Pearson's Active Reading Guide Ap Biology Chapter 16

A great syllabus is the backbone of whatever AP course, simply it can be challenging to create 1 that fits all the requirements and is easy for students to follow. In this article, I'll give yous the ingredients you need for a solid AP Biological science syllabus, including all the concepts and curricular requirements of the course.

I'll also provide a sample syllabus and so yous can become an thought of what a syllabus for this class might await like (if y'all're a student) or how you might structure your version of AP Biology (if you're a teacher). Finally, the stop of this article is devoted to a few quick tips for teachers and students on how to successfully teach and learn the material.

What Does the AP Biological science Grade Cover?

The curriculum framework of AP Biology was revamped in 2012 and is now organized around four Large Ideas, which are overarching themes that connect the concepts you'll learn in the form.

Within each Big Idea are several "Enduring Understandings" that students are expected to develop past taking the class.These are slightly narrower themes that can be cleaved downward fifty-fifty further into smaller parts that are aligned with specific facts nigh biological functions.

I'll listing the Big Ideas and their respective Enduring Understandings in this article, along with the labs that fall under each category. I won't go into the smaller concepts within the Indelible Understandings then that this guide doesn't get too long to digest. If y'all're interested in a detailed rundown of the more minute concepts involved in AP Biology, check out this page.

As students explore the Big Ideas, they are also expected to learn several cardinal scientific practices, and the classwork must cover certain curricular requirements.Afterwards I go through the Big Ideas, I'll listing the scientific practices students should develop and the curricular requirements that any AP Biology syllabus is expected to fulfill.

Think of each Big Thought as a giraffe. Why? Because information technology's fun. Live a little. (Yes, I know there are only three giraffes - Large Idea 4 is camera shy.)

The Four Large Ideas of AP Biology

Large Idea #1: The process of evolution drives the diversity and unity of life.

• Enduring Understanding 1.i: Change in the genetic makeup of a population over fourth dimension is evolution.
• EU one.2: Organisms are linked past lines of descent from common beginnings.
• EU 1.3: Life continues to evolve within a irresolute surroundings.
• EU 1.4: The origin of living systems is explained by natural processes.

Labs for Large Idea one:

• Artificial option
• Mathematical modeling (Hardy-Weinberg)
• Comparing Deoxyribonucleic acid Sequences to Understand Evolutionary Relationships

Big Idea #ii: Biological systems use free energy and molecular building blocks to grow, to reproduce and to maintain dynamic homeostasis.

• EU 2.1: Growth, reproduction and maintenance of living systems require gratis energy and affair.
• European union 2.2: Growth, reproduction and dynamic homeostasis require that cells maintain internal environments that are different from their external environments.
• EU two.3: Organisms employ feedback mechanisms to regulate growth and reproduction, and to maintain dynamic homeostasis.
• Eu 2.4: Growth and dynamic homeostasis of a biological system are influenced past changes in the organization's surroundings.
• European union 2.5: Many biological processes involved in growth, reproduction and dynamic homeostasis include temporal regulation and coordination.

Labs for Big Idea 2:

• Diffusion and Osmosis
• Photosynthesis
• Cellular Respiration

Big Idea #3: Living systems store, receive, transmit and answer to information essential to life processes

• EU three.1: Heritable information provides for the continuity of life.
• European union 3.2: Expression of genetic information involves cellular and molecular mechanisms.
• Eu 3.3: The processing of genetic information is imperfect and is a source of genetic variation.
• EU three.iv: Cells communicate by generating, transmitting and receiving chemical signals.
  
• EU 3.5: Transmission of information results in changes within and between biological systems.

Labs for Big Thought 3:

• Cell Partitioning: Mitosis and Meiosis
• Biotechnology: Bacterial Transformation
• Biotechnology: Restriction Enzyme Analysis of DNA

Big Idea #iv: Biological systems interact, and these systems and their interactions possess circuitous properties

• EU 4.ane: Interactions within biological systems lead to circuitous properties.
• EU 4.ii: Contest and cooperation are important aspects of biological systems.
• Eu 4.3: Naturally occurring diverseness among and between components within biological systems affects interactions with the surroundings.
  

Labs for Big Idea four:

• Free energy Dynamics
• Transpiration
• Fruit Wing Behavior
• Enzyme Activity

Cooperation is always happening in biological systems! This is an approximation of what the within of a jail cell looks like at whatever given fourth dimension.

The Seven Scientific Practices of AP Biological science

#one: The pupil tin can use representations and models to communicate scientific phenomena and solve scientific problems.

#2:  The pupil tin can use mathematics appropriately.

#iii: The educatee can engage in scientific questioning to extend thinking or to guide investigations within the context of the AP grade.

#four: The pupil can program and implement information collection strategies in relation to a particular scientific question. (Note: Data can be nerveless from many unlike sources, e.one thousand., investigations, scientific observations, the findings of others, historic reconstruction and/or archived data.)

