The structure and role of a cholinergic synapse (CIE International A-level Biology)

This fully-resourced lesson covers the content of specification points 15.1 (g and h) of the CIE international A-level Biology specification that states that students should be able to describe the structure of a cholinergic synapse and outline their roles in the nervous system. The majority of the lesson uses the cholinergic synapse as the example but other neurotransmitters are considered at the end of the lesson to provide the students with a wider view of this topic.

The lesson begins by using a version of the WALL (as shown in the cover image) which asks the students to group 12 words into three groups of 4. Not only will this challenge their prior knowledge from topics earlier in this module but it will also lead to the discovery of four of the structures that are found in a synapse. Moving forwards, students are introduced to acetylcholine as the neurotransmitter involved at cholinergic synapses and they will start to add labels to the structures found in the pre-synaptic bulb. Time is taken to focus on certain structures such as the voltage gated channels as these types of channel were met previously when looking at the depolarisation of a neurone. There is plenty of challenge and discovery as students are pushed to explain why organelles like mitochondria would be found in large numbers in the bulb. With this process being a cascade of events, a bullet point format is used to ensure that the key content is taken in by the students and again key points like exocytosis and the action of acetylcholinesterase are discussed further. The final part of the lesson challenges the application aspect of the subject as students are introduced to unfamiliar situations in terms of synapses with new drugs like MDMA and are asked to work out and explain how these affect the nervous transmission.

Understanding checks and prior knowledge checks are included throughout the lesson so that students can not only assess their progress against the current topic but also see whether they can make links to earlier topics.

This lesson has been designed for students studying the CIE International A-level Biology course and ties in with the other uploaded lessons on the topics of 15.1 (Control and coordination in mammals)