ED Compendium for web

ED Compendium for web

The Biology Compendium

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Biology Compendium: A Field Guide to the Alabama Standards

Acknowledgments . ......................................................................... 4 What is The Biology Compendium ? .................................................. 5 Compendium Goals . ....................................................................... 7 How to Use the Compendium ......................................................... 7 Sequence of Instruction ................................................................ 11 2015 Biology Course of Study ....................................................... 12 n What are the building blocks of life?...................................... 21 n What are living things made of?............................................. 26 n How do living things get and use energy?............................. 36 n How does DNA control traits in living things?. ..................... 45 n How do living things pass traits to their offspring?.............. 55 n How have living things changed over time?.......................... 67 n How do living things interact with each other and the environment?. .................................. 81 Appendix 1: About the Compendium Advisory Team................ 94 Appendix 2: About the Compendium Partners. ........................ 98

Copyright © 2016 HudsonAlpha hereby grants You, a worldwide, royalty-free, non-sub-licensable, non-exclusive, irrevocable license to reproduce, transfer, and share the Biology Compendium; A Field Guide to Alabama Standards (“Compendium”), in whole or in part, for Non-Commercial purposes only; For purposes of this license, Non-Commercial means not primarily intended for or directed towards commercial advantage or monetary compensation. There must be no payment or monetary exchange connected with the transfer, sharing, or reproduction of the Compendium If You transfer, share, or reproduce the Compendium (including in modified form), You must retain the following: • identification of the creator(s) of the Compendium • a copyright notice;

For more information: HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology Educational Outreach Department 601 Genome Way Huntsville, AL 35806 256-327-0458 or visit www.hudsonalpha.org/education Printed in the USA by American Printing Company Birmingham, AL

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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

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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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Teachers’ instructional planning is focused on the learning targets, as they are the end goal for students. Learning targets are the path students will take to master the standards. Targets do not represent pacing and teachers are cautioned to not view each target as the objective for a single day of instruction. These learning targets guide teachers in selecting materials and resources to use in the classroom. Following class- room experiences, students should be able to fully address the target, confidently saying “ I can do what this learning target asks of me. ” Learning Experiences Learning experiences are not lesson plans but descriptions of what students should encounter in biology class. These strategies are not intended to provide a detailed list of everything that should happen in a biology class. However, they will give educators an idea of the kinds of experiences that would meet the learning targets. Learning experiences are described broadly, focusing on the verbs of instruction – investigating, constructing, proposing, testing. This approach provides teachers flexibility in how they structure classroom experiences aimed at specific types of thinking students must engage in to meet the target and ultimately the standard. These learning experiences are written in student-centered language, painting a clear picture of what students will be doing, thinking, building, and writing. This represents the clear shift in instructional focus called for by the new COS. For teachers, this shift requires thinking of lesson planning in new ways focused on building experiences where students actively wrestle with concepts, leading and being responsible for their own learning. In modern biology classrooms, teachers function as facilitators of student inquiry, providing opportunities to experience science concepts in real-world contexts. Teacher Resources The Teacher Resources in the Compendium are not intended as an exhaustive list of required activities or labs. Instead, they are a compilation of resources that have been evaluated for alignment to the new COS, providing teachers with a set of quality resources that are appropriate for meeting the learning targets. Included are in-depth multi-day investigations, probing strategy options, reading passages, video resources, web-based simulations, and short descriptions of teaching strategies. It is not expected that teachers would use every resource from the list to meet the target. The listed resources serves as a menu of options for building the experiences described for students, with teachers selecting the option(s) that best meet the needs of individual classrooms.

Modifying instruction to meet the new COS is challenging. Gone are the days when a single lab activity could check a box and fulfill an objective. In that light, no single resource provides mastery of any biology standard, and educators must think about how to deploy resources differently. In the Compendium, specific resources may appear in multiple places. These resources address multiple learning targets and support mastery of aspects of more than one standard. Alternatively, a resource may only address some aspects of a standard, and additional effort may be required of the teacher to bring all three dimensions of learning into any given lesson.

