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OCR 21st Century Biology - B7 and Ideas in Context

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Reply 740
Avatar for Aidn
Aidn
6
Original post by Anny Smiles
They'll probably smile, and then continue- you wouldn't lose marks over it, it's not a Scientific error!


They better effin' smile! (Excuse my language) I put like 6 full-blown days of revision into biology and i'm competitive with my class ¬_¬

Also guys, sorry this might sound a bit over the top and a long shot, but seeing as we've established a 43-46 out of 55 for an A*, what do you believe the mark will be for 100 UMS? I wouldn't like to sit on a grade boundary as my overall grade :/ Paranoid like that!!
Original post by Aidn
They better effin' smile! (Excuse my language) I put like 6 full-blown days of revision into biology and i'm competitive with my class ¬_¬

Also guys, sorry this might sound a bit over the top and a long shot, but seeing as we've established a 43-46 out of 55 for an A*, what do you believe the mark will be for 100 UMS? I wouldn't like to sit on a grade boundary as my overall grade :/ Paranoid like that!!


Aha, depends on the examiner :wink:
I was going to say laugh... but I'm not sure examiners can express such happiness.... :P

Not entirely sure... I only recently realised you can get 100 UMS without getting full marks!!
Reply 742
Avatar for Aidn
Aidn
6
Original post by Anny Smiles
Aha, depends on the examiner :wink:
I was going to say laugh... but I'm not sure examiners can express such happiness.... :P

Not entirely sure... I only recently realised you can get 100 UMS without getting full marks!!


No, I think it's fair to say examiners are not the depressive ones, the invigilators are, it's like they WANT you to fail.. suckers.

I know, I got 50 UMS for my chemistry 4,5,6, I was like WHAT?!?! And then realised I would've probably missed a few marks XD
What did you guys get for the first photosynthesis question which was worth 3 or 4 marks i dont remember. I wrote the equation for photosynthesis and said that the chlorophyll absorbs the light rays from the sun and that the plant absorbs the co2 from the air and absorbs water. This then produces glucose which the plant use for many things e.g (energy) and oxygen is released in the air. Yh i know i waffled but can someone tell me if i would get any marks fore this :smile: Thanks.
for the valve question I'm pretty sure you'd get the mark for valve as although most of you guys bought the CGP book a lot of people haven't so that wouldn't be fair plus its GCSE not A-level.
Found it quite an awkward exam paper, I find biology the worst as there's so much more room for error if you dont write whats exactly on your markscheme they don't give you the marks -__-
ooh and did anyone understand the tissues and oxygen cell question, it wasn't that clear on what it wanted you to write about so I just talked about diffusion and haemoggloblin/oxy :confused:
Original post by SchoolKid.
What did you guys get for the first photosynthesis question which was worth 3 or 4 marks i dont remember. I wrote the equation for photosynthesis and said that the chlorophyll absorbs the light rays from the sun and that the plant absorbs the co2 from the air and absorbs water. This then produces glucose which the plant use for many things e.g (energy) and oxygen is released in the air. Yh i know i waffled but can someone tell me if i would get any marks fore this :smile: Thanks.


You'd probably get about half the marks as I think you had to go into just a bit more detail about the how light splits the water into hydrogen which combines with carbon to make glucose and oxygen released as waste product :smile:
I found that easy. So the grade boundaries will be high. When i counted i had about 40 possible marks but may go up xD
I messed up only on the last two questions. What did you guys put for those,
Reply 747
Avatar for Coke1
Coke1
18
Original post by kited4
same with me!


How can you think Chemistry was easier than Physics?
Reply 748
Avatar for Tarmu
Tarmu
Original post by Freddy-Francis
I found that easy. So the grade boundaries will be high. When i counted i had about 40 possible marks but may go up xD
I messed up only on the last two questions. What did you guys put for those,


That doesn't make a lot of sense. Just because you found it easy doesn't necessarily mean that the grade boundaries will be high. They have to take account everyone who sat the exam, not just you.

On a side note I'm glad you found it easy - all the best!
Reply 749
Avatar for Smko
Smko
Original post by Freddy-Francis
I found that easy. So the grade boundaries will be high. When i counted i had about 40 possible marks but may go up xD
I messed up only on the last two questions. What did you guys put for those,


Glad you found it easy! Again thanks for everything on this thread and the physics one!

Best of Luck with all you other subjects :smile: and hopefully you get your A*'s on results day :biggrin::biggrin:
Peter was not ethical though. He had genuine scientific reasons to be against it. The other one that said it's great because it shows how great science is is ethical, as not everyone morally agrees that it shows science is great.
Reply 751
Avatar for Maat
Maat
i thought it was quite easy, and did quite well, but after reading this, i guess not
Reply 752
Avatar for Aidn
Aidn
6
Original post by AlexandraW96
Peter was not ethical though. He had genuine scientific reasons to be against it. The other one that said it's great because it shows how great science is is ethical, as not everyone morally agrees that it shows science is great.


They asked you an ethical issue based on genetically modified crops, not based on "how great science is", they will not give a mark for any other indirect ethical implications linked to the other statements, the ethical implication thought by OCR will be the one which closely links to the "not being right to do" or "being incorrect to use" which it stated in the talking head of Peter.
Reply 753
Avatar for Aidn
Aidn
6
Original post by mari_lynne
for the valve question I'm pretty sure you'd get the mark for valve as although most of you guys bought the CGP book a lot of people haven't so that wouldn't be fair plus its GCSE not A-level.
Found it quite an awkward exam paper, I find biology the worst as there's so much more room for error if you dont write whats exactly on your markscheme they don't give you the marks -__-
ooh and did anyone understand the tissues and oxygen cell question, it wasn't that clear on what it wanted you to write about so I just talked about diffusion and haemoggloblin/oxy :confused:


I'd like to pull your attention to the CGP book content which I SCANNED onto my computer which took about an hour and a half out of my revision time to give a resource to anyone who needed it, so therefore it isn't "unfair",but it's you not looking through the posts carefully and making assumptions on things that aren't true.

Also, I don't want to sound like a pessimist, but OCR aren't going to treat triple scientists who are doing higher tier doing further biology dumb.. They're going to expect a lot more so assuming that because it's just GCSE's that they won't require things, you really need to look back at previous mark schemes with OCR's obsession with essential one worded mark strict answers. This may be disliked but it's the harsh truth.
Original post by Smko
Glad you found it easy! Again thanks for everything on this thread and the physics one!

Best of Luck with all you other subjects :smile: and hopefully you get your A*'s on results day :biggrin::biggrin:


THANKYOU. And same to you xD
Original post by Tarmu
That doesn't make a lot of sense. Just because you found it easy doesn't necessarily mean that the grade boundaries will be high. They have to take account everyone who sat the exam, not just you.

On a side note I'm glad you found it easy - all the best!


Well. Most of the people in my school said was it was a piece of a cake. so most people found it easy.
Original post by joe1545
same time lol, what region is your exam center in?
I thought they timed it differently in london, but it appears not :smile:

And i was good at geography in yr 9 but i gave it up lol :smile:


Arrrr geography's pretty interesting though :biggrin:
And what do you mean by what region is my exam centre in?? :P
Original post by Aidn
I'd like to pull your attention to the CGP book content which I SCANNED onto my computer which took about an hour and a half out of my revision time to give a resource to anyone who needed it, so therefore it isn't "unfair",but it's you not looking through the posts carefully and making assumptions on things that aren't true.

Also, I don't want to sound like a pessimist, but OCR aren't going to treat triple scientists who are doing higher tier doing further biology dumb.. They're going to expect a lot more so assuming that because it's just GCSE's that they won't require things, you really need to look back at previous mark schemes with OCR's obsession with essential one worded mark strict answers. This may be disliked but it's the harsh truth.


Thank you for taking the time to scan- kind of you....
It doesn't, however, change the fact that OCR can't presume all candidates have access... not everyone has internet access, certainly not everyone's on TSR! So, still, not everyone would have had access to it- even those with internet access, on TSR, may not have found the thread... So the resource isn't available to 'anyone who needs it', still...

OCR give a specification, and they publish an official textbook and revision guide- these are OCR resources, and they are what they base exams on [for example, the official OCR knowledge checklist we were given, written by OCR, has page number references for their own textbook] you can clearly see the parallels, and how their own resources fit with past paper answers, and whilst CGP and other revision guides are, undeniably, useful, OCR don't presume you've seen them, and don't base exams upon them.

You're right in that OCR aren't going to treat us as dumb- but there's also the reality that not every question in the paper is designed to gain a candidate an A*! Some 'easier' marks are available to gain other grades than A*, and it is more complex questions, and longer answers, which usually offer the opportunity for the top candidates to distinguish themselves...
They don't have unrealistic expectations. Their specification states, for the heart, you need to "describe the main structures and blood vessels of the heart" and in their textbook and revision guide, the valves weren't named! This meant understanding the atria and ventricles, valves, veins, arteries and capillaries, as far as the textbook and revision guides specified.

Neither of us can claim that we present the truth, harsh or otherwise, as we don't know for sure we're correct, and we won't know unless OCR puts this paper online as a past paper- since this is the last year of the spec, they may not even do so!

GCSE has a limit to knowledge you require- otherwise you may as well just take an AS level already... so, I think you're being somewhat pessimistic, and, yes, I dislike what you say, because you cannot claim it's the truth, as you don't know this for certain...!

*climbs down from soapbox* :wink:
I thought it went pretty well but after reading some of these posts a little bit unsure. What does everyone predict for the grade boundaries?
My only worry is that I think I may have written some of my answers outside of the scanning area because I didn't notice the borders :frown:
Original post by baffledchick
I thought it went pretty well but after reading some of these posts a little bit unsure. What does everyone predict for the grade boundaries?
My only worry is that I think I may have written some of my answers outside of the scanning area because I didn't notice the borders :frown:


Yeah i thought i did bad anyway, and i read these posts and was like :O :O :O I've done worse than i thought lol

Yeah, hopefully you didnt write outside the scanning area /:
I've always been worried about doing that D:

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