Links to Foundation to Year 10

Progression from the F-10 Australian Curriculum: Science

The senior secondary Biology curriculum continues to develop student understanding and skills from across the three strands of the F-10 Australian Curriculum: Science. In the Science Understanding strand, the Biology curriculum draws on knowledge and understanding from across the four sub-strands of Biological, Physical, Chemical, and Earth and Space sciences.

In particular, the Biology curriculum continues to develop the key concepts introduced in the Biological Sciences sub-strand, that is, that a diverse range of living things have evolved on Earth over hundreds of millions of years, that living things are interdependent and interact with each other and their environment, and that the form and features of living things are related to the functions their systems perform.

Mathematical skills expected of students studying Biology

The Biology curriculum requires students to use the mathematical skills they have developed through the F-10 Australian Curriculum: Mathematics, in addition to the numeracy skills they have developed through the Science Inquiry Skills strand of the Australian Curriculum: Science.

Within the Science Inquiry Skills strand, students are required to gather, represent and analyse numerical data to identify the evidence that forms the basis of scientific arguments, claims or conclusions. In gathering and recording numerical data, students are required to make measurements using appropriate units to an appropriate degree of accuracy.

Students may need to be taught when it is appropriate to join points on a graph and when it is appropriate to use a line of best fit. They may also need to be taught how to construct a straight line that will serve as the line of best fit for a set of data presented graphically.

It is assumed that students will be able to competently:

perform calculations involving addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of quantities
perform approximate evaluations of numerical expressions
express fractions as percentages, and percentages as fractions
calculate percentages
recognise and use ratios
transform decimal notation to power of ten notation
substitute physical quantities into an equation using consistent units so as to calculate one quantity and check the dimensional consistency of such calculations
solve simple algebraic equations
comprehend and use the symbols/notations <,>, ∆, ≈
translate information between graphical, numerical and algebraic forms
distinguish between discrete and continuous data then select appropriate forms, variables and scales for constructing graphs
construct and interpret frequency tables and diagrams, pie charts and histograms
describe and compare data sets using mean, median and inter-quartile range
interpret the slope of a linear graph.