Mastering your SBAs
Monacia Williams, Contributor

Welcome to the start of a new term and a new school year. Congratulations to all of you who successfully completed third form/grade nine and have been accepted to do biology at the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) level. If you approach the subject with the level of respect and commitment it deserves, you will do well and, in two years, I will be telling you "Congratulations" and "I told you so!"

My advice is to make sure that you understand each new concept that is introduced before moving on to the next. The examination you will be doing at CSEC does not offer a choice of questions; in other words, every question is compulsory! This means that every aspect of your syllabus must be covered in sufficient detail for you to be fully prepared.

The structure of the examination is as follows:

Paper 01 - consists of 60 multiple choice items.

Paper 02 - consists of 6 questions divided into two parts: Section A with three structured questions and Section B with three essay-type questions.

Practical-based subject

Biology is a practical-based subject so, in addition to Papers 01 and 02, there is also the School-Based Assessment, more commonly known as the SBA. This requires the carrying out as well as the recording of the many laboratory exercises that form a part of the course. These will help to enhance your understanding of the theoretical aspects of the subject.

Your friends might tell you negative things about SBAs, but do not be intimidated. The SBAs, treated properly and in a timely manner, will enable you to enter the examination with an advantage. Not only will they provide you with marks, but they will also provide you with the knowledge and skills required to answer the first question in Paper 02. Making use of the expert help from your teacher in the writing up of these laboratory exercises will enable you to obtain maximum marks. Unfortunately, many students do not capitalise on this aspect of the examination because they fail to realise that this is a guaranteed means of ensuring a good grade in the final examination.

Today, I will introduce to you the skills you will need to master in order to successfully complete your SBAs. These are:

• Observation, recording, reporting deals with the skills needed for the presentation of accurate scientific reports. This will require knowing how to present information obtained from experiments in the form of tables and graphs, and using these to complete a report accompanied by the accepted headings.
• Analysis and interpretation requires you to relate the information obtained from experiments to scientific facts; to use the information to infer, predict and draw conclusions, and to recognise the limitations of the data obtained.
• Planning and design requires you to develop hypotheses and plan experiments to test your hypotheses, predicting the results that would be obtained from these experiments.
• Manipulation and measurement tests your ability to use laboratory apparatus and measuring instruments with care and accuracy.
• Drawing requires you to have the ability to make large, clear, accurate line representations of specimens.

As we continue, we will go into more detailed requirements for a good performance in the SBAs.

Have a good week and we will meet again next Tuesday.

St James High School students Verona Wellington (left), Jessica McIntoch (second left), Peta Gayle (third right) and Jody Kaye Townsend (second right) get a lesson in enzyme catalyst testing from advance placement biology teacher André Bridgett (right) at the New Brunswick Health Sciences Technology High School. - Contributed photo

Art and biology, what a combination. - Contributed photo

Monacia Williams teaches at Glenmuir High School in Clarendon.