Eight Inspiring Books for A-level Biology Students

Here are eight books I recommend to boost your Biology, presented in no particular order. They are all well-known and likely to be found in your library.

Non-academic books about biology can broaden your knowledge and build anchor points for A-level learning. They can also give context to topics that might otherwise feel a bit dry. These pop-sci books are for a general audience, so they are written to be accessible and entertaining.

Which will you pick?

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Book 1:

I Contain Multitudes

Ed Yong

Your body is teeming with tens of trillions of microbes. It's an entire world, a colony full of life. They sculpt our organs, protect us from diseases, guide our behaviour, and bombard us with their genes. They also hold the key to understanding all life on earth.

In I Contain Multitudes, Ed Yong opens our eyes and invites us to marvel at ourselves and other animals in a new light, less as individuals and more as thriving ecosystems.

You'll never think about your mind, body or preferences in the same way again.

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Book 2:

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Rebecca Skloot

A real story of medical ethics. Henrietta Lacks’ cells were taken without consent, replicated in laboratories, and used in research. They are still used today.

Balancing the beauty and drama of scientific discovery with dark questions about who owns the stuff our bodies are made of, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is an extraordinary journey in search of the soul and story of a real woman, whose cells live on today in all four corners of the world.

The story is so compelling that they made it into a film, but the book is a lot better for you as it contains more biology.

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Book 4:

Life at the Extemes

Frances Ashcroft

How do people survive extremes of heat, cold, depth, speed and altitude? This book explores the limits of human survival and the physiological adaptations which enable us to exist under extreme conditions.

What causes mountain sickness? Why is it possible to reach the top of Everest without supplementary oxygen, yet be killed if a plane depressurises suddenly at the same altitude. Why are astronauts unable to stand without fainting when they return to Earth? Why do human divers get the bends but sperm whales don’t? Why don’t penguins get frostbite?

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Book 3:

The Vital Question

Nick Lane

Why is life the way it is? Bacteria evolved into complex life just once in four billion years of life on earth-and all complex life shares many strange properties, from sex to ageing and death.

If life evolved on other planets, would it be the same or completely different?

In The Vital Question, Nick Lane radically reframes evolutionary history, putting forward a cogent solution to conundrums that have troubled scientists for decades. The answer, he argues, lies in energy: how all life on Earth lives off a voltage with the strength of a bolt of lightning.

In unravelling these scientific enigmas, making sense of life's quirks, Lane's explanation provides a solution to life's vital questions: why are we as we are, and why are we here at all?

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Book 5:

Dr Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation

Olivia Judson

A very funny, quirky and well-researched book, which entertainingly presents the huge variety of sexual behaviours and differences across the animal world.

The book takes as its starting point all creatures great and small worried about their bizarre sex lives, and the letters they write to the wise Dr Tatiana, the only agony aunt in all creation with a prodigious knowledge of both natural history and evolutionary biology.

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Book 6:

The Emperor of all Maladies

Siddhartha Mukherjee

The author examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion.

The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience and perseverance, but also of hubris, arrogance and misperception, all leveraged against a disease that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out ‘war against cancer’. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories and deaths, told through the eyes of predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary.

From the Persian Queen Atossa, whose Greek slave cut off her malignant breast, to the nineteeth-century recipient of primitive radiation and chemotherapy and Mukherjee’s own leukemia patient, Carla, the book is about the people who have soldiered through toxic, bruising, and draining regimes to survive and to increase the store of human knowledge.

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Book 7:

Why Evolution is True

Jerry A. Coyne

An exploration of the evidence we have for evolution (the book was written in 2009).

The presented evidence is vast, varied, and magnificent, and drawn from many disparate fields of science. Modern discoveries are now revealing evolution in action - from the actual observation of a species splitting into two, to new fossil discoveries, to the deciphering of the evidence stored in our genome.

Why Evolution is True weaves together the many threads of modern work in genetics, palaeontology, geology, molecular biology, anatomy, and development to demonstrate the 'indelible stamp' of the processes first proposed by Darwin. It is a crisp, lucid, and accessible statement that will leave no one with an open mind in any doubt about the truth of evolution.

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Book 8:

Bad Science

Ben Goldacre

A wise and witty book which lifts the lid on quack doctors, flaky statistics, scaremongering journalists and evil pharmaceutical corporations.

Ben Goldacre has been exposing dodgy medical data in his popular Guardian column since 2003. Here he takes on the MMR hoax and misleading cosmetics ads, acupuncture and homeopathy, vitamins and mankind's vexed relationship with all manner of 'toxins'.

Along the way he performs a successful detox on a Barbie doll, sees his dead cat become a certified nutritionist and probes the supposed medical qualifications of 'Dr' Gillian McKeith.

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How to Excel in A level Biology

A level Biology is a challenging course that demands a lot from students. So what is the difference between students that excel and those that struggle? It’s not quite as simple as “the top students are smarter”, or “they spend more time studying”. There’s a lot more going on.

Here are some key factors that apply, and ideas for how you can get better grades.

Prior Knowledge

Going to see cute animals at the zoo is a valid study technique

Everything you learn will be built on top of things you already know, and linked to them. Students who are already familiar with organisms or concepts that come up in class will find it easier as they have a base to build from. Your GCSE knowledge will be vital, but general knowledge from life is very important too.

• Spend time watching nature or farming content, reading medical news stories, and other content around biological topics. If your school subscribes, then “Biological Sciences Review” is written for A level Biology students and is excellent.

• Go to the Zoo, or Botanical Gardens or Natural History Museum, when you look at an organism think about how it feeds, what habitat it lives in, how at avoids predation, what adaptations can you see that lead to survival or mating ?

• This isn’t about learning difficult, deep concepts, but just getting a broad foundation of familiarity with the natural world that you can then build your A-level understanding upon.

• How’s your maths? If you struggle with maths, it’ll make learning some concepts extremely hard. Take time to recap your GCSE knowledge. We have some articles to help, including on Surface Area and Volume Ratio; Averages, Range, and Standard Deviation; and Graphs and Tables.

• Language matters too. Students with lower literacy will struggle with the huge amount of language and vocabulary in A level Biology. If you come across words you aren’t confident with during study, stop and check your understanding. It’s better to slow down and learn words properly so you can use them later, rather than push on regardless. If you can’t understand the explanations or exam questions, you’re not going to get top grades.

Think

How often do you look like this while studying?

This might seem obvious, but you really need to think about the material. Many students sail through GCSE with top grades by memorising things, and never thinking too deeply about anything.

But at A level you need to know why and how, and to understand things at a much deeper level than could ever be captured on a flashcard, or even a memorised paragraph of text. This catches a lot of students out.

You will need to make real mental effort, and really challenge your understanding. Think about things from different angles and with different examples. You need to do more than just remember what’s on the slide, you need to take time to build a deep understanding from it.

Two students sitting in a classroom might look like they’re doing exactly the same thing - both paying attention to the teacher and writing notes. But if one is just copying down what the teacher is writing on the board while the other is thinking about the content and checking their understanding as they go, then the latter will get better grades. You can’t see what other students are doing, but I bet you that the person getting top grades in your class is thinking hard all the time.

Gamified apps sell the lie that we can learn without mental struggle, and some people believe that struggle demonstrates a failure on the part of the teacher or subject. But cognitive scientists and learning researchers are clear that this is not true for academic subjects*, and definitely not for A level Biology. Confusion and struggle are a required part of effective learning.

(* Effortless learning is only really a thing when you’re very young, learning basic requirements for social life and survival).

