Preparing the Classroom

I've been spending some time in my classroom, preparing for the start of school which is now less than 2 weeks away.  The key project has been a word wall.  I went to a College Board workshop for AP Biology last year, and we spent some time talking about the words in bold on the free response questions.  I want my students to be familiar with the words and what they are required to write about when they see those words. I printed eight of the words and what those words are asking for.  Afterward, I decided that I wanted them to see all of the words, and so printed them to be a border of sorts.

Stapling paper onto a curved bulletin board doesn't always go very well, so I spent about half of the time making this board pulling out the staples and trying again.  

Here is the link to the Word Wall document. It contains all of the words and 8 definitions.  I may eventually add more definitions, although I don't have much room on the board.  My predecessor left the Theory of Revolution poster on the board and I don't want to give it up.

First Day of School Plans

For my AP Biology class, the students already know each other, I just don't know them.  We don't need any sort of mixer, so we get right to work.  I want them to get practice designing an experiment and get them comfortable with using google sheets. We use google sheets for nearly all our labs, because it allows for instant sharing of everyone's data.  

Since I want to focus on learning how to set up a lab and use sheets, I present them with a simple question to investigate.  We delve into the heavy AP labs soon enough.  I got this simple idea from a lab from Cooking with Science on Teachers Pay Teachers and combined it with an exercise from Biology Inquiries: Standards-Based Labs, Assessments, and Discussion Lessons by Martin Shields. The question to investigate is, "Do you get more juice out of lemons if you heat them first?" After designing the experiment and collecting data, they work on finding the standard deviation and graph the data including 2 Standard Error of the Mean. We could also add in a chi-square analysis, but I think they have enough on their plates already.

For the Living Environment class, we use stations as a get to know your classmates, get set up for class, and practice some lab techniques. The inspiration for this activity was from Amy Brown Science and her Science Chat. My students get their textbook, set up their notebook, adjust their goggles and lab aprons, and pick their preferred size of gloves. They also practice reading the meniscus in a graduated cylinder, using a ruler, using pH paper, and calibrating our digital scales. To try to save paper, I give them an answer sheet to fill in as they go that is a half sheet (but is quite tight on space). Here is a link to the stations I use and the link to the answer sheets for the students to use and keep track of what stations they still need to go to.

Study Guides by Unit for AP Biology

In going through the process of the AP Biology course audit and writing my syllabus, I came across the work of some people who inspired me to make these study guides.  The College Board has four sample syllabi, and both #2 and #3 talked about a list of enduring understandings or science practices that they provided students to self-assess themselves as they went through the course and also to help them keep view of the overarching themes of the course.  I had also seen an AP Biology Essential Knowledge Student Diagnostic done by Jeremy Conn on Clear Biology.  I decided that it may be helpful for my students to have a chart of the enduring understandings, essential knowledge, and learning objectives that are included in each unit that we study.  The process of putting these together was also helpful to me, to make sure that the course I teach really does include each of these items.  I have one huge file that includes directions for students on how to use the charts as well as all the charts for the 10 units the course is divided into.  I also have 10 smaller files: one for each unit I teach. If you want to see which chapters are in each unit, you can see them in my syllabus.

Enduring Understandings, Essential Knowledge, and Learning Objectives by Unit

Unit 1 Chart-Biochemistry

Unit 2 Chart-Cells

Unit 3 Chart-Cellular Energetics

Unit 4 Chart-Cell Reproducion

Unit 5 Chart-Mendelian Heredity

Unit 6 Chart-Molecular Genetics

Unit 7 Chart-Evolution

Unit 8 Chart-Plant Form and Function

Unit 9 Chart-Ecology

Unit 10 Chart-Animal Form and Function

20 Years Ago Today: The first first day of school

August 13, 1996 was my first day of school as a teacher.  I could not have asked for a better school to have my first teaching job.  Sahel Academy was relatively new, in fact, they didn't have a senior class yet.  There were 6 freshmen, 4 sophomores, and 2 juniors.  My teaching assignment included Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2, Biology, and Chemistry.  Fortunately, I only taught Chemistry for two weeks, until the other math and science teacher arrived.  You see, in a mission school where teachers raise their own support to get there, not everyone makes it exactly when they'd like to.


I faithfully kept a journal the entire year there, so I've been reading through it, remembering some precious times. I spent my first day teaching at Sahel Academy saying, "um" a lot and sweating even more.  As the days went on, I said, "um" less, but continued to sweat. My students forgave me for this though. Being in Niamey, Niger meant that even on the cool days, the highs were in the 90s.

One of the biggest adjustments for me was feedback.  While in college, I received regular feedback (and encouragement) on my performance through graded assignments from professors. Teenagers don't hand out grades.  I had to learn to get feedback  other ways.  Yes, the principal observed me once or twice, but I needed more feedback than that.  I learned to value when a student was willing to open up to me, when hands were willingly raised to answer questions, and when we went over a homework question and upon hearing the answer, a student would say, "Yes!" under her breath.  My report card now came in the form of notes from students in my yearbook.  I still have that little yearbook 20 years later, and treasure the memories and encouragement stored in that book.

