One of our tutors, Raghav is embarking on a degree in Medicine at one of UK’s most prestigious universities. He will be sharing one of his GCSE Biology lesson plans and an explanation on digestive enzymes. Before we dive into this, here’s a small biography from Raghav:
TUTOR PROFILE
“I just finished my second year studying medicine (MBBS, BSc) at University College, London and am excited to enter my third year where I’ll be taking up the integrated BSc subject of Oncology – the study of cancer.
This year, I was president at one of UCL’s biggest student societies and balanced that with one of the toughest year’s in the study of medicine; I love to work hard and will give my all to ensure you produce the best possible outcome in whatever you’re aiming to achieve, whether that be an A* at GCSE or A level Biology, a grade 7 at IB, or even advice on getting into and surviving medical school! Biology is fantastic.
A lot of it involves exploring how your own human body functions; I’ll make sure you cover each point in your syllabus in depth as well as how to combat difficult exam questions…and if you don’t love Biology already, you’ll love it by the end of our tutoring sessions! I provide a very friendly approach and prepare lessons in depth according to how you’d like it to go, and what you’d like to learn.
About my sessions: I spend a couple of hours preparing for each lesson, ensuring there is a great balance between giving you new information, interactive diagrams and answering exam questions. Everything I prepare revolves around you – I’ll ask you at the end of each lesson what you’d like to learn in the following lesson, and I’ll prepare according to that! We’ll keep revisiting previous topics so that they’re not forgotten and really ensure that you enjoy each lesson – studying doesn’t have to be a chore, and the more you enjoy it the easier you’ll find it!”
LESSON PLAN
LESSON STRUCTURE: Start lessons with a question related to the topic that catches the interest of the student – real-world relevance helps to engage the student. In this case, the topic is digestive enzymes, and the question chosen is as below:
QUESTION: Why does bread start to taste sweet after being chewed in the mouth for a long period of time?
The lesson will then work through the knowledge required to be understood by the student for the exam surrounding this topic, and then hopefully the student should be able to answer the question with hints given if required.
I believe in a building blocks approach, starting with the absolute basics of knowledge and building up to the final picture. All ‘complicated topics’ are really just a jigsaw of simpler ideas built up together, so slowly adding each piece of the puzzle enables the student to grasp the final concept in its entirety. I’ve learnt that students struggle in situations where they don’t fully understand the basics.
So I’ll make sure the student has had a chance to look over the specific syllabus bullet points on the topic to assure them of what is required of them by the examination board, and then we’ll work through nailing each of them.
LESSON STRUCTURE
In this case, the lesson structure would be as follows:
- Definitions – the first step in this building blocks approach is to define and explain key terms surrounding the topic.
- Defining the action of digestive enzymes: large food molecules are digested by enzymes in the body into smaller molecules, which are then absorbed into the bloodstream. b. Define enzymes: Enzymes catalyse (speed up) chemical reactions. If at this point the student wishes to go through the structure of enzymes (i.e. that they are large proteins and have a groove on the surface called the active site, lock and key theory etc. then we can go over that).
- List the enzymes in the digestive system the student needs to know about according to syllabus requirements, and the substrates that they break down – proteases, amylase and lipase (which break down proteins, starch and lipids respectively).
- Explanations of the substrates and their respective digestive enzymes:
- PROTEINS: Proteins are essentially long chains of something we call ‘amino acids’, and these long chains are broken down by enzymes called proteases. This results in the individual amino acids from the chain being released and absorbed into the bloodstream, and absorbed by body cells. The amino acids are then jumbled up into different orders to make different proteins that the body can use. Proteases are found in the stomach, the pancreatic fluid, and the small intestine.
- STARCH (a carbohydrate): Like proteins are a chain of amino acids, starch (which is found in bread) consists of a chain of glucose molecules. See how this point attempts to link in with the previous knowledge point; creating l inks between explained topics massively increases student understanding. Starch is broken down by the enzyme amylase to produce what we call ‘simple sugars’. The enzyme amylase is found in the saliva and pancreatic fluid.
- LIPIDS: The structure of lipids is slightly more complicated; instead of a simple chain of molecules, it consists of a molecule of glycerol attached to 3 molecules of fatty acids. Lipid molecules are digested by the enzyme lipase, to produce (can you guess?) glycerol and fatty acids. Lipase is found in the pancreatic fluid, and in the small intestine.
Other Lesson Notes
✓ Check understanding of each enzyme after explaining it. ✓ DIAGRAMS of the substrate molecules and what they look like after being broken down.
Visual aids are known to not only help with understanding, but with committing to memory too. ✓ Summary Slide ✓ TEST QUESTIONS – where are lipases found in the body? What are lipids broken down into?
BREAD QUESTION ANSWER: Hint 1: bread contains starch. Hint 2: saliva mixes with your food when you are chewing. Answer: The starch in bread is digested by the enzyme amylase which is found in saliva. This produces simple sugars, which makes the bread taste sweet.
HOMEWORK: Past exam questions related to the topic, which we’d go through at the beginning of the next lesson.
Interested in working with Raghav? Contact Us today to discuss arranging a 1 to 1 lesson.