Make the most of your Working Memory

Help your brain by giving it nice spoonfuls of things to think about, rather than a firehose of information

You will be processing a lot of information through your ‘working memory’ during this thinking. This is the bit of your brain’s activity where you consciously think about things and make sense of them. This processing moves information into your long term memory, and builds up concepts to use later.

Working memory is limited, and is a huge bottleneck on learning.

• Dodgy companies will try to sell you apps to boost working memory by training, but these are a scam. The research is clear that these methods do not work.

• Maximise your working memory by getting good sleep, food, and exercise. It might sound boring but a lack of any of these things can reduce your processing capacity. Which will affect everything you do while studying. Especially try to look after yourself before exams as you’re going to need all the working memory you’ve got.

• An invisible trick used by top students is to break up information into small chunks, so that you can process one chunk at a time. If something is overwhelming, stop, back up, and break it down into smaller tasks. Good teachers will help with this, but you need to learn how to manage the information flow yourself as only you know how much you can process effectively at one hit.

The working memory app scam works because users develop tricks to break up the app’s tasks into chunks and to take shortcuts. And so they do get better at the tasks in the app with time. This makes them think it’s working … but in fact there’s no change in actual working memory. No improvement is seen when they are tested on totally different working-memory tests. So they are not going to help with your A level Biology.

Focus on breaking information up. It might feel like it will take longer, but what’s the point in speeding through if you’re not learning anything?

Process Goals, not Product Goals

During your course, you will probably be asked to write an essay, complete a test, or take notes. It’s all too easy to think that the completion of these tasks is an important goal, and that finishing them means you’re progressing well through the course.

Thinking that the goal is to complete the task is what leads people to use AI, or copy from other people. They find tricks to complete the assigned work as quickly as possible and with the least mental cost to themselves. Brains are lazy, this is very human behaviour.

Now … the next thing I’m going to say might be one of those things that’s it’s impossible to communicate. One of those bits of wisdom that you can only ever learn through experience. So maybe I’m wasting my time here. But I’m still going to try because it’s so absolutely central and it will change everything about your approach to your studies … if you can grasp it.

Your notes, your essay, your answers to that test? They’re not important

The reason you’ve been asked to produce these things is not because there is any value in the paperwork. I know - you have to do them, so completing them is a task ticked off - but the materials you produce are not the point. The world does not need more A-level essays about genetic diseases; your teacher already knows the answers to those exam questions. The examiner is never going to look at your beautiful notes (and anyway your text book already contains all the important information you need, with fewer errors).

Your overall aim is to get a top grade in the exams

To achieve a top grade, you need to learn. You need to construct a real understanding of the topics in the spec. Through thinking about the topics, you are effectively building a complex, biology-exam-answering machine in your brain - a tool you can use to quickly process exam questions to produce mark-winning answers.

So, what’s the point of homework or tests then? The point is that this work is designed to make you think, and process information. It’s the thinking that is the thing of value. Taking short cuts is just cheating yourself out of an opportunity to build understanding. Brains are lazy, but you need to make yourself focus and think and avoid short cuts.

Your objective is the process of learning, which takes time and mental effort

Imagine if you decided to go out for a lovely countryside walk to get some exercise, but then took a short cut so that you got back home within five minutes. Well done, you got home quickly, and you can tell people you went for a walk. But did you achieve your objective? Sometimes the journey itself is the important thing, even when you have no visible evidence that it ever happened.

Want more?

I’ve written a series of “How To Revise A Level Biology” articles, which you can find here. It digs more deeply into some of these concepts, and also gives some more useful tips.

Good luck, and keep thinking! Brains can do incredible things when you put them to work. Think hard and you will find you have more opportunities, more capability for creative thought, and a richer life than anyone who has sailed through life taking the short-cuts.

And you’ll get a better grade for A Level Biology.

Five top tips for studying with Quizzes

We offer a large selection of self-marking, multiple-choice quizzes by topic for OCR A and CIE, which are also useful for students studying other specifications.

But how can you use them to best effect? Here’s a quick guide.

Think:

• You only get one chance to see each quiz for the first time

• A-level exams are designed to test your deeper understanding of concepts, so they rarely repeat the same questions in the same way

Five Top Tips for using the Quizzes:

1. No cheating

HOW - don’t skip past ones you’re not sure about, sneak a look at your notes, or avoid picking an answer

WHY - to practice your best strategies for answering difficult questions, to practice recalling difficult information, and to find out whether you’re able to answer the question or not

2. Think about the wrong answers as much as the right one

HOW - think carefully about why each wrong answer is wrong

WHY - this forces you to think more deeply, and means you are less likely to make mistakes

3. Explain your thinking out loud

HOW - explain it to an imaginary friend. You can ‘talk’ silently if necessary, but make sure you ‘say’ every word

WHY - this ensures your thinking is clear and that your brain isn’t skipping things or taking short cuts

4. If you get a question wrong, restudy the concepts and the facts instead of just memorising the answer

HOW - go back to the topic and improve your understanding of the concepts that were being tested in the question

WHY - your questions will be different. Memorising an answer to a question you won’t get on your exam isn’t going to help

5. Recognise when you had a lucky guess

HOW - think about how confident you were before checking the answer

WHY - if it was a lucky guess, then you don’t know the content and you need to restudy that topic

If you do all these things, you will get a lot more benefit out of using the quizzes. Also remember that the quiz collections don’t cover the whole topic, so getting everything right doesn’t mean that you are definitely set for the whole topic area. They’re just a useful tool to practice thinking about the topic and to help you identify some weaker areas.

And don’t feel bad if you get answers wrong - this is actually great as it means you’ve found out that you need to restudy that area. And it’s best to find that out before the real exam.

This article written by Jenny Shipway

How to take notes in A-level Biology

Notes are really important.

There’s a lot of chatter online about the best methods for taking notes, what type of notes are most useful, and whether to use other people’s notes.

There are also a lot of harmful myths about this topic, so let’s step back and first think about why we take notes at all. It’s “what students do”, but why?

Why do A-level students take notes

This is a big question all by itself and worth taking a moment to think about.

❌ “Your notes remind you what you need to know for the exam”

Ok, yes they can. But wait, don’t you have a textbook that does that too? Are your notes as comprehensive and correct as your textbook? Would you buy a textbook written by a current A-level student, and if not, why not?

Notes are important at University because the courses are not as established as A-level; there are no text books that specify what should be covered, and the specification changes from year to year. This isn’t true for A level, where the course rarely changes.

❌ “Your notes show that you have done the work”

Many students think that if they turn up to every class and copy down notes from the board then they will get a good grade. Unfortunately it isn’t so easy.

You can’t take your notes into the exam with you, and they won’t be marked.

Every year, diligent students who got an A at GCSE by carefully copying down notes and memorising them get a nasty shock at A level. This strategy isn’t going to win you a top grade in an exam which is specifically designed to test your deep understanding.

🤔 “Your notes show you understand the topic”

Your notes won’t be marked, so does this matter? But - understanding the topic is your goal as an A-level biology student, so this sounds good.

Do they show this? Well, it depends.

If the notes were copied directly from the board without you thinking about them, then no, sadly they don’t. I could go into a quantum physics class and copy equations off a board but it wouldn’t mean I understood anything.

But - if the notes were written from your own personal viewpoint after having fully understood the concept, then yes, they can. I’ll write more in a minute about how this happens and why it’s worthwhile to make notes like that even if you then throw them straight in the bin.

But first, there’s a BIG problem that nobody talks about:

When to take notes

🏫 Taking notes in class

The first time you encounter a topic will probably be in class. This will be the first time that you grapple with the new vocabulary and concepts and try to make sense of them in your mind.