Something else that I learned in the beginning of my teaching career is that students work better for you when they know you care about them.  Fortunately, I was single and wholly devoted to these kids.  I saw them fairly regularly as well. We all frequented the American Rec Center to go swimming.  I even went to a Super Bowl party with several students at the home of the family of two of my students. With the time zone difference, the game didn't actually start until midnight.  We were all pretty tired at school the next day, but the fun we had rooting for the Packers was worth it--and did some more relationship building.

I'm not sure how I managed it, but I fairly regularly brought no school work home over the weekend. With just teaching two classes this past year, I worked on class plans nearly every evening and always on the weekends!  I like to think that my lessons last year must have been far more involved and polished than in my first year of teaching.  I do work much harder at planning my classes so that the students participate in activities and investigations to learn the material with a minimal amount of lecturing from me. My philosophy of education now is, "He who does the most work does the most learning." I don't mean giving lots of homework!  I do my best to minimize passive listening. I did far more direct instruction my first year than I should have.

As a student, the last day of school was always a great celebration, but after that first year of teaching it was such a sad day for me.  I'm sure if I weren't about to return stateside, it would've been a more festive day for me too.  There were so many hard good-byes that day.  I certainly loved those students and left a big part of my heart at Sahel when I flew home the next week.

Guided Reading Questions

I like for my students to have guided reading questions to help focus their attention on the most important parts of the chapters as they read them.  The Holtzclaws have written guided reading questions for the 8th edition of Campbell's Biology that are readily available online, but the questions cover the whole chapter.  They are extensive, and for all the work that needs to be done in AP Biology, they can be overwhelming.  Biology Junction is one place that has them all.

I wanted those questions, but only the ones that directly pertained to the new AP Biology curriculum framework.  In class, we used the Pearson Education Test Prep Series for AP Biology (also by the Holtzclaws), which was written for the 10th Edition Campbell Biology and the 1st Edition Biology in Focus as a secondary text.  I personally used it as a guide to know which guided reading questions to keep and which to eliminate.  These guided reading questions should work for any editions of Campbell Biology and even Biology in Focus (although the chapter numbers will be different).

Below are links to the chapters in my first unit of instruction on Biochemistry.

Chapter 2: The Chemical Context of Life
Chapter 3: Water
Chapter 4: Carbon and the Molecular Diversity of Life
Chapter 5: Macromolecules
Chapter 8: Enzymes (partial)

I'm still working on tweaking the other units, but I'll post them as they are finalized.
  

Prepping for school in a creative way

Since 2 of my daughters attend the school where I teach, I get to do some parent volunteering there as well.  Because one of my hobbies is making cards, I make birthday cards for each of the faculty and staff at the school for the PTF.  I appreciate that it forces me to get my supplies out and use them, when I would otherwise feel I'm too busy.  I'm part of a Stampin' Up stamp club that meets once a month to make cards.  We make three cards together and get to visit with friends.  My two stamping buddies from club have the same problem of finding time to stamp outside of club, so we got together to get some more cards made. We each ended up with 6 cards and 3 boxes.  We even had a few mistakes we needed to cover up that made the cards even nicer than we envisioned. Bring on the birthdays!

Writing a syllabus for AP Biology for the College Board

My big project for this summer was to complete the course audit with the College Board for AP Biology.  Even though I started teaching the class last year, my school did not pressure me to complete this right away.  Actually, we were focused on getting the class approved as a University in the High School class.  Since that was completed last year, I decided this year, I would complete the course audit, so the class could officially be called "Advanced Placement Biology".  I am so grateful for the freedom my school gave me to wait.  After teaching the class, I felt like I had a much better grip on the new content and could focus on how the class fit with the big ideas, enduring understandings, and essential knowledge for the course.  I was also glad for the time this summer to concentrate on this without having the pressure of keeping up with teaching.  I was pretty obsessive about following all of the guidelines given by the College Board, and although the Board said approval could take up to 60 days, it went much faster than that.  Here's a link to the syllabus: AP Biology Syllabus The most interesting parts (to me at least) are the last few pages.

A Foray into the World of Blogging

A couple of years ago, I was homeschooling my oldest daughter and looking for some ideas for teaching her Algebra 1.  I stumbled upon Sarah Carter's blog, Math = Love.  This was the first blog I ever followed.  I appreciated that she shared all of her files.  I was just homeschooling one child and didn't have a budget for buying files from Teachers Pay Teachers, and I really didn't need much.  I also enjoyed the peek into a new math teacher's world, after being out of the mathematics classroom for so many years. One of the most helpful blog posts for me was when she mentioned the website, Problem Attic.  It is a compilation of all of the past New York Regents exam questions (as well as questions from other sources) organized by topic, and allows users to create custom tests for their students (for free!).  I quickly put together several practice sets for my daughter as we prepared for her to take the Common Core Algebra 1 Regents exam.  Then when I started teaching Living Environment, all of the tests for the class were made through problem-attic.

I love the idea of sharing my journey and sharing my ideas and resources for others to use.  Here we go!