Christian Moore Anderson
Contextualising biological components: Cellulose, an example
Cellulose is an incredibly important component of cell walls, plant cells, plants, and whole ecosystems. However, cellulose can only be a...
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Christian Moore Anderson
Mar 1, 20205 min read
Making systemic interactions explicit in biology lessons: diagrammatic representations
Biological systems are highly complex and non-linear. Students will struggle to see the wood for the trees unless the multitude of...
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Christian Moore Anderson
Feb 20, 202011 min read
Developing a biologist’s gaze: the organism in its environment
Ideas in this blog post eventually developed into a much more advanced idea presented in my book. Life exists within the context of its...
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Christian Moore Anderson
Feb 12, 20205 min read
The problems with Mendelian genetics in biology education
Mendelian genetics is ubiquitous in secondary school biology curricula and the Punnet square is iconic to genetics. Think about the...
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Christian Moore Anderson
Feb 3, 202011 min read
How typical biology curricula get it wrong: The need to contextualise components
Should mitosis be taught alongside meiosis or separately? Should organelles be taught together or separately across the curriculum? How...
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Christian Moore Anderson
Jan 23, 20205 min read
The knowledge curriculum in biology: How retrieval practice and knowledge organisers may distort it
During the popularity of the skills curriculum, there appeared to be some agreement across school subject areas about what skills were...
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Christian Moore Anderson
Jan 5, 20203 min read
The hows & whys of biology: Classroom questions that elicit explanation
Explanation in biology is split between two big questions. These questions should inform how we teach, and the answers we expect from...
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Christian Moore Anderson
Dec 23, 20195 min read
The problematic use of glucose in the definition of respiration and photosynthesis.
Why is the word glucose problematic? Cellular respiration, which is the oxidation of organic molecules for the production of ATP, is...
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Christian Moore Anderson
Nov 20, 20194 min read
The problem of defining DNA to young secondary students
How should we define DNA (or in some cases, the nucleus) in secondary school? Since beginning teaching biology I have seen such things...
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Christian Moore Anderson
Sep 19, 20192 min read
Organelles: teaching them with purpose
How many biology courses begin with cells? Most Year 7 courses (11 years old) begin with cells. Then at 14 years old GCSE biology courses...
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Christian Moore Anderson
Mar 16, 20197 min read
The strand curriculum in Year 7 biology
This post is somewhat old now, for my more advanced ideas check out my book. The big ideas in biology transcend all its individual...
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Christian Moore Anderson
Mar 3, 20194 min read
Reduce cognitive load in your lesson PowerPoints
Working memories are fragile; on average people can only hold and process maybe four items at any one time. If too much is happening, and...
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