Teaching AQA A-Level Biology for the First Time

Course Code: T0154 £249.00 – £289.00

ABOUT THIS COURSE

This refreshed course offers an introduction and overview to teaching AQA A-Level Biology for anyone in their first 3 years of teaching the course, or for anyone lacking confidence in delivering the course effectively. The sessions are designed to improve delegates’ understanding of the AQA specification and ensure that students have the best opportunity to maximise their potential grades. The course will also demonstrate practical teaching and learning strategies While assessment materials will be drawn from the AQA course, many of the ideas will be applicable to other specifications.

BENEFITS OF ATTENDING

  • Provide teachers of A-level Biology with the material and confidence to teach effectively to all ability ranges
  • Obtain quality understanding of the key challenge areas and how to teach them
  • Explore how the maths and practical skills can be embedded throughout the course
  • Gain insight into the content, the exam structure and the how exams are marked.
  • Leave with a set of resources and scheme of work for the full 2 year course
  • Understanding of how to differentiate using scaffold and stretch strategies for essay writing

PROGRAMME

Overview of the AQA A-level Biology course including challenges and what to expect from pupils

10.00am
  • Ensuring students and teachers hit the ground running in September – introducing the scheme of work and baseline assessment
  • Recognising which areas will be most challenging for you and how to address these issues
  • How to develop a teaching plan that reflects the assessment objective weightings and the areas which require more intense teaching
  • Identifying your support network and making the most of it – particularly in a small department
  • Ensuring topic areas which create the foundation for success – incorporating them into

Expectations at A Level

10.30am
  • The transition between GCSE and A level
  • What do successful A Level students do?
  • What do Grade A/A* response look like?
  • What do Grade D responses look like?
  • Synoptic skills and how to use these in your teaching
 

Break

11.20am

Approaches to Effectively Teaching the Maths and Practical Skills

11.40am
  • Effective methods and approaches for integrating maths and practical skills into teaching of the course
  • How to integrate practical skills and theoretical content to help students write about their practical work confidently
  • Practical strategies and approaches in the key challenges in teaching maths and practical skills
 

Lunch

12.40pm

Key Ideas for teaching the content knowledge from Paper 1

1.40pm
  • Pitfalls and easy wins when teaching Biological Molecules, Cells, Organisms, exchange substances and their environment
  • Teaching for success; how to support students to remember key concepts and begin to apply them – interleaving and retrieval strategies
  • Teaching across the ability range; how to ensure top students are challenged, while not leaving lower ability students behind.
  • Lessons from the exam boards and how to implement them in the classroom.

Planning and Structuring

2.40pm
  • Curriculum issues – Intent, Implementation and assessing Impact Milestones for success, what should students have mastered by the end of year 12
  • Assessment time tables, when, what and how and how to balance this with whole school assessment schedules
  • Time management – how to plan so that you can mark efficiently and effectively; use of peer assessment

The Exams – What is expected

3.15pm
  • Overview of all three papers by AQA, what are they looking for?
  • Teaching towards the ’endgame’, what language to use, ensure you are marking ‘like the examiner’ and secure grading
  • Focus on essay structure in exams, how to pick up easy marks, and what top grade responses look like

Depart

3.45pm
A-Level - Code: T0154

Teaching AQA A-Level Biology for the First Time

COURSE LEADER

Dr Harjit K Singh is a highly experienced Biology teacher, with 30 years of A-Level classroom teaching, IB Biology for 8 years as well as BTEC Applied Science. She has worked with Biology Departments on interventions, focusing on Teaching and Learning. She has been an examiner for AQA and OCR A-Level Biology for over 20 years and as an IB examiner for over 15 years. She is involved with marking GCSE Biology mock papers for several different centres and was also a GCSE Psychology team leader for coursework.

She is a published author of the Key Skills and Knowledge Booster Biology and co-author of Key Skills and Knowledge Booster BTEC Science Applied and Vocational courses. She has been presenting Biology CPD courses for teachers both face to face and online for over 12 years. She has a wealth of experience in delivering student revision conferences and webinars and is actively involved with delivering In-School student A-Level Biology revision days.  She has also been involved in presenting international IB student revision courses both national and internationally.

 

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