OCR GCSE (9-1) Biology - Reflexes

This resources is designed for the OCR Biology GCSE, particularly the ‘B3 - Organism-Level Systems’ scheme of work.

Pupils will start the lessons by considering why a reflex action is important to living organisms and asking pupils to consider any examples they can think of. After revealing the importance of reflex actions and come examples, the slides then move on to look at the pathway an electrical impulse takes along a reflex arc. Pupils will delve a little deeper into this by watching a video, during which they can answer questions. Once this has been completed they can self-assess their work using the answers provided. This process can also be summarised using a copy and complete exercise.

Next, the lesson focuses on synapse, a diagram of a synapse is shown with key details labelled, there is also a link to an animation that can be shown to demonstrate what occurs at the gap between neurons. After this has been demonstrated pupils are then asked to complete some tasks to show their understanding of what occurs at a synapse.

The next activity involved a set of statements which are muddled up, pupils need to put them into the correct order to correctly describe the steps involved with a reflex arc. Once this has been completed pupils can assess their work using the model answer provided.

The final activity is a past-paper question which can be printed for pupils or they can complete in their own books, this needs to be self or peer assessed once complete.

The plenary task is for pupils to pick a task - either to summarise the work from the lesson using a list of key words or for pupils to come up with questions for the list of answers that are provided.

All resources are included at the end of the presentation. Thanks for looking, if you have any questions please let me know in the comments section and any feedback would be appreciated :)