More pacemakers and an ESSAY - now corrected

Today's ppts here (endogenous pacemakers) and here (exogenous zeitgebers).

Some fairly technical stuff so well done everybody for keeping up.

Essay: 'Discuss the role of endogenous pacemakers and exogenous zeitgebers (24 marks)'. Remember discuss means describe and evaluate.

Due in to me by Tuesday 11th October.

Since it's your first A2 essay for me I've written a plan for you to follow if you wish (AO1 is in red and AO2 is in blue).

Endogenous pacemakers

Some more discussions about the pacemaker of the body's circadian rhythms today. Ppt is here and some extra info about the bagpipe-playing Kate Aldcroft is here.

I will be setting an essay next week about endogenous pacemakers and exogenous zeitgebers so now would be a good time to do some advance reading. There are lots of A2 textbooks are in the sixth form study room.

Biological eplanations of gender development - exam question

a) Outline the biological explanation for the development of gender identity. (5 marks AO1)
b) Assess the evidence supporting this explanation. (4 marks AO1 + 16 marks AO2/3)
For part a) you need a fairly brief (one paragraph) summary of the chromosoms/genes > hormones > neuroanatomy explanation of gender development.
Part b) needs to be around 600 words. Organise it into paragraphs dealing with the three strands of evidence we have looked at (animal, case study and correlation). Description of these needs to be very brief - it's all about the evaluation.
You need to include a research methodology issue (e.g. reliability, validity, generalisability, cause & effect) and an IDA (issue, debate or approach) related discussion for higher mark bands.
Word processed and turned in via Edmodo in time for our next lesson on Thursday 29th September please.

REM - paradoxical sleep

Today we started to look at infradian rhythms - these are shorter than 24 hours. We looked into the stages of sleep as an example of this. A link to a web-page showing the EEG readings from the different stages is here, and my powerpoint is here.

TEXTBOOKS

If you have a copy of this book at home please return it to me ASAP!

Biological Rhythms and Sleep

Apologies that this is a little late - on Tuesday we started our first unit 3 topic, Biological Rhythms and Sleep. We looked at circadian (24 hr) rhythms (powerpoint here) and infradian (longer than 24 hrs) rhythms (powerpoint here). The spec content is here and the essay titles are here. I'm hoping to issue you with textbooks on Tuesday.

Gender Key Terms

On Thursday we reviewed key terms associated with Gender and began to discuss psychological gender differences and where their origins might lie. In Thursday's lesson we will look in detail at the biological determination of sex and possibly gender, and the different strands of evidence on which it is based.
Here is the presentation which covers both lessons. It would be useful to have a look ahead at it.

Homework for Thursday which I didn't set in the lesson:
Research human sex chromosome abnormalities. What syndromes / conditions are caused by unusual combinations of sex chromosomes? What are these people like? How useful is this as evidence for tackling the nature / nurture question of gender development? Collect your findings / thoughts on a piece of paper and bring it on Thursday.