The Biology Compendium Goals
The Goals of The Biology Compendium are to: • Equip Alabama high school biology teachers with the tools to implement three-dimensional learning. • Evaluate available biology educational resources for alignment to the 2015 Alabama COS: Science . • Curate available biology educational resources aligned to 2015 Alabama COS: Science . • Leverage resources already available through existing organizations such as the Alabama Math Science and Technology Initiative’s Alabama Science in Motion (AMSTI/ ASIM) program, A+ College Ready, and HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology to maximize student usage.
The Compendium does not represent the only way to move students toward mastery of the performance expectations outlined in the new COS, but it does provide a thoroughly analyzed plan to do so. The Compendium is neither a pacing guide nor a fully formed course curriculum. Instead, it highlights a potential sequence of activities, les- sons, and labs to help students master the performance expectations associated with each standard. The concept of a biology compendium originated from a series of meetings between three of Alabama’s largest science education initiatives: the Alabama Math, Science, and Technology Initiative, A+ College Ready, and HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology. Collectively, these three programs have developed an extensive library of classroom activities and modules that support high school biology. In addition, they have cultivated a culture of partnership: each routinely supplies the others with resources for teachers and students. Together, they reach every public school biology class in Alabama. Details and online links to each of the partners can be found in Appendix 2 on page 98.
How to Use the Compendium
Learning Targets Learning targets provide students and teachers clear destinations and state what students should know and be able to do at the end of the instructional sequence. Each learning tar- get is associated with a standard from the new COS, noted in parenthesis. Many learning targets include aspects of more than one standard. That is noted by including all applicable standards in the parenthetical notation with the most relevant standard listed first. No single learning target fully addresses any COS standard, therefore targets for a specific standard may appear in multiple places throughout the progression. This repetition is intentional and is due to the interconnected nature of biology. For example, to master a standard about cells, students need multiple experiences targeted at differ- ent aspects of cellular structure or function to gain a holistic concept of how cells work individually and in the context of a multicellular organisms. These learning targets were carefully crafted to address the entire course of study for biology. They include science and engineering practices in student friendly language, and they reach the depth of knowledge required in a modern biology classroom. Continued...
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A Field Guide to the Alabama Standards
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The Biology Compendium
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