What Your Child Will Learn with Alex

As an experienced Year 9 Science tutor, Alex strictly adheres to the official Australian Curriculum. She ensures students master all required areas and meet the achievement standards set by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority. Here's what students will cover throughout the year:

Biological Sciences

Alex will guide students in understanding how body systems regulate and coordinate responses to stimuli, with particular focus on negative feedback mechanisms. Students will explore reproductive biology in plants and animals, examining the form and function of reproductive cells and organs. They'll analyze how sexual and asexual reproduction processes enable species survival, building a foundational understanding of biological continuity and adaptation.

Earth and Space Sciences

Students will investigate the carbon cycle and its critical importance to life on Earth. Alex will help them represent and examine key processes including combustion, photosynthesis, and respiration. Students will explore how these processes rely on interactions between Earth's spheres—the geosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere—developing a systems-based understanding of our planet's functioning.

Physical Sciences

Alex will introduce students to wave and particle models for describing energy transfer through different mediums, evaluating each model's usefulness for explaining various phenomena. Students will apply the law of conservation of energy to analyze system efficiency, examining energy inputs, outputs, transfers, and transformations. These concepts build critical foundations for understanding energy resources and technologies.

Chemical Sciences

Students will learn how the model of the atom evolved following the discovery of electrons, protons, and neutrons. Alex will explain how natural radioactive decay results in stable atoms. Students will model the rearrangement of atoms in chemical reactions using various representations, including word equations and simple balanced chemical equations, demonstrating the law of conservation of mass.

Science as a Human Endeavour

Alex will guide discussions on how scientific knowledge is validated and refined, including the crucial roles of publication and peer review. Students will investigate the reciprocal relationship between technology and science—how technological advances enable scientific progress and how science contributes to technological and engineering developments. They'll analyse factors affecting societal adoption of scientific knowledge and examine how society's values and needs influence scientific research directions.

Science Inquiry Skills

Throughout the year, Alex will develop students' abilities to formulate investigable questions and hypotheses, plan and conduct valid experiments while considering ethical issues, and select appropriate equipment to generate precise data. Students will learn to construct meaningful data representations, analyse patterns and relationships, assess methodological validity, construct evidence-based arguments, and communicate scientific ideas effectively to specific audiences.