The teacher will (or at least should) take you on a mental journey that leads you to understanding. This is really important as textbooks don’t explain/teach things, they just .. say them. It’s different. You need to listen to and think along all the steps of the explanation to make sense of things.

The question people don’t ask is: do you have enough mental processing power to build understanding from the explanation at the same time as writing notes?

Can you write notes quickly enough that you don’t miss anything? Or are you overwhelmed, so you end up just focusing on copying from the board rather than actually thinking about the content and following the explanation?

A-level biology has a LOT of content (too much, tbh), so teachers don’t have the luxury of taking their time going through it properly. They have to go fast, and that can quickly become overwhelming.

If you just copy off the board, you’ll end up with nothing more than a worse version of what you already have in your textbook. It’s more important to listen and think.

💻 Taking notes during tutorial sessions

Tutorials are recorded, which is fantastic because it frees you up.

You can fully listen during the live session, concentrating on making sense of the concepts. Then watch the video back later, going through more carefully and taking notes. I’ve had some fantastic feedback from students using this technique. It turns out that learning biology is a lot easier when you’re not trying to write a textbook at the same time.

🖊️Making notes when studying at home

The best time to make notes is when you’re not in a rush, and can take your time to go through things properly.

Don’t worry about spending ages making them beautiful, but do worry about making sure you understand everything you’re writing. Beautiful notes that include errors, gaps, and bits just copied out of textbooks are much worse than ugly notes written by someone who has thought about the topics in depth. Nobody will be marking your notes.

Why students should take notes

I’ve written a lot of negative-sounding stuff. But actually, writing notes is great!! Just not for the reasons you might think.

✅ Writing notes is fantastic and great

❌ The notes have very little value

Wait, what?

So here’s the big secret that students never fully understand (maybe you can be the first): the important thing about notes is the process of making them. And I don’t mean just copying things from the board.

Think about it. You want to pass the exam with a good grade, right? To do that, you need to have an understanding of the topics in your brain. So, the question is, how do you get things into your brain.

If it was as simple as listening to a lecture and copying notes from a board, life would be easy. But it’s not. Science tells us that the only way to get A-level Biology understanding into your brain for later recall is to process the concepts in your conscious mind. You have to make the effort to really think about them.

Unfortunately brains are pretty lazy and will outright lie to you to avoid having to do that: “yeah honest we’re learning this, 100% trust, we’re good to go”. But it’s lies.

Forcing stuff through your brain

If you just read something, your brain will lie and tell you that you understand it fine. It’s only when you try to use the concept in a new way or write it in your own words that you realise you don’t understand at all. This is a really frustrating feeling but it’s better to find out now rather than in the exam.

Writing information down in your own way (not copying) forces your brain to process that information. It can’t fake it’s way around it. You can’t write something in your own words without, at some point, having understood it.

So, writing notes in your own words is really useful. Learn the topic, make sense of it, then organise that information on the page in a way that best makes sense to you. Make links to other topics (I can’t overstate how important this is) and use the new knowledge to make more sense of the old topic. Also make links to your personal experience (biology is great for this).

The difficulty you feel when writing high quality notes - that is the feeling of learning happening. And remember: the learning is the goal, not the physical notes themselves. Trust me, the world has more A-level notes than it could possibly need.

Now here’s the problem - in class, everything is in such a rush that you don’t have time to do that properly. But the system encourages everyone to try, while all that does is to make it impossible for most students to listen properly to the teacher.

Ok so I know this is upsetting but it’s important

Humans love to have proof of value, in physical form. We love getting medals for our achievement - for most people the achievement itself is not enough, we need some physical representation of it. And notes are held up as a physical representation of learning. But the problem is that often they are not. You can have beautiful, comprehensive notes, but not have learned a thing.

You need to focus on the process, to value the actual learning, which will not be seen or appreciated by anyone other than the examiner through the lens of your answers in the exam. And that’s how you get a bit of paper with your final grade on it that you can proudly show people as a physical representation of your achievement.

What to Write Down

Taking notes in class

In class, I would suggest you don’t distract yourself by writing down all the things that will obviously also be in your textbook.

Do write topic headings, so you know where you are. And then record useful study tips for your future self to use for when you are revising the topic - what misunderstandings did you have this time that you could avoid in future? What useful examples did your teacher use? What did they say that gave you a lightbulb moment? What links did they make to other parts of the specification?

And if you’re naturally a doodler who needs to doodle/draw while you’re mentally processing then that can be fine - just don’t let the doodling stop you listening. This is biology class, not art/design.

Highlighting printed text is a waste of time - close that book and start writing from your own brain

Making notes at home

Making notest at home is a great to way think your way through the information and concepts that you need to learn.

Don’t just copy stuff out - that’s pointless - you need to learn it. Then write it down from a position of understanding. Explaining something on paper is a great way to ensure you really do understand it and that your brain isn’t lying to you about that. If you can’t write it in a coherent, organised way, then it’s not available in your brain in a coherent, organised way either.

When you’re writing stuff out and you get stuck, that is brilliant - it’s a strategy for finding out where your understanding is weaker, so that you can focus your efforts on the right things.

And don’t worry about having a perfect notebook or making everything beautiful - that’s going to make it harder to actually study. Focus on the biology. Scribble stuff out if it’s wrong. Rewrite things more clearly. Draw that diagram again. Redrawing and redrafting information is a good way to get it going through your mind over and over again, so long as you’re thinking about how to make the concepts clear rather than just making it pretty.

Borrowing notes from your friends

Wow did you really get this far?

Ok so what do you think, given everything I said above?

If you borrow your friend’s notes and copy them down, are you learning anything? What is the quality of what you’re learning?

Yeah, it’s a waste of time. It will make you feel better, but feeling confident beyond your actual knowledge is a really really good way to get disappointed when the exams come. If you miss a topic, you do need to learn it, and ok your friend’s notes can tell you what was covered. But your friend’s attempt at creating a textbook during class isn’t going to help you learn it. Check out your textbook to see what you need to learn, find good quality explanations online, learn the content, and write your own notes.

Then throw your notes away, whatever, it doesn’t matter. The important bit is safely stored in your brain. Take care of it with a bit of ongoing revision and you’ll be all set to get a top grade.

Written by Jenny Shipway with support from Tom

How to Revise A Level Biology: A Simple Trick - Use Your Words

A guest blog from Dr Jenny Shipway, who studied biochemistry at university and now works in science communication and education training.

Find the full set of “How to Revise” articles here

The Lazy Brain

Brains are great at taking sneaky short-cuts to avoid thinking too hard, especially when they’re feeling tired. If you get stuck on something while revising, it might be for this reason.

Words are Powerful

Words not only help us communicate, but also help us organise our thoughts. By forcing things into words, we can prevent our brains from taking short cuts, and force them to think things through properly.

Many problems can be solved simply by stating the problem out loud. How many times have you asked someone for help but, as you are describing the problem you realise what the answer is? By describing the problem step by step, it’s suddenly obvious where you were going wrong.

As a bonus, when you take the effort to put things into your own words this forces the thoughts through your brain in a way that means you are more likely to remember it in future.

Your best study buddy is already in the room

Can you explain Mitosis to Mr Pokey?

Research shows that much of what people learn in schools comes from talking with their teachers and classmates. But what if you’re alone? Don’t despair, your study buddy does not have to be human, or even alive.

As you study, you could explain concepts out loud to:

• Your pet

• A beloved soft toy

• A smiley face drawn on your finger

• A picture of someone you love or respect

• Pretty much anything with two googly eyes stuck onto it

I don’t know what the research says about giving your buddy a name, but I would imagine this would help too.

Keep Your Language On Track

For best effect:

• Speak in complete sentences rather than letting your thoughts jump around. If you need to repeat yourself to do this, then do so (your study buddy won’t mind). Making yourself repeat the same idea again but more clearly is really helpful.

• Keep your language scientific and appropriate to the level of study where possible.

• Don’t let your brain take short-cuts by using unprecise language or skipping through ideas. Speak slowly and deliberately, like you really are trying to explain something to someone who doesn’t already know it.

By repetitively speaking biology jargon words out loud, you will be much more likely to remember them in future. And by using them in complete, meaningful sentences, you will be telling your brain that they are useful things to recall and flagging them up as things worth remembering in future.

It’s important that you’re not just repeating sentences you read elsewhere, the key is to produce new sentences that serve a purpose in explaining something to your study buddy.

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If this post has been helpful, please like ❤️ below and share with your friends. 

Key Concept: Independent and Dependent Variables

A guest blog from Dr Jenny Shipway, who studied biochemistry at university and now works in science communication and education training.

To understand experimental design and graphs in exam questions, you will need to confidently recognise the difference between different types of variables. Master this now and it will also make it easier to learn content that is taught using graphs.

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What is a Variable

A variable is any value that does/might change during an experiment.

Variables can include things like pH, temperature, colour, or the concentration of substances. The amount of time that has passed is a variable, as are rates of reaction.

• Some variables’ values are fixed deliberately by the scientist.

• Some variables’ values are changed deliberately by the scientist. These changes are planned in advance so the measured values are usually known before the experiment starts.

• Other variables’ values are allowed to change naturally as the experiment progresses. These values can be measured to provide useful data.

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Simplify Your Exam Approach

During exams it’s very easy to get overwhelmed with information. When this happens, your brain makes guesses and jumps, often without you being aware. This is why students so often mis-read graphs and/or make ‘silly’ mistakes.

Excellent Exam Tip: work out what the experiment was and how the graph is presented BEFORE looking at the exam question.

This will …

• Reduce the number of things you’re thinking about at one time

• Reduce the risk of you jumping to (incorrect) conclusions

• Help you focus on understanding the experiment

You might feel an urge to rush forward to look at the question, but trust me that won’t save time. You will not be able to answer the questions unless you understand the graph, and rushing forward will make that more difficult, not less.

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Identifying Variables

Variables described in the experiment and named on the graph axes may include:

• Independent Variable – this is the thing that is changed deliberately by the scientist in a planned way. This is the thing that we expect to cause a measurable effect. 

• Dependent Variable- this is the thing that is measured by the scientist. The value is not known until it is measured, and the value will depend upon the value of the independent variable.

• Control Variables – these variables are fixed to one unchanging value throughout. For example, all experiments might be carried out at 20°C, in which case temperature is a control variable. (Important: this is a different thing from ‘a control’).

The purpose of the experiment is to answer the question: how does the independent variable affect the dependent variable?

There are usually many factors that could be affecting the dependent variable, so it’s important to control as many variables as possile. The idea is that if only one thing has changed (ie the independent variable), then you can be more confident the affect is due to that one thing. 

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An Example 🍅🍅🍅

If you wanted to work out what temperature was best for growing tomatoes, you could try growing plants at different temperatures to see which plant produced the most fruit. Everything except temperature should be kept the same so that you’re sure that any difference in fruit yield is due to temperature.

The question is: how does temperature affect fruit yield?

You will deliberately be changing the temperature to pre-chosen values, so temperature is the independent variable.

You will need to measure the weight of tomatoes produced to find out this value. So this is the dependent variable. The weight of fruit will depend upon the temperature.

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Check your Understanding

Can you identify the independent and dependent variables in the following examples? Which variable was independently fixed by the scientist? And which was measured/recorded during the experiment?

(Ignore the positions of the data points, you only need to look at the axis labels.)

Usually, you will find the independent variable along the x-axis, and the dependent variable up the y-axis. But that’s not always the case (as you hopefully spotted in some of these examples). Do not let your brain jump to an assumption! You must always check this.

You need to be 100% confident of your variables before you move forward to look at the actual question, or everything else will get really confusing. It’s a good tip to write on the exam paper which variable is which (eg label the graph axes “I.V.” and “D.V.”)

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Multiple Independent Variables

It’s possible to have more than one independent variable.

For example, some experiments are run twice under different conditions. See this graph:

First, look at the axes. The independent variable here is the amount of time that has passed (on the x-axis): the scientist decided before the experiment at what times they would count the fruit. The dependent variable is the number of ripe fruit (on the y-axis): the number of ripe fruit is the thing the scientist is measuring, and this depends on how much time has passed when the measurement is taken. We’ve seen this before.

Now look at the data. There are two sets of data plotted on the graph. One experiment has been run with fertiliser, and one without. So the presence of fertiliser is another independent variable – it’s something else that affects the value of the dependent variable.

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Example A-level Exam Questions

Can you identify the independent and dependent variables in the following A level Biology exam questions?

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For more general information about graphs, see the post about how best to approach A level biology graph questions.

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How to Revise A Level Biology: Constructing Meaning

A guest blog from Dr Jenny Shipway, who studied biochemistry at university and now works in science communication and education training.

Find the full set of “How to Revise” articles here

What teachers don’t tell you about A level Biology

Your teachers will take you through the course material. Hopefully you’ll be able to follow what they’re saying, and maybe you’ll copy down notes in class and then make flashcards to help you remember these things.

But that’s not enough to get a good grade. There are some things you need that teachers don’t tell you – because … well, they can’t. Some things can’t be told.

Into the Brain

The only way for a teacher to get things into your brain is to try to squeeze information in via your senses, and that’s pretty limited in what it can achieve even when you’re doing your best to pay attention.

The simple facts and concepts that you are served by teachers and books are just ingredients that you’re going to need to use to construct your own understanding of the topic.

This next step happens inside your own brain. Nobody can help you with this and it takes active mental effort. It’s not (just) about ‘memorising’ things, this is about constructing deeper meaning from the simple bits of information that you have taken in.

You know that ‘oh NOW I get it’ feeling - when you suddenly understand something that was just a list of information before? And suddenly it all makes sense? That’s what you need to be aiming for throughout your studies.

Too many facts

Your brain can memorise seemingly limitless facts and information for later recall. Things that could be put on a flashcard, like “RNA is single stranded”, or “water is polar”.

Some people think this will be enough. After all, surely everything in the textbook is there? Well, in a way yes. But there’s a big problem in that there are just so many of them. Although your brain can remember as much as it wants, there is a hard limit to how many bits of information your brain can juggle at one time when working new things out.

To answer the more-complex exam questions you would need to recall many many individual words, facts and concepts, and make sense of how these interact with each other, all at the same time as working out what the question is actually asking, and then processing the information it presents to produce your answer.

This isn’t possible because you have a limited working memory – the bit of your brain capacity that consciously processes things. You will feel completely overwhelmed.

A Deeper Understanding

The way the brain gets around this this problem is by its (amazing!) ability to process information to create a deeper understanding of a topic. This deeper understanding is not a list of facts and cannot easily be defined. You can think of it like a capacity of the brain to process new information on that topic. (Psychologists call it a “schema”.)

If I say: “Imagine a fluffy dog” … you just do it. Effortlessly. You don’t have to struggle to recall every fact you’ve ever heard about what a dog is, and what fluffy is, and pull all of these things together on the fly. Instead, the only things you need in your working memory are “fluffy” and “dog”. Because both of these come with an inbuilt deep understanding.

Contructing Meaning

So how do you go from a group of facts to a deeper understanding?

It takes mental effort. You need to slow down and avoid skipping over things that are uncomfortable. To check that all those different facts and concepts fit together properly, that they make sense in how they interact with each other. You need time just thinking about the topic, looking at it from different angles, testing your understanding, checking that everything about the topic links together properly and makes sense at every scale (and also in relation to other topics you have learned).

Ask yourself: do you have a real understanding of this topic? Or do you just have a list of facts that you are sticking together?

The really good news is that when you do get it (“Oh NOW I understand!”) everything will suddenly become so much easier and less overwhelming. It’ll also make it easier to remember the associated facts and jargon, because they’ll be anchored by something really strong.

Test yourself

You know when teachers say “explain in your own words”? That’s because they don’t want you to repeat a set definition you’ve memorised from the text book, but rather they want you to demonstrate your own understanding of the topic.

If you really understand something, you’ll have a thousand different ways you could explain it. If I asked you what a dog is, you’d never give me the same explanation twice – there are so many different ways to approach that question. And you can answer it in different ways because you’d be processing a deep understanding rather than just repeating back something you memorised.

How many different ways, from how many different directions, could you explain the biology topic you’re currently studying?

Success in Exams

So many students lament that “I know the content, I just have trouble answering exam questions”. They are hoping for some quick-fix ‘exam technique’ but in nearly all cases the issue is that they simply lack the deeper understanding the questions demand.

Without an understanding of the topic, you’ll be drowning in facts at best. And just coughing up a pile of facts related to the topic won’t be enough to get you through.

With a deeper understanding, you’ll be able to confidently recognise what exam questions are about. You will have the spare mental capacity to process the required information to produce high quality answers. And as a bonus, you are less likely to make ‘silly’ mistakes.

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How to Approach A level Biology Graph and Table Questions: Tips and Exam Question Pack

Get top marks when analysing figures, tables and images by avoiding common mistakes that students make

This article contains key vocabulary, a strategy for how to approach questions for success, a multichoice quiz with answers, and a big pack of past paper exam questions

Don’t panic, it’s only a graph

The single best exam tip for graphs and tables exam questions is to start by looking at the graph or chart itself. DO NOT LOOK AT THE QUESTIONS FIRST! This single thing will help you avoid the most common mistakes that students make.

But you also need to know what you’re doing. Which means you’ll need to be confident with these terms:

Background Knowledge / Vocabulary:

• Independent Variable: The variable that you purposefully set to different values during the experiment

• Dependent Variable: The variable that you measure during the experiment, which is unknown until it is measured

• Replicate: Experimental data is often replicated - the same data point is recorded multiple times for the same conditions

• Accuracy / Precision: Accuracy is how close the replicated values are to the correct value, and precision is how close they are to each other. If there is an unknown problem with the experiment, results can be very precise but have very low accuracy.

• Range / Standard Deviation: The amount of variation in the data. A large range or standard deviation means that the replicated data had a broad range of results. A small range or standard deviation means they were much more similar in value. Range / Standard deviation is therefore a measure of precision.

• Trend: What is the general relationship between the dependent and independent variables? When the experimenter increased the independent variable, what happened to the dependent variable? What shape is the graph?
  

How to Approach the Question:

1. Look at the graph or chart first!
Too many students look at the question first, get confused or panicky about what it is asking, and form preconceptions about what data they need. This then means they are then unable to look at the data clearly, and miss the information they actually need. Looking at the graph or chart first both makes the data easier to understand, and makes it easier to work out what the question is asking.

Trust me, this is a major factor in student success. If you only take away one thing from this article, always look at the graph or chart first.

2. Don’t panic if it’s about something totally unfamiliar
Students can get very thrown if the question is about an organism or molecule that they have never heard of before (the exam boards do this a lot). This sudden panic makes it hard to think clearly.

Remember - if you have covered all the course material, even if the question is about something weird and new then all the information you need will be in the data. The things that look scary are just surface details. If the question was “Fred gave James two apples, how many apples does James have” you wouldn’t need to know who these people were to answer the question.

But don’t just dive in to the details of the data …

What’s going on here?

3. Understand the format
Don’t waste time looking at the actual dots or numbers until you understand how the data has been presented. Check every aspect methodically. It’s too easy to make assumptions based on previous graph/table formats you have seen - this one might be different!

• Look at the headings / axis labels and units. What is the data showing?

• Identify the independent variable and the dependent variable. If possible, it’s helpful to label them “IV” and “DV”.

• What type of data is shown? Is it averages? Does it include a Range or Standard Deviation?

• Graphs: Check the axis labels. Have they plotted rate or time, mass/volume or concentration? Often students assume enzyme graphs have rate on the y axis - but sometimes they don’t!

• Tables: Check: is the Independent Variable in the first column? Is the data in each row consistent?
  
  

4. Look at the data
Now you understand its context, look at the actual dots or lines or numbers. Check:

• Does the Range overwhelm differences in values: Do the range bars or standard deviation bars overlap? If they do, then there is significant overlap between the populations of replicated results that were used to calculated the average values.

• Unspecified Ranges: If there are replicates but no range bars or standard deviation has been calculated, how broad does the range look when you compare the replicated data values to their mean?

• Trends: What trends can you observe? Then think about what principle of biology is being shown by the the trends.

Now think about what it all actually means:

• Values: How would you explain the highest value, the lowest value, the point at which the line crosses the x axis,

• Range: How would you explain the largest range? How would you change the method to reduce the spread in the data?
  
  

5. Ok - NOW look at the actual questions
Try to see past the detail. How does this data/question relate to things you have studied?

Your working memory can easily get overloaded with details, making it hard to think. If the examiners have introduced a new organism, its name won’t be important. What might be important is the environment in which it lives, or its interactions with other organisms. You know what data you have, and what the questions are, so pick out what actually matters here. Is this a question about enyme reaction rates? Or about surface area to volume ratio?

This is why it’s useful to look at the data first - you will be able to look at it with a clear eye, making it easier to pick out how it’s relevant to the material you have studied.

6. Give the required information
Avoid the common mistakes that lose students marks:

• If they say you should use the data, you must either quote it, or show how you have used in in a calculation

• Refer to the axis/data labels wherever possible. Don’t say “the graph goes up”, do say “the saturation of haemoglobin increases”

A-Level Biology Past Paper Graphs and Charts Exam Questions:

Got all that? Ok! Here are some questions for you to practice.

And remember - don’t read the questions until after you have made sense of the graph or chart.

If you’re looking for more maths-heavy questions to practice, here is an older but popular set from OCR.

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This article was written by Dr Jenny Shipway with guidance and editing from Tom. Tom has over 26 years experience specialising in A level Biology teaching and tuition, and has helped many students achieve top grades in the subject.

How to Revise A Level Biology: Learn the Language

A guest blog from Dr Jenny Shipway, who studied biochemistry at university and now works in science communication and education training.

Find the full set of “How to Revise” articles here

The Language of Science

Words, Words, Words

One of the reasons I love biology is the wonderful language that comes with it. But learning so much new vocabulary can be a real challenge. And yes you’re going to need to learn it - both to understand the exam questions, and to communicate your answers clearly.

It helps - a lot - to use scientific language as much as possible from the very start of your studies. It might feel awkward, but fight the urge to slide into everyday speech for comfort, or to fudge the syllables of complex words. Consciously use scientific language so that it becomes a habit. And whenever possible, speak words out loud - the muscle memory will help you remember them. Using scientific language will require you to properly organise your thoughts, so being able to do this is also a great check that you really do understand a concept.

And it’s not just about remembering scientific words (although I have some tips for that below) - you will also need to know the words the examiners will use to describe what you have to do to get full marks.

Command Words

These are the words that will communicate what you need to do in exam questions. Fully understanding them will ensure you focus your efforts on the right things. However much accurate and interesting information you write down, if it’s not what the examiner was looking for then you won’t get the marks.

When you read an exam question, look out for words like these:

• Evaluate: judge using available evidence

• Show: provide structured evidence to reach a conclusion

• Deduce: draw conclusions from the evidence provided

Find a list of useful command words here

Scientific Vocabulary

Communication is a core concept of science, and that communication has to be as clear as possible. There are a lot of scientific words that can help you achieve this clarity. But only if you use them correctly.

For example:

• Accuracy / Precision: in academia, accuracy and precision are very different things. Accuracy is how close the values are to the correct value, and precision is how close they are to each other.

• Repeatable / Reproducible: in science, “repeatable” means the experiment has been repeated by the same experimenter using the same equipment, and the same results were obtained. “Reproducable” means the same results are still obtained when the experiment is run by a different person, or using different equipment/techniques.

FInd a list of useful scientific vocabulary here

Jargon

Some molecules and processes have really complicated names. But they are not just random letters - they have coded meaning. When you see a new word, or need to remember one, look at it carefully and see how it breaks down. Most long biological words are constructed from coded fragments stuck together.

For example, “carbonic anhydrase” is “carbon” + “ic” + “an” + “hydr” + “ase”. What does this molecule do? Look below if you’re stuck.

Important prefixes and suffixes:

• a- / an- : prefix meaning “not”. As seen in words like abiotic, anhydrase, and asexual. The “an” version is used when it goes in front of a vowel or h.

• bio- : prefix meaning it’s about something living. As seen in words like biology, biochemical, biotechnology, biotic, and biomass.

• cardi[o]- : prefix meaning it’s about the heart. As seen in cardiovascular, cardiopulmonary, cardiac.

• cyto- : prefix meaning it’s about cells. As seen in cytoplasm, [endo/exo]cytosis, cytokinesis, cytokines.

• endo- / exo- : prefixes meaning “inside / outside”. As seen in endoskeleton vs. exoskeleton; endotherm vs. exotherm; endocytosis vs. exocytosis; and endocrine vs. exocrine.

• extra- : prefix meaning “outside / beyond”. As seen in extracellular, extraordinary.

• glyco- : prefix meaning it’s something to do with glucose. As seen in glycolysis, glycosidic, glycogen, glycolipid and more.

• hetero- / homo- : prefixes meaning “different / the same”. As seen in heterotrophic, homologous.

• hydr : prefix relating to hydrogen or water. As seen in carbohydrate, hydrostatic, and carbonic anhydrase.

• hyper- / hypo- : prefixes meaning “over / under”. As seen in hyperglycemia, hypothalamus and many more words.

• -ase : suffix often use for enzyme names. As seen in amylase, polymerase, helicase, ligase, lactase and many more.

• -in : suffix often used for protein names, no matter their function. As seen in actin, myosin, insulin, and opsonin. But keep your wits about you: not all “-in”s are proteins, for example penicillin is not.

• -ic : suffix meaning “relating to”. As seen in abiotic, polymorphic, metabolic, antibiotic, genetic and many more.

• -ose : suffix often used in the names of sugars. As seen in glucose, fructose and ribose. Complex carbohydrates sometimes use it - cellolose does, but starch and glycogen do not.

• -some : suffix meaning “body” (ie a lump of stuff). These names are often given to things that have been spotted by use of a microscope. As seen in ribosome and chromosome. Also very often used for spheres of cell membrane: eg lysosome, acrosome and phagosome.

• mono- : means one. As seen in monomer; monosaccheride, mononucleotide, monogenic,

• di- : means two. As seen in dimer; dipeptide, dihydrogen oxide (water!), and many other words. But of course other words just happen to start “di-” and so you have to look at the rest of the word to be sure.

• tri- : means three. As seen in trimer, adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and others.

  [there are other ones for higher numbers, but they are used less often]

• poly- : prefix meaning many. A polymer is something made of repeated units stuck together (one unit is a monomer, two are a dimer, etc). As seen in polypeptide, polysaccharide, and polynucleotide. Also in words like polymorphic.

There are huge numbers of these word fragments - this list just contains some of the most important for A level Biology. Try to spot them as you go along - this will make it easier to remember the names of new process and molecules by relating them to their function. And maybe consider building up a bank of flashcards to help get them really stuck in your memory. If you can master these, learning new scientific jargon will be a lot easier.

Most importantly, make sure you’re not skipping over the middle bits of these words! Can you spell them from start to end? This will be a lot easier if you think about their entire structure, rather than just the beginning and end. Remember you won’t get the mark if you mess up the middle.

This is one of the reasons that speaking these words out loud helps - your brain might lie to you that you remember the middle bit, but speaking it out loud (without looking at the spelling!) is a great check for this.

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How to Revise A Level Biology: Keep Forgetting Things? Don't Despair!

A guest blog from Dr Jenny Shipway, who studied biochemistry at university and now works in science communication and education training.

Find the full set of “How to Revise” articles here

The Art of Forgetting

Your brain is amazing

It’s frustrating when we forget things we want to remember, but this isn’t a failure of our brains - it’s an important feature. Remembering everything would cause all sorts of problems, so our brain spends a lot of time forgetting things. What colour coat was the first person to pass you on the street today wearing? How many bites did you take during lunch? What is the first thing your Year 5 teacher said to you on your third day?

Unfortunately perhaps, we can’t consciously tell our brains what to remember. So sometimes it forgets things we want to recall, like the internal structure of the kidney, or how oxygen dissociation curves work. We can’t tell it to remember these things, but we can encourage it to remember by giving it sigals that this stuff is important.

So how does the brain choose what to remember? There are a variety of signals that can flag things up as worth remembering, including:

1. Information that links nicely to prior knowledge
2. Information that connects to things the brain has already decided are important

Pay attention to the links between a new topic and things you’ve learned before. And make sure they agree - if there is a conflict your brain is more likely to forget (also it means there is something you don’t understand which needs re-studying!). If you previously learned that every human cell has a nucleus, but then read that red blood cells do not have a nucleus, take the time to work out how that can be, or you’re likely to forget the new information.

Information that connects to yourself - like a topic you had to present to the class, a question you answered during a lesson, or something that you can relate to your own body - is particularly likely to be remembered.

3. Information that has proven itself to be useful

Test your recall - if you remember the information successfully and this feels like an achievement, your brain will take note. Brains love feelings of success and are always eager for more. Even better, use the information to successfully solve a problem. Brains LOVE that.

In biology you have the added benefit of having stories about health. The brain is always keen to remember information from stories that could help you avoid future harm. Emotional/personal stories of people with medical problems that were (or could have been) overcome with a little biological knowledge are high priority for the brain.

Putting on your auntie’s hat and trying to ride your next door neighbour’s unicycle is a valid study strategy

4. Information gained during/after novel experiences

In a study, children remembered a lesson better if they had an unexpected music lesson just beforehand. (If the music lesson was expected, they did not remember so much.) How much novelty is required to get this memory boost is sadly unknown, but you could try studying in different places, or wearing something unusual, or trying a new activity beforehand? At least it gives you the excuse to take a break from your desk.

5. Information that satisfies your curiosity

In a study using Trivial Pursuit questions, people better remembered the facts they’d been more curious to know the answers to. Ask yourself questions as you go through a topic, get a step ahead of your learning and try to develop a curiosity for what comes next. If you don’t care, it’s going to be harder to remember. (If you lose all interest, take a break and try to ride a unicycle.)

6. Information that it receives on multiple occasions over a period of time

This one is really important. We generally forget things - even important things - bit by bit unless we think about them again. My memory of childhood holidays is largely centred around photographs, as they have reminded me of specific events over the years.

