1. St Philip Howard Catholic High School SIXTH FORM BRIDGING WORK 2017
The bridging work MUST be completed for biology by the time you start in September.
Your work will be assessed.
Anyone not completing the work or producing such poor quality will be asked to act on the feedback and re do the work.

2. Remember you learn best when:-
Use your initiative, have a go and clarify later; it’s your ideas that matter.
Take a risk and be creative.
Talk about what you are learning and what you know.
Work together to explore how you would solve a problem.
Reflect on your needs and how you learn best in terms of interests, abilities and styles of learning. Make changes if necessary.
Respond positively to feedback from your teachers and your peers.
Take responsibility for your own learning.

3. Synoptic essay
In the A level paper 3 there is a 25 mark essay: one essay from a choice of two titles.
The essay is designed to assess whether you can bring together material from a range of topics to illustrate and explain an important concept or idea.
The essay is not just a memory test of what you know – it is also a test of whether you have some understanding of what you have learnt and can apply what you know.

4. Feedback from 2016 exams from examiners
General comments:
Students’ hand writing – each year examiners in all papers comment that students’ answers can be difficult to read. - Remember that the majority of scripts are scanned and marked by examiners at home on a computer screen, rather than in hard copy.
There are still students who are not using black ink.
Many students wrote about relevant topics but failed to relate the content to the theme of the title.
The vast majority of students appeared to understand that this is a synoptic exercise, where they have to attempt to draw on a wide range of examples to obtain a high mark.
Examiners reported that substantive attempts at extension material were uncommon.
GCSE-level content was common; as in previous years, the use of examples that any member of the public might use did not gain any extra credit.
Extension material has to be at least of A-level standard and accurately described using appropriate scientific terminology.
Appropriate terminology was often poorly used or absent. For example, many students wrote about ‘signals’ and ‘messages’ rather than impulses/action potentials. The use of ‘levels’ and ‘amounts’ for concentration was also very common.
The essay is supposed to be written using appropriate terminology, at a level to be expected after two years of A-level study.

5. Marking of the essay. You should write your essay in continuous prose.
Your essay will be marked for its scientific accuracy. It will also be marked for your selection of relevant material from different parts of the specification and for the quality of your written communication.
The maximum number of marks that can be awarded is:
Scientific content 16
Breadth of knowledge 3
Relevance 3
Quality of written communication 3

6. What to include in the essay
To identify an underlying theme or idea in an essay title – it will be a ‘big idea’, not a minor topic.
To select five or six different examples that you can use to illustrate the theme or idea.
To write a reasonable paragraph about each example (using appropriate A-level terminology) pointing out how it illustrates the theme or idea.
It is not – ‘Think of every possible thing that relates to the title and write as much as you can about it, with no thought of the main theme/idea’.
This would make it just a memory test (AO1).
It is not – ‘Write at a very high level (above A-level) about one or two topics’.
This is not a synoptic approach. We do not wish to encourage learning of rote answers involving one or two important topics which might apply to many titles – eg respiration.

7. Your task Choose 2 of the 5 essay titles on the next page.
For each essay, spend 5 minutes planning your essay, this can be a spider diagram or bullet points of ideas. Please hand your plan in with each essay.
The essay should take around 40 minutes to write.
A good concise essay will be around 2 handwritten pages of A4.

8. Essay titles (choose 2)
1. The importance in the control of processes and responses in organisms. 2. The importance of shapes fitting together in cells and organisms. 3. The causes of disease in humans. 4. The movement of substances within living organisms. 5. DNA and the transfer of information.