to be in the final exams so they are well worth focusing on to boost results, especially for students who do not do A Level Maths.

This scheme of learning (which takes 4 hours to go through) includes a student version of the AQA A Level Biology Practical Skills Handbook, and I have added lots of specific exam questions in each section so students can show their understanding and application of each skill:

• How to tabulate data
• Significant figures
• Calculating uncertainties and percentage uncertainties
• Graphing: Drawing scatter, line, bar and histograms; lines of best fit, dealing with anomalous results, measuring gradients, equation of a straight line
• Biological drawings
• Statistical tests in biology: analysis of standard deviation from a graph and table, writing a null hypothesis, student’s t-test, chi-squared test and correlation coefficient.
• Glossary of key terms

The accompanying PowerPoint has the same content as the handbook which allows the teacher to easily read through the booklet as a class, and focus in on key points. There are also additional slides to further explain and give examples of some of the more difficult concepts, such as statistical tests. The answers to all exam questions are also embedded within the PowerPoint so students can easily self-assess their answers throughout the lesson.