Advanced Placement Biology Syllabus

2017-2018

Instructor Information

Instructor / Email / Planning Period
Jodi Clayton / / 4th Period

Description

The AP Biology course is designed to enable you to develop advanced inquiry and reasoning skills, such as designing a plan for collecting data, analyzing data, applying mathematical routines, and connecting concepts in and across domains. The result will be readiness for the study of advanced topics in subsequent college courses — a goal of every AP course.

*** You will be required to take the AP Biology Exam on May 14, 2018. NO EXCEPTIONS TO THIS PER MR. HOWARD.

The Emphasis on Science Practices

A practice is a way to coordinate knowledge and skills in order to accomplish a goal or task. The science practices enable you to establish lines of evidence and use them to develop and refine testable explanations and predictions of natural phenomena. Because content, inquiry, and reasoning are equally important in AP Biology, each learning objective combines content with inquiry and reasoning skills described in the science practices. The science practices capture important aspects of the work that scientists engage in, at the level of competence expected of you, an AP Biology student.

Organized around Big Ideas:

The key concepts and related content that define the AP Biology course and exam are organized around a few underlying principles called the big ideas, which encompass the core scientific principles, theories and processes governing living organisms and biological systems.
Big Idea 1: Evolution
The process of evolution drives the diversity and unity of life.
Big Idea 2: Cellular Processes: Energy and Communication
Biological systems utilize free energy and molecular building blocks to grow, to reproduce, and to maintain dynamic homeostasis.
Big Idea 3: Genetics and Information Transfer
Living systems store, retrieve, transmit, and respond to information essential to life processes.
Big Idea 4: Interactions
Biological systems interact, and these systems and their interactions possess complex properties.

Lab Notebooks and College Credit

Colleges may require students to present their laboratory materials from AP science courses before granting college credit for laboratory, so students are encouraged to retain their laboratory notebooks, reports, and other materials.

Course Materials

Required Materials

  Lab fee of $25

  GRAPH-ruled Composition Notebook (Walmart has these)

  12 pack Crayola Color Pencils (Brought and left in class, I will have a separate box to keep your color pencils in)

  1 pack BLACK Sharpie Markers (can be the 2 pack) (We will use this in lab)

  Paper Towels

  Pencil or Pen (blue or black in ONLY)

  1 ream white printer paper

  1—1 inch 3 ring binder with tab dividers solely for AP (I will be doing periodic, unannounced notebook checks throughout the year.)

  1 box quart bags

  1 pack lined index cards (recommended)

Required Text

Campbell Biology9th Edition, Reece, Urry, Cain, et al.

Additional Information and Resources

Video Links and PowerPoints will be posted onto the class notebook.

You can access the notebook by going to portal.office.com

Username and password are the same ones that are used to log in to school computers. With the username however, you must type

All important information will be sent using class notebook and/or Remind

If you need to contact me, the best way to reach me it via email or via the Remind app.

·  For Remind, you can do one of the following:

o  Text @saintsAP1 to 81010

o  Visit https://www.remind.com/join/saintsap1

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