Study with Steph Biology

🎉 You are done! 🎉

🧠 Your A-level Biology journey is over!

⭐ You should be so proud of yourself for sticking with one of the hardest A-level subjects and seeing it through!

🍀 If you still have exams – keep going! You’re almost there!

🎉 And if you are done – go celebrate!!

AQA A-level Biology students – here are five common mistakes you need to avoid in the exam – be sure to share with your fellow Biologists!

1️⃣ If you’re writing about the light independent reaction of photosynthesis, remember you must write triose phosphate in full – do not abbreviate it to TP!

2️⃣ Don’t confuse NAD and NADP – both are coenzymes that carry hydrogen (electrons) when reduced, but NAD is only in respiration, and NADP is in photosynthesis.

3️⃣ Lots of processes in Paper 2 involve ions – make sure you don’t miss out the word ion! ‘Sodium diffuses into the axon’ = 0 marks, but ‘Sodium ions diffuse into the axon’ = correct!

4️⃣ When referring to cones, make sure you don’t say ‘red cones’, ‘blue cones’ etc – it needs to be ‘red-sensitive cones’, ‘blue-sensitive cones’.

5️⃣ The role of ATP in muscle contraction is not to make myosin bind to actin – ATP is used to break the actin-myosin crossbridge, bend the myosin head back to its original position, and finally it’s used to actively transport calcium ions back into the sarcoplasmic reticulum.

⭐ Bonus tip – if you’re explaining the outcome of a statistical test, do not say ‘the results are significant’ – it needs to be the difference or correlation is significant.

Remember this key statement – if the P value is less than 0.05 this means ‘there is less than 5% probability that the difference/correlation is due to chance’.

⭐️ My Top Tips for AQA A-level Biology Paper 1

1️⃣ Make sure your answer matches the command word in the question. Particularly look out for ‘describe and explain’ questions – you often need to do both for just one mark!

2️⃣ For calculation questions, make sure you express your answer in the correct format – e.g. if it asks for a specific number of significant figures, or standard form.

It’s heartbreaking when students correctly execute a complex multistep calculation and then forget to express it in the correct format and lose a mark!

3️⃣ If you’re struggling to understand a question, do not panic! Simply leave it, complete the rest of the paper and come back to it!

4️⃣ Make sure you leave sufficient time for the extended response questions at the end of the paper – or do them first!

5️⃣ Don’t lose easy marks by forgetting to:

⭐️ Refer to ions as ions! If you say ‘sodium’ instead of ‘sodium ions’ you won’t get the mark.

⭐️ Mention the process by which molecules are moving – if something is moving make sure you give the process e.g. ‘water moves in by osmosis’, or glucose is co-transported…

⭐️ Mention standard error/deviation bars if they are given on a graph or in a table – remember if the standard error bars overlap, the difference is not significant, but if they do not overlap, the difference is significant.

⭐️ Say the ‘difference/correlation is significant’, not ‘the results are significant’ when talking about the outcome of statistical tests!

🧠 Remember, you’ve worked hard and you know what you need to do! Go in and show those examiners you’re a Biology superstar! ⭐️

⭐️ AQA A-level Biology students! ⭐️

Final round of ‘Guess what’s on the back of the flashcard!’ before Paper 1 on Thursday!

Will be moving onto Paper 2 after that so make sure you’re following so you don’t miss them!

⭐️ Plan & write some essays! ⭐️

Students often don’t realise that planning and writing 25-mark essays is one of THE BEST ways to prepare for all three exams.

Obviously, it’s great preparation for Paper 3 – the essay itself is worth nearly 10% of your overall grade!

But it’s also amazing revision for Paper 1 and 2!

⭐️ It tests your knowledge of a wide variety of different topics from both papers – great for AO1 questions.

⭐️ It forces you to consider the importance of these topics – great for application questions that may come up!

Make sure you’re following for more on the essay over the next two weeks!!

If you are unsure about what is required for the Paper 3 essay, please do drop me a message!