Plant disease detective
Posted on 23 May 2016
Alistair, who is a member of the University of York Science Education Group (UYSEG), has been working in collaboration with the Science and Plants for Schools (SAPS) programme at the University of Cambridge.
The theme for the new resources is 'Plant disease detective!', now available for teachers to download from the SAPS website (http://bit.ly/1OIzJ5N). SAPS is a provider of high quality plant science resources for use in schools, which are widely used by school science teachers. The new resources will also be included in UYSEG's own GCSE biology course, Twenty First Century Science. As part of the collaborative development work, Alistair also enlisted the help of plant disease experts from Fera (formerly the Food and Environment Research Agency, based just outside York) and the University of Reading. Ideas about communicable plant diseases were recently included in the National Curriculum at GCSE level for the first time, appearing in the updated Key Stage 4 science programmes of study for first teaching from September 2016.