#five: The student can perform data analysis and evaluation of evidence.

#6: The student tin piece of work with scientific explanations and theories.

#7: The educatee is able to connect and chronicle knowledge across various scales, concepts and representations in and across domains.

The Curricular Requirements of AP Biology

Here's a list of the requirements that an AP Biology course must fulfill to exist considered an advisable and thorough survey of the textile:

• The course must use a college-level biology textbook published within the last ten years.

• Students must connect the Enduring Understandings of each Big Thought to at least 1 other Big Idea (for case, connect the evolutionary concepts in Big Idea 1 to the idea presented under Large Idea 3 that genetic information is sometimes candy imperfectly, and this leads to variation).

• Students should exist assigned projects and activities outside of labs to run into the learning objectives for each Big Thought (for instance, students might do an activity where they create a model of the cell bike and give an oral presentation on its most of import aspects).

• The class must give students the opportunity to connect biological cognition to major social issues and electric current events (for example, a project researching stem cells and their potential to impact the medical field).

• Labs must give students the opportunity to apply the seven science practices I listed earlier, and the form has to go through at least two labs that stand for with each Big Thought.

• Labs must make up at least 25% of course fourth dimension.

• Students should be asked to demonstrate verbal, written, and visual communication skills with lab reports, summaries of scientific literature or evidence, and oral presentations.

I was going to make a joke about teachers wasting class time by trying to get the projector to work for presentations, simply then I realized that I don't even know if they utilise projectors anymore. I'm sure at that place'southward some other essential piece of classroom engineering science that never works by now.

What Does an AP Biology Syllabus Look Similar?

The College Board has released some sample syllabi to help guide teachers in their instruction of the new format of the AP Biological science course. The instance that I'thousand looking at divides the class into nine different units of varying length.

The resource for the course include:

• Reece, Jane, et al., Campbell Biology , 9th Edition, 2011, Pearson Benjamin Cummings
• world wide web.campbellbiology.com (The main text'southward accompanying website that provides animations, investigations, PowerPoint and other sound-visual resources)
• Giffen, Cynthia and Heitz, Jean. Practicing Biology (to accompany Campbell- Reece Biology), 3rd Edition, 2008, Pearson Benjamin Cummings
• AP Biological science Investigative Labs: an Inquiry Based Approach

I'll give an overview of the topics discussed in each unit and the projects and labs students might complete throughout the year. I'll also provide the approximate length of each unit. In this example, the grade met four times a calendar week for ii 80-minute periods and 2 l-minute periods (four hours and 20 minutes a week total).

Sample AP Biological science Syllabus

Unit ane: Get-go Calendar week and Introduction (4 classes)

Textbook Capacity:

1. Introduction: Themes in the Report of Life
2. The Chemic Context of Life
3. H2o and the Fitness of the Surroundings

Lecture and Word Topics:

• Darwin and the theory of natural selection
• Research every bit a way to learn science
• Structure of atoms
• Emergent properties of h2o

Projects:

• Make construction paper models of atoms and molecules to illustrate chemic concepts.
• Conduct an open enquiry on a biological topic of choice; formulate a question, design an experiment, and nowadays the findings.

Unit 2: Biochemistry and Introduction to the Cell (xi classes)

Textbook Chapters:

iv. Carbon and the Molecular Diversity of Life
5. The Construction and Office of Large Biological Molecules
six. A Tour of the Cell
seven. Membrane Structure and Office

Lecture and Discussion Topics:

• The bear upon of carbon as the "courage of life"
• How monomers build polymers, including the roles of nucleic acids
• Examples of organelles that are membrane bound to compartmentalize their functions
• Membrane structure and function

Projects and Labs:

• Build a 3D cell membrane
• Improvidence and Osmosis Lab

Unit 3: Cellular Energy and Related Processes (14 classes)

Textbook Chapters:

8. An Introduction to Metabolism
9. Cellular Respiration
ten. Photosynthesis

Lecture and Discussion Topics:

• Metabolic pathways
• Laws of energy transformation
• How ATP powers cellular work
• Enzyme structure and role
• Harvesting chemical energy: glycolysis, citric acid wheel, oxidative phosphorylation
• Low-cal reactions and the Calvin bike
• Evolution of alternative mechanism of carbon fixation

Projects and Labs:

• Cellular Respiration Lab
• Photosynthesis Lab
• Enzyme Catalysis Lab

Unit of measurement four: Jail cell Communication and the Cell Structure (nine classes)

Textbook Capacity:

eleven. Jail cell Communication
12. The Cell Bike

Lecture and Discussion Topics:

• Evolution of jail cell signaling
• Reception, transduction, response
• Apoptosis
• How mitosis produces genetically identical daughter cells
• Development of mitosis
• How the eukaryotic cell wheel is regulated by a molecular control system
• Origin of jail cell communication

