VCE Bio - Scientific Method

[wildcat]

Hey guys,

I am doing Bio 3/4 this year. I was wondering how you would prepare for SACs when the teacher says that it's going to be 'practical based'. Anyone who has done Bio 3/4 - what are some good resources I could use to prepare for this?

Thanks.

[Erutepa]

Hey guys,

I am doing Bio 3/4 this year. I was wondering how you would prepare for SACs when the teacher says that it's going to be 'practical based'. Anyone who has done Bio 3/4 - what are some good resources I could use to prepare for this?

Thanks.

When your teacher says the SAC will be practical based, from my experience the SAC will probably consist of conducting an experiment followed by questions based on that practical. Some marks may be assigned to the completion of a log book (basically filling out data and observations while doing the experiment) but most marks will probably be allocated to the questions completed after the practical. Some of these questions will be content based (assessing content that is relevant to the practical) for which you should study by going over your notes on the content and doing practice questions. If your teacher has given you a practice SAC make sure you do this. There will also be some experimental design related questions which will require you to apply experimental design knowledge to the practical you completed. Some things you might have to do is: Identify the different variables present in the experiment, analyse and interperate data, comment on why certain things were done (e.g. to reduce impact of uncontrolled variable), comment on what things might be improved/what could have caused errors, and perhaps to write a conclusion for the experiment. I wouldn't think you'd have to do everything listed here, but I think these are all things that could come up, so you you would want a fairly good grasp of experimental design. Your textbook should do a good job at going over the relevant aspects of experimental design for you, and you should - as always - practice applying this knowledge by doing practice questions.
You can do the textbook questions for this purpose, but generally the best questions to do are exam style ones which you can find in resources like checkpoints, or atarnotes Topic Tests. Another resource I enjoyed using in 3/4 bio was BioZone which offer yet more practice question, however i found these were better when practicing for SACs specifically as they were a bit more systematic then the afformentioned exam style question resources.

To summarise: Study the content just as you would for a normal SAC, however make sure you are well aquainted with experimental design knowledge.

Hopefully this helps!