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Another HS Biology Question
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I’m really struggling to know what to do for my son for HS Biology. I’ve been following the recent science discussions and I’m still unsure. Reading does not come easy for him and he is not college bound but I still want to challenge him. His younger brother would most likely be working on the same course with him.
I like the looks of the Sabbath Mood Guides but we don’t have four years to complete Biology. I have looked at Guest Hollow Biology and it looks interesting but would like to see more reviews. I have Apologia Biology and was thinking of purchasing the DVD lectures.
Another possibility would be to totally skip Biology and do Chemistry instead because he enjoys and does well with math.
I’d appreciate any thoughts or recommendations.
My daughter did Apologia Biology this past year and we used the free at your own pace class from Virtual Homeschool Group. It went very well. The class offered a few quizzes for every module and a much more doable test for each module as well.
I think Guest Hollow Biology looks really good as well. It is definitely more than adequate seeing as how it uses a textbook for a spine and adds lots and lots of supplements. It actually looks like too much to me!
I’ve also seen that there is a new curriculum out called Friendly Biology. It’s from the folks who have been offering Friendly Chemistry for years. It looks good!
If your son has already had Algebra 1, then he could do chemistry now. However, I’m not sure if I would want to totally skip the study of biology. While he might find chemistry more interesting, it certainly won’t be any easier than tackling biology.
Another option would be to cobble together the one term Biology study from Sabbath Mood with the Biology 101 DVD’s and study guide, as well as a few more living books suggestions from SM and/or AO. If you added in a dissection kit for labs, this could be quite a meaty study! The SM study guide could help you get the feel for planning your own living books study to finish out the year.
If you want to use an audiobook for you son to read Apologia Biology, Audible.com has it. If you sign up for it, you can get it for free and then cancel your membership if you don’t want to purchase anything else. The book will remain there for you to use after you cancel.
My daughter also has reading difficulties, so we use audiobooks on occasion. We did that this year with Biology, and we used the Virtual Homeschool Group lectures, quizzes, and tests also. (That is free as well.) It worked out fine for her. You can do your own labs and submit lab reports for grading to VHSG, but we used a co-op lab class that was based on Apologia Biology instead.
If you have any further questions about this particular biology course, feel free to ask.
HTH,
Sue
Thanks for the suggestions!
I’ll have to look into the Virtual Homeschool Group more. Are there any samples of the lectures or am I not understanding the website? We would definitely need to use the ‘on your own pace’ option.
We used the Audible version of Physical Science this past year and that was very helpful so it is something I have considered for Biology as well.
I like the idea of using more living books in our study but because of the rest of my little people I won’t be able to put something together myself. I need everything laid out for me and then I can make the adjustments I think are necessary.
I was wondering if any of you have found using other components like 4-D cell models or KNEX DNA sets helpful?
I never found any sample lectures on Virtual Homeschool Group’s website. I signed up for the at your own pace class and then had access to all of the material for that class. Basically, the videos are various slides with an audio of the teacher going over each slide and teaching the material. After each slide video, there is a quiz.
We found it best to select how many pages we planned on covering each day and then watching the slides that went along with those pages. We often stop in the middle of a video and pick up where we left off the next time. After we finish a complete video and the related reading material, my daughter takes the correlating quiz.
When we finish a module, I have my daughter complete the study guide in the book and then give her a day to study before she takes the online test from VHG. This has worked very well for us.
This may be of some help. Here are two sample lessons I found in the FAQ section of Virtual Homeschool Group. The first is from the General Science course, and the second is from the Chemistry course. For the first link, you have to click on “Start the Lesson Lecture” when you get to the screen; the second one will auto-start the lecture after about 5 seconds. Make sure your volume is turned up.
One more thing to note about the VHSG lectures. They are called voicethreads, and there are typically 3 voicethreads in a given module. All of the voicethreads for a module total around 60 to 75 minutes, on average.
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