It’s totally normal to forget things the first time you learn them. And the second time. It can be frustrating to relearn things that you thought you knew, but this is just how learning works. You might feel you have made no progress after re-learning something for the third time, but that’s not true - every time you re-learn it, you will slow the rate of forgetting. Until, with enough recapping, you will fix the information in your long-term memory.

So, when you learn something, try to come back and recap it after about a week. And then again after maybe another couple of weeks. Then again after another month or so. This is called ‘spaced learning’ and it’s one of the most powerful and efficient techniques for getting stuff into your long-term memory.

Luckily for biology students, the topics are really interconnected. This means you will naturally get the chance to recall past topics when new ones relate to them, while you are thinking about all the connections.

Her brain’s still doing good stuff, so I reckon this counts as studying

Be kind to your brain

All of this learning is pretty hard work, and your brain will need some downtime to process everything behind the scenes.

Having a nap can be great for learning, but at the very least make sure you get a decent night’s sleep.

This is why last minute studying, staying up all night studying before an exam, is not recommended. Spreading your learning out over a longer period is much more efficient.

In a nutshell:

• Don’t despair when you forget something you did previously, you’ve still made progress. Trust the process!

• Every time you re-learn something, celebrate that you have moved the information one step closer to long term memory

• Taking a break to do fun, novel activities - or to have a nap - can be good for your studying

Dr Jenny Shipway
www.jennyshipway.com

How to Revise A Level Biology: Work Your Brain

A guest blog from Dr Jenny Shipway, who studied biochemistry at university and now works in science communication and education training.

Find the full set of “How to Revise” articles here

Memory Is The Residue Of Thought

Think About It

Daniel Willingham, an influential educational psychologist, said it first: “Memory is the residue of thought”. Whatever tricks we might use to help our memories - linking concepts to prior knowledge or practicing recall - we will never remember things we don’t think about.

It’s the classic ‘in one ear, out the other’ problem. But it doesn’t only happen when the information is boring; it can also be witnessed after superb lectures given by talented speakers.

Have you ever listened to a talk where the lecturer explained everything so clearly that following their train of thought was effortless - everything made such perfect sense, and flowed together so well that it was a pleasure to listen to? I’ve been to talks like that, and loved them. I’ve gone home rhapsodising about how I learned so much. And then someone asks “What did you learn”? And - I realise there’s no residue of the talk in my mind. I can remember the experience, but not the information.

They say people remember how you make them feel, not what you say. Students and teachers have to fight against this default. That speaker would be a terrible teacher.

You can’t leave a mark without taking an action

Effortful Thought

When we’re young, we seem to pick up information without trying. New vocabulary, the names of dinosuars - our brains just sponge it up. Psychologist Frank Geary calls this ‘Biologically Primary’ learning. It happens with things our brains are primed to absorb, like how to communicate, what is good to eat, and dangerous things in our environment.

The academic learning we do in colleges, in contrast, would be called ‘Biologically Secondary’. It’s not necessary for survival to know how muscle contractions move the skeleton, and so - although we all have skeletons and muscles - we have to make effort to learn this. This type of learning isn’t joyously soaked-up; it requires effortful thought. Writing, too, is biologically secondary - it has to be consciously learned with effort, rather than being effortlessly acquired just from living in a society with labels, notices and signs everywhere.

How to Revise

Biology A Level is definitely biologically secondary in this categorisation. Understanding the concepts requires a lot of effortful thought. Reading around the subject for fun is great, but you need to stop and really think about the ideas if you want the concepts to stick. You need to process them in relation to other knowledge you have, and practice using them in different ways.

This is one of the reasons why taking notes is good: you are forced to process the information to turn it into writing.

And one of the reasons taking notes during lessons/lectures can be bad: you have less time to think about the topic.

Are you paying attention?

It’s also why using someone else’s notes is pretty pointless. It’s the action of making the notes that has value, not the notes themselves.

If you carefully go through a topic, working it out, making sense of it in your own way, and then prove you have it tidily organised in your mind by demonstrating this on paper (usually realising in the process that there’s something you haven’t quite got right, so that you go back and fill that knowledge gap) … Then you have thought about the subject for sure. Creating notes gives motivation to think, and also provides a test of the quality of that thought.

Someone else’s notes? They are no different from a text book. They will have meaning to the person who made them - imbued with the memory of the thought that developed them, and referenced with their own memories and prior knowledge in ways that are unique to them. But all they can give you are surface facts. Not the deeper understanding that you need. There are no short cuts, sadly.

I’m so confused

The good news is that the feelings of confusion and difficulty you might experience while learning can actually be good signs (not always, but often!). Good teachers will make you feel this way, because these are feelings we get when we’re really thinking about something, trying to make sense of it. Our brains are actively turning over the new information and trying to fit it with our prior knowledge. Sometimes we come to realise our prior knowledge is wrong, and have to change the way we think about things on a wider scale. This is mentally uncomfortable because brains don’t like being wrong so they’ll fight against this. Feelings are discomfort are necessary to this process.

All this means that if something is too easy to understand, it can actually be a problem. If you don’t need to think about something to understand it, then you will not leave traces of it in your memory. In this case, it can be useful to purposefully make it somehow more difficult, just to give your brain something to chew on.

In a nutshell:

• We remember what we think about - you will need to make mental effort

• Feeling a topic is difficult or confusing is part of effective learning

• Don’t borrow a friend’s notes, make your own (at home)!

Dr Jenny Shipway
www.jennyshipway.com

How to Revise A Level Biology: Making Connections

A guest blog from Dr Jenny Shipway, who studied biochemistry at university and now works in science communication and education training.

Find the full set of “How to Revise” articles here

Everything’s Connected

Memory Palaces

Some people specialise in memorising long strings of boring information. One trick they use is to imagine the information located along a walking route. Imagine if you had to remember a list of household appliances. You might imagine a kettle outside your front door, and a dishwasher at the end of your garden path. There could be a toaster on the road outside, and a microwave on the corner down the road. As you mentally rewalked the route, you would ‘look’ in each location and see the objects, which would be remembered in the right order.

The reason why such tricks are necessary is that your brain can’t remember unrelated information. Every new tidbit must be linked to something that you already know. Linking it to something you know well, like the route from your house, helps pin it in place.

One of the great challenges of A level biology is that you need to really understand things, rather than just memorising facts and figures. It’s about deeper concepts rather than surface facts. But the good news is that this actually makes it easier to remember the associated facts - each piece of information is related to others, and the more interlinked it is, the easier it will be to recall.

Toto I don’t think we’re in GCSE any more

Synoptic Thinking

Some of the most challenging exam questions are those that require you to think between topics. Rather than drawing on your memory of one specific part of the course, they demand you reach into your understanding of multiple areas to solve a single problem. This is similar to the type of thinking you would need as a researcher, where bringing in knowledge from other disciplines can help solve problems in novel ways.

Although the A-level specification is split into sections, biology itself is a intricately interlinked tangle of concepts with uncountable interdependencies. Pity the teacher who has to decide in which order to tackle the topics given how everything seems to underpin everything else in some way or another.

How to Revise

Don’t avoid the complexities of how the topics interrelate. By noticing and thinking about these, you can make it easier to both understand and remember concepts. And make it easier for you to jump between different areas for those synoptic questions.

To really understand a complex concept, it’s necessary to look at it from different angles, on different days, considering multiple different examples. Brains are incredible things: when they are fed enough examples and surface facts, and allowed to really think, they can magic up a deep understanding beyond anything that is easily written down. It’s not possible to simply read this type of deep understanding in (brains are nothing like computers); the understanding has to be created in the context of your own mind. Looking at topics from the angle of intersecting topics is a great way to feed your brain with new information to help it build understanding.

