Acknowledgments
What is the Biology Field Guide?
We gratefully acknowledge the following organizations and individuals, without whom the compendium would not have been possible: The Boeing Company The Alabama Math, Science, and Technology Initiative part of the Alabama State Department of Education A+ College Ready HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology Compendium educator advisory team: Madelene Loftin (Lead), HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology Jennifer Hutchison, Alabama Science in Motion
In 2015, the state of Alabama adopted new courses of study, the 2015 Alabama Course of Study: Biology (COS) for all K-12 science classes, grounded in best practices for how students learn science through scientific practices and active learning tactics. This approach is substantially different from previous strategies that emphasized breadth over depth and taught science as an exhaustive list of discrete facts. The focus has moved from memorization to posing questions, designing investigations, building models, and engaging in argumentation. These practices allow students to compare ideas, arrive at conclusions, and build knowledge. One of the most challenging hurdles to successfully implementing the new COS is recognizing which resources best support student mastery of the standards. Educa- tors require high-quality, well-vetted resources that facilitate student proficiency. Hundreds of kits, laboratory exercises, tutorial videos, and websites claim to meet those requirements but vary widely in format, quality, and accuracy. Some activities even inadvertently increase student misconceptions or make learning more difficult. The Biology Compendium was developed to help address this challenge. The Compendium is a collection of active-learning resources that reinforce the new COS objectives for high school biology. An advisory team of biology educators, drawn from diverse educational settings across the state (Appendix 1), evaluated hundreds of potential resources and selected only those tools that best allow Alabama students to engage the content present in the 2015 Biology COS. Using a rubric modified to the Alabama standards, the teacher team combed through lesson plans, laboratory protocols, and classroom activities to find three-dimensional, learning-rich resources. The team asked hard questions: Does this activity promote inquiry learning? Does this lab contain science practices and cross-cutting concepts? Is this project student-cen- tered? The advisory team found that many of the traditional experiences and exper- iments only partially supported the new standards. Consequently, many of these old favorites were not incorporated into the Compendium. The Compendium is much more than a list of useful resources but is analogous to a “field guide” for biology educators. Teachers carry the book with them into the class- room, where it assists in navigating through a somewhat unfamiliar landscape – the new course of study. Like a field guide, the Compendium recommends potential paths to follow that highlight relevant points of interest, suggesting ways to sequence activi- ties. It also showcases the flora and fauna that call the landscape home by identifying the activities that use the practices and connecting concepts to best explain biology concepts. The Compendium provides a scaffold upon which the nearly 700 Alabama biology educators can assemble their individual plans of instruction.
Mary Busbee, St. Clair County High School Nerissa Deramus, Thompson High School Susan Dial, Gardendale High School Teresa Gregory, Clay-Chalkville High School Ben Johnston, Bob Jones High School Eve O’Connor Kendrick, Northside High School Leslie Machen, Sparkman High School Kim Miller, Fairhope High School Melody H. Tucker, PhD, Citronelle High School Keshia Williams, Lee High School
The marketing and communication team at HudsonAlpha for their expertise, creativity and patience
Continued...
5
A Field Guide to the Alabama Standards
4
The Biology Compendium
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker