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Biology Course Perspective
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by Barbara Grosz
AP Biology
Pine Crest School
Fort Lauderdale, Florida
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| | Please note: The official College Board® Course Description is available below in "More."
AP Biology could be the last general biology course your students will ever take. It's a comprehensive survey of general biology that includes biochemistry, cellular biology, molecular genetics and heredity, biotechnology, diversity, structure and function of organisms, and ecology and evolution. The topic outline is so broad that you have the chance to include everything you ever wanted a student to know about general biology. If you teach the course conceptually, that is; if you focus on the most important ideas that form our current understanding of each topic, then you might also have the time! Teachers who help students to see the overarching themes that link topics can create a dynamic, thought-provoking course which will help students to experience science, rather than memorize it. Descriptive and experimental lab exercises are a vital part of this experience.
Time is the number one concern of every AP Biology teacher. There are 12 recommended lab topics that require a minimum of 48 class hours to complete -- that's one-fourth of the typical school year! Doing all of these exercises in a meaningful way while covering the broad outline taxes the creativity and pacing of even the most experienced teachers. Planning and organization are critical. If you take the traditional approach, beginning at the molecular level and ending with global ecological relationships, you probably should cover molecular genetics by winter break and be ready to discuss ecology by mid-April. It helps to block out your entire course on a calendar. Decide how much time you want to devote to each major topic and commit the time for lectures, labs, projects, and tests before the school year even begins. Be sure to leave some time for the myriad of unscheduled interruptions as well as for those teachable moments that emerge from current events. The AP Biology Course Description provides a suggested percentage of time for each topic, but don't be afraid to devote more time to topics in which you're especially interested. When the calendar runs out of days for all that you want to cover, try abbreviating a topic rather than omitting it. That's where a focus on the major concepts is practical as well as pedagogically sound.
The AP Course Description identifies eight major themes that link the topics into a unified conceptual framework. It's important to help students recognize how every topic can be viewed in this thematic perspective. We can look at how the structure of macromolecules determines their function as well as how the structures are adaptive, how their activity is regulated, and how the scientific process has helped us understand them. One can study the plant kingdom from the very same points of view. Instead of restricting evolution to a discrete topic, evidence of evolution and the role of natural selection in the evolutionary process can be discussed throughout the course.
The lab component of the course is a second, and special, concern. Lab experience is absolutely critical to learning the process of science, but an AP college-level laboratory is more expensive to operate than the typical high school laboratory. The activities require equipment and reagents that you may not have on hand. They can be time consuming to prep as well as time consuming to teach, but the time, effort, and expense are very worthwhile. And there is a lot of help available -- several supply companies have kits designed specifically for the AP Labs and it's possible to purchase the reagents already mixed and aliquotted. A very important thing to remember is that the 12 lab exercises that are included in the AP Course Description are provided as examples of exercises that meet certain objectives. The AP Exam always includes questions that reflect the objectives, not the specific laboratory protocols. Don't forget that course content can be taught in the laboratory. For example, students can learn about the structure, function, and regulation of enzymes while doing the enzyme catalysis lab. Many teachers go to weeklong Summer Institutes just to get comfortable with the laboratory protocols, and The College Board publishes a list of these institutes. The lab component makes AP science courses unique. If we want our students to have a real college-course experience and to go on, able to compete with those students who took their first-year biology course in college, we must provide them with laboratory experience that will allow them to manipulate equipment and data, draw conclusions, and think analytically.
A third concern is course prerequisites and student preparation. Juniors and seniors who have had at least a year of biology and a year of chemistry prior to taking AP Biology best master the concepts. I think the successful completion of a year of chemistry is even more important than having a first-year biology course. With respect to student selection, I give more weight to performance in chemistry than I do to performance in the first-year biology course. Even though there is more and more pressure for students to take the challenging AP courses, I wouldn't compromise on the chemistry prerequisite. Some students have the prerequisites but they really aren't prepared for the challenge. Most of those students drop the course in the first two weeks when they see how rigorous the demands of the course are. Those who stick with it, even if they are less able, can grow enormously from their intellectual struggles. AP Biology can be the course that gives meaning and context to all of the high school science a student has studied. I often hear this from my students. As their understanding deepens, they appreciate how physics and chemistry ultimately explain biology, and those subjects become less abstract.
AP Biology is challenging and rewarding for teachers as well as for students. There's a rich network of AP Biology teachers who want to share their successes and their woes, and you can meet them at one-day workshops, Summer Institutes, and online at the AP Central discussion groups. In my experience, AP Biology teachers are exceptional in their dedication to biology and their students. Don't allow yourself to be alone in this endeavor - it's richly rewarding to spend time with other teachers who share your enthusiasm for teaching and love of biology.
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