Complete “Ready to go” lesson with no adapting necessary!
New for AAQ Pearson Medical Science BTEC from Sept 2025 Specification
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This lesson is part 3/4 of 4 lessons that cover the entire content of Unit 3 Learning Aim C/Task 3.

Layout of the lesson
•Students to observe and describe the colony morphology of their inoculated plates from the previous lesson
•What are growth characteristics in broth cultures with a task where students match the descriptions of different growth characteristics to the images
•What is enumeration and why is it important?
•What is a haemocytometer and how does it work to calculate bacterial concentration
•Students will use the haemocytometer to calculate the bacterial concentration on a sample of broth culture. Students will then describe the growth characteristics of their broth culture, they will also describe how to calculate cells per ml using a haemocytometer with calculations included
•Students will discuss limitations of haemocytometers which will introduce how to keep counting consistent and the total count vs viable count. Students will then try and identify how we can count only living cells
•Students will use their inoculated lawn spread to calculate CFU/ml. Students will then describe in their coursework how they did this with calculations included
•What are turbidimetric methods, how does colorimetry work and what do they estimate
•Students will use the colorimeter to measure the absorbance of different broth cultures. Students will then write a background on how turbidimetric methods work, write a method for their investigation, present their results in a table and explain what their results show
•Exposition on advanced quantitative techniques including flow cytometry, biosensors and qPCR
•Guided evaluation on the practical elements of this lesson on their own techniques, advatantages and disadvantages of each method and alternative methods of analysing microbial samples

NO PRINTING REQUIREMENTS
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This lesson follows my usual style and contains:
•Recall starter to build retention of previously learned content
•Clear levelled learning objectives and outcomes
•Clear and modern layout utilising GIFS and Youtube
• Variety of tasks and plenaries with self assessment to assess progress
• ANSWERS INCLUDED!

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