When you spot a link to a previous topic, give yourself a bit of time to recall what you previously learned, to think about the new topic from that angle and consider how they intersect. As well as helping your brain build understanding, making these links will make it easier to recall information. The more interlinked information is, the easier it is to recall.

What did your kettle look like?

Use Your Self

Every brain is different. Everyone who imagines walking past a kettle on their front step has a different image in mind. Do they imagine tripping over it if the step is narrow? Or is it sat on a plant pot? What colour is the kettle? Everything will be drawn from prior experience, and this is one of the reasons it works well as a memory trick - it’s linking to things your brain already know about.

If you can link anything in your course to strong memories, or especially to yourself, this will help you recall it later. When you learn about parts of the body, link it in your mind to your own experience of having a body. If you learn about a disease, think about someone you know with that disease while you study. Or imagine what it’d be like if you were a doctor treating it, or if you had it yourself - how you would feel, what you would do? Linking new information to our sense of self is possibly the strongest way to flag up information for later recall.

In a nutshell:

• Identify and explore connections / interdependencies between biology topics

• Think about concepts in the context of your own life

• If you find something hard to remember, try finding more links between it and things you already know well

Dr Jenny Shipway
www.jennyshipway.com

How to Revise A Level Biology: Chunking Complex Concepts

A guest blog from Dr Jenny Shipway, who studied biochemistry at university and now works in science communication and education training.

Find the full set of “How to Revise” articles here

Breaking It Down

Step by Step

Understanding and remembering all the information required for A Level Biology is a real challenge. So anything that reduces the workload and overall effort required must be a good thing.

One of the problems is that there is so much to take in, including complicated concepts that require understanding of multiple other complex ideas. There is a bottleneck in our ability to process information for learning which can get jammed if you try to think about too much at once; it’s called Working Memory.

Working memory isn’t a particular part of the brain (the brain’s function is highly distributed) but rather a capacity of the brain. It’s where new information is held while it is consciously thought through and processed to create new understandings and definitions. The products of this thinking can then be moved into your long term memory (memory is the residue of thought).

You can get a feel for the limitations of your working memory by trying to process a list of items. Try this:

Starting with the list of three digits, read the numbers then shut your eyes and mentally add them up. Don’t use any tricks, just do it straight. If you can do it, move on to the next, longer, list.

How many numbers can you process like this? How does it feel when you lose track of things?

Three 2 8 3
Four 3 1 7 9
Five 7 4 8 2 6
Six 4 9 3 1 8 2
Seven 5 2 7 3 4 6 9

Because Working Memory prevents us thinking of more than a small number of things at once, as humans we need ideas to be broken down into manageable chunks for learning. This is why we have step-by-step guides, bullet points, and why this sentence only has three items.

Educators call this ‘chunking’.

But is the bottom layer stable?

Shaky Ground

The complex concepts of A level Biology are carefully broken down by teachers and educators into manageable chunks for you to mentally chew upon. They are then presented (you hope) in a sensible order that allows you to build up your understanding.

It’s like making a huge, complex LEGO model - you make small sections first, then join them together to create larger structures.

The problem comes when you make an error at the beginning. You might not realise until you have already built a large - but, you now realise, unstable mental structure. If your learning is based on an early false premise, you could have been wasting time and mental effort thinking about things in all the wrong ways.

You’ll need to go back and start from scratch. But worse, you can’t dissassemble what you’ve built. All that misguided thinking has left its indelible mark in your brain, and when you call upon the topic in the exam, which version will your brain give you?

How to Revise

Frustrating as it may be not to romp through a topic and meet all your studying objectives, it’s best to progress with care.

Check your understanding of each chunk before you move on. If you’re not sure, go back through the materials and think some more. If you don’t understand a foundational premise, then moving on will waste your energy building a misconceived and confusing mental model. You remember what you think about, and if you’re thinking about something wrong, it’s hard not to remember it wrong.

In a nutshell:

• Break things down into manageable chunks for mental processing

• Check you understand each chunk before using it to build bigger concepts

• If you think might you have something wrong, stop and check rather than trying to push on

How to Revise A Level Biology: The Familiarity Trap

A guest blog from Dr Jenny Shipway, who studied biochemistry at university and now works in science communication and education training.

Find the full set of “How to Revise” articles here

Tricks of the Mind

The lazy brain

There's a dangerous trick your brain can play, which can fool you into using ineffective study techniques and lead to to exam-day confusion and disappointment. But you can overcome it if you know how.

You are sitting in the exam hall. The bell sounds to start the exam. You turn over the paper, read the question and smile. You confidently pick up your pen but … somehow you can’t pull up the knowledge you need. What was that word? You know you learned it, but your mind is blank.

After the exam, you talk to a friend. They tell you the word. “Aaah I knew that!!” you say. But no you didn’t; not when it mattered.

Did it really go in?

Your brain tricked you. Going through your notes before the exam, your brain seemed to be telling you that you knew all the content. However, really it was just telling you that your notes were familiar. You never asked if it could actually recall the information.

Human brains by nature like to minimise mental effort and to feel successful (it should be noted that these are features, not bugs). As a study technique, re-reading notes doesn’t strain your brain or make you feel like you’re failing in any way. You feel like you’re learning. But are you really? Is it possible to learn without making mental effort?

How to revise

In 2006, a study [1] was published comparing two groups of students, who studied some new information in two different ways. First they all had a look through the materials. Next, one set of students were asked to re-read everything, while the other set were asked to put the materials aside and write down everything they could remember. Some time later, both sets of students took an exam to see how much had stuck.

Going into the exam, the students who had had more time studying the information were more confident. They had been able to go through it a few times, so were more familiar with it. In contast, the students who had spent the second part of their time writing down what they had recalled were not so confident. They were aware that there were parts they had forgotten, and that they had been unable to recall it perfectly.

You can probably guess the exam results. Familiarity is not the same as learning, and the first set of students’ confidence was misplaced. The students who had practiced retriving the information from their memory during study time were better able to recall the same information in the exam.

Since then, many other studies have confirmed that practicing retrieval is a particularly effective way to study. It’s called the “Test Effect”. Recalling information flags it up in your brain as being worthwhile remembering for future use. Testing what you can recall even out-performs open-book mind-mapping; in a 2021 study [2] of biology studying techniques, mind-mapping wasn’t found to add anything to the boost students got from retrieval practice.

Keep the faith

Gravity will draw the knowledge down into the brain. Maybe.

Retrieval is hard work and it can be frustrating or demoralising if you can’t remember everything you expected to. But it’s a fantastic way to learn content properly. Be reassured that the brain-ache you experience during retrieval is the feeling of effective learning. And if you can’t remember as much as you expected? You’ve been tricked by familiarity. But it’s great that you discovered this now, rather than in the exam.

So give it a try: after you revise a topic, put your books aside and just write down everything you can remember. See if your expectation matches reality. And when you can’t remember everything, you can still reassure your uncomfortable brain that it’s done a great job.

In a nutshell:

• Practicing recall helps you know for sure what you don’t know

• Practicing recall makes the information more easily remembered again in future

• When you can’t remember something, that’s not failure - you have successfully identified something for re-study

Dr Jenny Shipway
www.jennyshipway.com

References:

[1] Henry L Roediger & Jeffrey D Karpicke, Test-Enhanced Learning: Taking Memory Tests Improves Retention, Psychological Science 2006, 17(3) 249-255.

[2] Garrett M. O’Day and Jeffrey D. Karpicke, Comparing and Combining Retrieval Practice and Concept Mapping, Journal of Educational Psychology 2021, Vol. 113, No. 5, 986–997.