The purpose of this series of downloadable PDF resources is to provide opportunities for senior secondary students to develop skills in manipulating, reading, describing, analysing and interpreting biological data. In many cases the data is from actual historical experiments from scientific literature and in other cases has been generated or approximated from real data. 

Topics in this resource are divided into four sections: ecosystems, patterns in nature, life on earth and evolution of Australian biota.

Teachers will find the activities in this resource useful as a supplementary material for practical work, as materials for relief teachers or as homework. Suggested answers for all questions are provided. 

This downloadable PDF resource contains 17 stand alone activities. Every activity should take approximately 40 minutes to one hour to complete. Each activity requires students to:

• Read the data, which is presented as tables, graphs, flow charts, diagrams or text. 
• Translate or manipulate that data into a more convenient form. 
• Describe in words the trends in the data using a scaffold example as a guide. 
• Analyse or interpret the data and relate it to existing theoretical knowledge. 

As students become familiar with the format, they will become more able to complete the activities with minimal assistance.