Course Goal and Long-Term Plan for High School Biology (California)
Introduction
Biology is the study of life, from molecules and cells, to organisms, to how those organisms interact with each other and their environment. In the elementary grades, students generally come to understand that organisms have basic needs (air, water, food, light, etc.) and that organisms have a life cycle (being born, developing into adults, reproducing, and dying). In high school, though, “students’ understanding of biology will expand by incorporating more abstract knowledge, such as the structure and function of DNA, and more comprehensive theories, such as evolution. Students’ understandings should encompass scales that are both smaller, for example, molecules, and larger, for example, the biosphere” (National Science Education Standards).
Big Goal and Assessment
At the end of the year, my students will take the California Standards Test (CST) in biology. First, it’s my goal that on average students will receive a scaled score of 316 or higher on the CST. Last year, students at my school averaged a scale score of 307 I found the scores of the highest-performing school district in the state –ABC Unified in LA county—online at ap.org. Their average score was 343. If my class averages a 316 on the exam, that will mean that my students will have closed the achievement gap by 25% this year. My program director and I thought that 25% would represent a meaningful closing of that gap after analyzing the past performance of some successful teachers.
In order to ensure that my students will get a 316 on the exam, I’m going to emphasize some standards over others. I decided to focus on key concepts that will build students’ understanding of living things from the basic building blocks of life (macromolecules) to entire ecosystems. If students master 80% of the content aligned to the key concepts, and get 80% of those questions correct on the CST, they will achieve a 316 on the exam.
The key concepts are those that the state of California expects all students should know, as opposed to those that all students should have the opportunity to learn.
Of course, we won’t know the official CST scores until August, but I plan to administer an exam similar to the CST (as prep for the CST) at the end of the year and calculate scaled scores on that exam. Then, I’ll be able to tell the students whether or not we reached the big goal at the end of the year. I’ll use the CST released items as my primary source for questions[1], but I’ll need to add some questions to cover the pre-requisite learning goals I’ve added (basic math and science skills) and for the standards without released items.
[1]