A teacher in North Lancashire has started singing biology lessons to his classes.

Pupils at Lancaster Girls Grammar School are learning the more dry or difficult technical subjects by putting them to pop songs.

Teacher Richard Fusco told BBC News Online: "It started when I realised I could remember large numbers of irrelevant song lyrics without making any effort."

Mr Fusco's pupils say that humming tunes in their heads helps them to grasp concepts they might otherwise fail to understand.

Click here for two examples.

The teacher is also a drummer and a guitar player.

Inspected

His singing biology lessons began when he wrote about the stages in the cell cycle, a subject which his pupils were finding particularly hard to remember.

Singing his lessons has since become an integral part of his job.

One Ofsted inspector witnessed a lesson about the hormones of the female sexual cycle, sung to the tune of the Carole King song "You make me feel like a natural woman".

Mr Fusco said: "For young people music is an important part of culture and life, and this provides a hook for them to learn.

Rap and blues

"Things like osmosis and diffusion sound difficult, so I make up a tune for a song about how water moves through cells.

"It would be nice to extend this so that every difficult topic has a song, and ultimately we could release the whole GCSE syllabus on a CD."

Zoe Wilkinson, a 14-year-old pupil from Hornby near Lancaster, added: "It is very entertaining and very useful when you get into an exam and you have a song in your head which brings back the technical terms.

"Classes are fun, the teacher improvises blues songs. Some of us make up our own tunes.

"We once wrote a rap about transpiration and the flow of water."

Mr Fusco offered these examples of his technique:

Osmosis Song

In diffusion
Molecules go
From a high to a low
Concentration they go
From a high concentration to a low

In osmosis
Water molecules go
From a high to a low
Across a membrane they flow
From a high concentration to a low

In transpiration
Water it flows
Up the xylem it goes
And out the stomata Lord knows
In transpiration water flows.

Mitotic Blues

I'm an interphase baby, my chromosomes are short and fat.
I'm an interphase baby, my chromosomes are short and fat.
And if you want to see me
Take a garlic root and squash it flat
(and stain it with acetic orcein).

I'm a prophase baby, I've gone and copied my DNA.
I'm a prophase baby, I've gone and copied my DNA.
Two identical chromatids.
The semi-conservative replication way
(makes two identical copies).

I'm in metaphase baby, the chromosomes lie head to toe
I'm in metaphase baby, the chromosomes lie head to toe
Along the cell's equator
The chromatids will split they'll have to go
(to opposite ends of the cell).

I'm in anaphase baby, chromatids pulled by the centromere.
I'm in anaphase baby, chromatids pulled by the centromere.
Attached by spindle fibres.
Little microtubles just appear
(attached to the centrioles).

I'm in telophase baby, my dividin's almost through.
I'm in telophase baby, my dividin's almost through.
I'll form a new cell membrane.
And what was one cell now is two
(that's mitosis baby).

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