Page Example:

Learning Targets

Learning Experiences

Misconceptions

V Cells are not made of atoms. V Biological materials

1 I can describe the particles that compose an atom and relate these particles to types of chemical bonding such as covalent, ionic, and hydrogen and describe Van der Waals forces. 2 I can identify patterns in the elements that compose each macromolecule and the arrangement of mono- mer units in carbohydrates, proteins, nucleic acids, and lipids. (1)

Active learning strategies re-acquaint students with basic chemistry con- cepts from prior science courses, such as elements, atomic structures and types of bonding. Sample strategies are included in the resource list. Students also review the four mac- romolecules that compose life and identify the elements that compose the monomer subunits that combine to form each macromolecule polymer. The focus of this introductory experi- ence is to review general biochemistry knowledge rather than a deep dive into detailed content.

are not made of matter.

Teacher Tip The intent of these learning targets is to review basic chem-

istry concepts during the first few days of school. The targets can be incorporated into other first days of school activities.

Teacher Resources

Dogs Teach Chemistry — YouTube This video clip uses cute dogs to review simple chemistry concepts. bit.ly/dogs-teaching-chemistry

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Common Student Misconceptions Students do not arrive at biology class as blank slates but bring with them a host of prior learning and conceptions about life that inform their thinking. Not all of the preconceptions that students bring with them are accurate. Being aware of common misconceptions about particular content allows teachers to monitor and address fallacies appropriately in the classroom and to design learning experiences that help students identify their own misconceptions and metacognitively address them. The examples in the Compendium are not intended as an exhaustive list but encompass many of the more common misconceptions encountered by Alabama teachers. Teachers are encouraged to use the identified misconceptions to assess students’ thinking as new topics are introduced. “Teachers must use appropriate strategies to uncover misconceptions and design experiences that will help students willingly give up their misconceptions in favor of a scientific idea,” says Page Keeley, developer and author of the Uncovering Student Ideas in Science series. Some probing strategies are included in the teacher resources sections of the Compendium. Teachers who want to know more about addressing student misconceptions can find valuable resources at www.UncoveringStudentIdeas.org Teacher Tips Much of the Compendium is phrased in student-centered language, speaking directly to what students should be doing, saying, and thinking during biology class. The teacher tips provide educators insight into the learning progression, foreshadowing of future experiences for planning purposes, resources to help the teacher plan, and words of caution from veteran educators. Tips are included when teachers need additional information and are intended to support teachers’ efforts to build standards-based, student-centered experiences.

Sequence of Instruction

The Biology Compendium is organized around a proposed sequence of instruction. This sequence organizes learning experiences in a gradually widening spiral that begins with the building blocks of life and ends with students developing solutions to complex environmental problems. This spiraling sequence allows for critical topics to be revisited multiple times over the course of the year, adding additional layers to student understanding of these key concepts.

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The 2015 Biology Course of Study (COS) Visit alex.state.al.us to view the 2015 Alabama Course of Study online.

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The Biology Compendium

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What are the building blocks of life? In order to ground understanding of biological processes, it is necessary to be familiar with key chemical components, behaviors, and characteristics. Before students grasp structural concepts of proteins and lipids, they must understand key features of chemical bonding and the properties of water.

1 I can describe the particles that compose an atom and relate these particles to types of chemical bonding such as covalent, ionic, and hydrogen and describe Van der Waals forces. 2 I can identify patterns in the elements that compose each macromolecule and the arrangement of monomer units in carbohydrates, proteins, nucleic acids, and lipids. (1) 3 I can conduct several short investigations to predict the unique prop- erties of water. (5a) 4 I can build a model of a water molecule that illustrates hydrogen bonding. (5a) 5 I can use that model to illustrate how water molecules interact with each other and with other polar and nonpolar molecules, based on oppositely charged parts of the molecule. (5a) 6 I can design and conduct an experiment, including controls and variables, that provides >Page 1 Page 2-3 Page 4-5 Page 6-7 Page 8-9 Page 10-11 Page 12-13 Page 14-15 Page 16-17 Page 18-19 Page 20-21 Page 22-23 Page 24-25 Page 26-27 Page 28-29 Page 30-31 Page 32-33 Page 34-35 Page 36-37 Page 38-39 Page 40-41 Page 42-43 Page 44-45 Page 46-47 Page 48-49 Page 50-51 Page 52-53 Page 54-55 Page 56-57 Page 58-59 Page 60-61 Page 62-63 Page 64-65 Page 66-67 Page 68-69 Page 70-71 Page 72-73 Page 74-75 Page 76-77 Page 78-79 Page 80-81 Page 82-83 Page 84-85 Page 86-87 Page 88-89 Page 90-91 Page 92-93 Page 94-95 Page 96-97 Page 98-99 Page 100

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