Projects and Labs:

• Pathways with Friends
• Modeling the Jail cell Wheel
• Cell Division and Mitosis Lab

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Unit of measurement five: Genetic Basis of Life (vii classes)

Textbook Chapters

13. Meiosis and Sexual Life Cycles
14. Mendel and the Gene Idea
15. The Chromosomal Basis of Inheritance

Lecture and Discussion Topics:

• Genes are passed from parents to offspring by the inheritance of chromosomes
• How meiosis reduces the number of chromosomes (diploid to haploid)
• Evolutionary significance of genetic variation that results from sexual life cycles
• Concepts of Mendelian genetics (laws of probability, inheritance patterns)
• Genes are located along chromosomes (concepts of gene linkage, mapping distance between genes, causes of genetic disorders)

Projects and Labs

• Fruit Fly Genetics Lab
• Meiosis Lab

Unit 6: Gene Activity and Biotechnology (thirteen classes)

Textbook Chapters:

16. The Molecular Footing of Inheritance
17. From Gene to Poly peptide
eighteen. Regulation of Factor Expression
19. Viruses
20. Biotechnology
21. Genomes and their Development

Lecture and Discussion Topics:

• DNA is the genetic fabric (historical experiments, DNA construction and part, DNA replication)
• Flow of genetic information (genetic code, role of other polymers, transcription, translation)
• Mutations
• Gene expression (operon systems in prokaryotes, eukaryotic gene expression)
• Virus structure and activeness
• Restriction enzymes, plasmids, transformation
• DNA technology (how gel electrophoresis works and applications of this technology)

Projects and Labs:

• DNA and Histone Model
• Biotechnology Lab i: Transformation
• Gel Electrophoresis Lab

Unit 7: Evolution and Phylogeny (19 classes)

Textbook Capacity:

22. Descent with Modification: A Darwinian View of Life
23. The Evolution of Populations
24. The Origin of Species
25. The History of Life on Earth
26. Phylogeny and the Tree of Life
27. Bacteria and Archae

Lecture and Discussion Topics:

• How natural selection serves equally a machinery for evolution
• Scientific prove supporting evolution
• Hardy-Weinberg concept
• How allele frequencies can exist contradistinct in a population
• Concepts of speciation
• Origin of life; fossil records
• Events in the "history of life" (origin of single-celled and multicellular organisms; mass extinctions; adaptive radiations)

Projects and Labs

• Comparing DNA Sequences Lab
• PBS Video: "What Darwin Never Knew"
• Evolutionary Time: The Geologic Fourth dimension String
• Hardy-Weinberg  Problems

Unit of measurement 8: Diversity in the Biological Globe: Organism Course and Function (22 classes)

Textbook Chapters:

xl. Bones Principles of Animal Form and Office
43. The Immune Organization
48. Neurons, Synapses, and Signaling
49. The Vertebrate Brain
(Chapters 28-49 volition be utilized to provide students with resources for the enduring understandings in this unit of measurement)

Lecture and Discussion Topics:

• Evolutionary trends (endosymbiosis, adaptations that immune plants to move from water to country, reproductive adaptations of angiosperms, environmental roles of fungi, animal torso plans, progressively complex derived characters in animal groups)
• Unique features of the angiosperm life cycles
• Indicate transduction pathways (plant and animal hormones)
• Photoperiodism in plants
• Feedback control loops in animals
• Thermoregulation in animals
• Energy allocation and use in animals
• Examples of performance units in mammal systems (alveoli in lungs, villi of small intestines, nephrons in kidneys)
• Structure and function in immune systems
• Construction and function in nervous systems (neurons, resting potential, action potential, synapses)
• Structure and function of the human brain

Projects and Labs:

• Construct a cladogram for a group of organisms with certain traits
• Jumpin' the Gap (students pretend to exist components of neural communication)
• Research project on stem cells and whether they should be used to care for brain and spinal cord injuries

Unit 9: Ecology (17 classes)

Lecture and Discussion Topics:

• Aspects of fauna behavior
• Aspects of biomes
• Models describing population growth
• Regulation of population growth
• Customs interactions
• Species multifariousness and composition
• Community biodiversity
• Energy flow and chemical cycling in ecosystems
• Principal productivity
• Energy transfer between trophic levels
• Human activities that threaten biodiversity

Projects and Labs

• Fruit Wing Behavior Lab
• Dissolved Oxygen and Chief Productivity Lab
• Design a model of a biome
• Improving species richness by calculation phosphate to a swimming - how would you make up one's mind how much to add to avoid eutrophication? Present your hypothesis.
• Investigate how the fungus Pilobolus succeeds every bit a decomposer? Written report adaptiveness of spore dispersal methods

In AP Bio, yous'll get to hang out with some fun guys.

