Biology 3/4 SACS

[Voltman]

Hi everybody! It is getting close to the school holidays and I am interested in knowing what people have done in biology unit 3/4 for their SACS. I have also seen the VCE assessment handbook for Biology on the VCAA website so please don't send me links to it (it has given me a rough idea what I'd be expecting, but it is not very specific). Next year I will be doing biology unit 3/4 and I would like some heads up, regarding any unexpected difficulties that some may have found during the course of this or previous years. Did anyone do some sort of test or exam under school conditions for it or was it just practical reports and presentations? Were their any excursions? Were you given time to do finish practical reports or any SAC at home or was it strictly done whilst at school?

[Nelle91]

I did Biology this year...
Our school was abit of a mixture, we did lots of pracs on osmosis, test crosses between buttons However our class did no prac write ups at home, most of our sacs involved doing a prac at school and in the same double, sitting a sac under test conditions. We did a powerpoint which was easy (involved prior prepartion at home), as well as having tests/exams under test conditions which was used to test our overall understanding of concepts, rather than having the ability to only quote defintions.

In Semester 2 we also did an excursion, making a PCR at Gordan .

Anyway I overall enjoyed bio, although I found that on the VCAA exams, they can put random stuff that can confuse you. Also I found that I sometimes blabbed too much in sacs, and found it was better to be more direct and straight to the point in answers rather than writing lots of information.
Anyway if you are willing to put the effort in, do plenty of practise exams you shall go fine!
Good Luck

[Voltman]

What kind of pratical reports did you do for semester 2?

[beezy4eva]

our sacs

Sem1:
-Prac report involving osmosis
-trip to GTAC, looked at proteins
-Prac report on the effects of light on plants
-Poster style report on an immune response to a disease of our choice ( i did SARS =])

Sem2:
-Some program thing at Uom. Counted as two sacs. First part was on genetic crosses involving drosophila, second part was about gel electrophoresis.
-Power point on some form of gene technology (mine was genetically modified jersey cows)
-Test on natural selection & speciation