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Department Reviews

BIOLOGY

This year started with the annual SFC2 field course during the last week of the summer holidays. We were undertaking this particular trip for the final time, marking the end of a traditional venture to the Orielton Field Studies Council Centre in Pembrokeshire. An enjoyable and successful excursion, it enabled our SFC2 girls to experience wild things growing out on the shores and dunes of this pristine ‘area of outstanding natural beauty’ and to complete their assessed coursework investigations to be written up back here at College. SFC1s enjoyed their own equally successful field course at the end of June, accommodated at the Leeson House Field Centre (owned by Dorset County Council) and Swanage’s YHA hostel, which was taught by CLC Biology staff. Creating our own programme and field course has allowed us greater flexibility and the chance to tailor our trip around the needs of girls studying the two new courses we are pursuing in the sixth form in a way that Orielton would not have managed.

It has been all change for SFC1 girls this year with the passing of the legacy syllabus, which we finished teaching this summer and the commencement of both the IB course to some and SNAB (Salters-Nuffield A level Biology) course to others. The transition has been smooth and the new SNAB syllabus has allowed teachers and girls to explore Biology, encompassing new and up-to-date biological principles and research in a more contextual way than ever before. The course is relevant, current and of interest to the girls who are benefitting from acquiring skills and information demanded by the country’s leading universities which helped to create the syllabus and its practical assessment criteria. In order to achieve the demands of the course, girls have carried out a number of core practicals designed to develop their skills, undertaken a personally-motivated research task and write up, and visited Bristol Zoological Gardens to see at first hand how zoos play a vital role in the conservation of endangered species; running stud books to maintain genetic diversity of captive populations; helping educate the public and yet aiming to look after their animals to the best of their abilities whilst remaining competitive enough to attract visitors to fund their work. Meanwhile, the IB course has been guided by an enthusiastic band of staff who have not only considered the biological concepts required for IB Biology but have worked collaboratively with the other sciences and departments in the Group 4 extended practical projects, ‘Theory of Knowledge’ and other aspects of the IB study course.

Biology also enjoys a huge extra-curricular component; we continue to run our highly successful Green Soc every Monday evening, having visiting speakers in, including one on the conservation of cheetahs and another on turtle conservation, and support all those wishing to take up Biology at university level (from Marine Biology through to Medicine). We have run extra classes and mentoring sessions for anthropologists, general biologists, the extension and philosophy of Biology, Advanced Extension Awards, medics, dentists and veterinarians and, of course, examination preparation and revision. Green Soc has ranged in its activities from ecoraids on form rooms to see how much energy has been wasted by individual classes, through snail racing for charity right up to environmental survey and management in the College wildlife garden. It is no longer a rare sight to find a group of teachers and students crowded round a hole in the garden, pouring in water and watching for movement as they help with a national survey into the earthworms of Britain. A little further from home, we have taken LC3 to Crickley Hill Country Park to investigate the abiotic (non-living) factors that influence the plants and animals found living on the edge of the Cotswold escarpment. This same year group also visited the Natural History Museum in Oxford to celebrate Darwin 200 together with the RS and Art departments in a cross-curricular venture designed to look critically at the relationships between religion, science and art. After an exhausting day, these girls will have appreciated some of the controversies, but also the lack of a need for controversy, between these interlinked disciplines.

In conjunction with the Art, Geography, Technology and Physics departments, as part of project week, LC2s enjoyed a botanical adventure in the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew where they studied the adaptations of plants both structurally and to their environment. This hugely successful and interesting day out was followed up in the labs later in the week when we looked at how plants have been influenced by natural selection to enable them to conquer and colour our green planet and how humans are reliant on them and on their diverse adaptations.

Biological study this year has focussed on our individual and species’ roles within a complex ecosystem which takes place on a relatively small planet upon which we are totally dependent. Our subject inspires and involves all and we remain proud to play our part, in both the curricular and extra-curricular programme, to ensure that the next generation of CLC girls are successful and knowledgeable about their own biology, the biology around them and their responsibilities for the future.

News

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