Teaching Tips

Writing a great syllabus is the get-go guild of business organization, only equally you probably know, nearly of teaching is in the execution. If you're a teacher trying to provide the best experience for your AP Biology students, here are a few tips you lot might consider using in your lessons.

#one: Provide Brief Lecture Outlines

Give brief outlines to students before you start your lecture and so that they'll accept a clearer picture of what you're going to cover. I say brief outlines because y'all don't desire to give them notes that listing everything they need to know about the lecture topic. List the main points of the lecture (effectually 3-5 of them), and listing a couple of important subtopics under each. Provide plenty of space between concepts for students to write notes. They  should have some incentive to pay attention in course. This volition create a better environment where students aren't confused or tuned out.

#2: Pause Upwardly Your Lectures With Class Discussions

I retrieve dreading double-menstruum lecture classes in high schoolhouse, and I was better than most loftier school students at sitting quietly and forgoing social interaction. You should try to engage the class in a word midway through your lecture to break upward the monotony. I'd recommend calling on people randomly so that kids will have an incentive to pay attention and more introverted students volition become a chance to participate in the discussion.

#3: Be Accessible During Labs

Chances are, kids will have tons of questions during labs. Sometimes the procedure is a little confusing or the results are different from what was expected. Make a bespeak of walking around the room and checking in with each lab group to ensure that everyone stays on job and students accept a take a chance to ask questions.This tin as well forbid students from doing the lab incorrectly and wasting time - you'll grab mistakes early on!

#4: Model Your Tests Later the Real AP Test

My AP Biological science teacher gave us tests throughout the year whose questions were very like to real AP test questions. These tests were super challenging (I don't think I always got a solid A on whatsoever of them), simply I was very well-prepared for the AP exam. Zilch on the exam was more difficult than the questions I had encountered on in-class tests, so I felt pretty confident.

Bobby, what did I tell you nigh eating the caterpillars!? We demand those for the lab! Too, why are y'all even in AP Biological science?

Tips for Students

Here are a few boosted tips directed towards students who want to do well in AP Biology.

#one: Do the Readings on Time

There's a lot to comprehend in this class, so it's critical that you keep up with the readings in your textbook. If you lot fall behind, it will be hard to catch up. There also may be of import things that your textbook covers that your teacher won't mention in lectures. Plus, you'll be able to participate in class discussions and avoid failing any pop quizzes!

#2: Take Notes During Lectures

Don't zone out when your teacher is talking! I know information technology tin be difficult, but taking effective notes is a cracking skill to accept for college and beyond. Your notes will also help you lot study for in-class tests and, eventually, the AP test. Information technology's easier to study your own notes because they'll be written in a fashion that you empathize.

#3: Enquire Questions

Don't be afraid to speak upwardly in class discussions and engage with the lecture topics.If y'all feel like you don't understand a concept, ask your teacher almost it. B elieve me, it'south better than finding yourself totally lost later! Also, if y'all have whatsoever doubts about lab procedures or how you should write your lab reports, consult with your instructor before going forward.

"This child is all of us in AP Biology," is what I would say if I wrote for Buzzfeed.

Decision

AP Biology covers a huge amount of information, and so writing a syllabus that organizes everything effectively is super of import. The iv main Large Ideas embrace many smaller themes, each of which covers a variety of complex concepts.

The College Board also requires classes to innovate students to seven scientific practices and fulfill a litany of other curricular requirements. Hopefully, the sample syllabus in this article gave you lot a good idea of what the structure of an AP Biology class should look like and how you might choose to embrace all of the material.Guiding students through this intimidating maze of concepts can be pretty difficult!

To review, some teaching strategies I recommend are:

• Providing cursory lecture outlines
• Breaking lectures into more manageable chunks
• Being available for questions during labs
• Using tests that mimic the structure and content of the AP test

For students, here are a few other pieces of advice that I would propose post-obit:

• Keep up with the readings
• Take notes on lectures
• Inquire lots of questions

What's Next?

Looking for some good AP Biology review books? Check out my guide to the best books for this twelvemonth's version of the test.

I've also written a complete study guide for the AP Biological science test that goes through all the concepts and has links to free online resources that you tin apply to review.

Finally, this article goes through an analysis of whether AP Biology is more or less hard in comparison to other AP classes and tests. It might be helpful if you're not sure virtually taking the course or just want some insight into how much you'll need to report for the examination!

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About the Author

Samantha is a blog content writer for PrepScholar. Her goal is to assist students adopt a less stressful view of standardized testing and other academic challenges through her manufactures. Samantha is also passionate about fine art and graduated with honors from Dartmouth College equally a Studio Art major in 2014. In high school, she earned a 2400 on the SAT, v's on all seven of her AP tests, and was named a National Merit Scholar.

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Source: https://blog.prepscholar.com/ap-biology-syllabus

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