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Ideas for high school science
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DD15 took an online course this past year for biology, using Apologia Biology as its text. She did a couple of the recommended lab experiments at the beginning, but we had a hard time keeping up with them. (We had supply issues plus her autistic brother “interrupted” the process a time or two.) We discovered that a co-op group we knew of would be offering a lab course for Apologia Biology this year, so we opted to have her take that to complete the labs in connection with the coursework she completed during the past school year.
I am having trouble deciding what to have her do this year for science in addition to the biology labwork. The lab course meets every other Friday over the course of the school year. She will need something else besides that, but I don’t really want to have her doing double labwork, so I’m thinking of doing something that has little or no labs with it. She’ll be doing chemistry and, in all likelihood, physics–both with labs–in her final two years of high school.
Any ideas? I asked her today to think about what science topics she might like to study in-depth this year (in addition to the biology labs), but she hasn’t gotten back to me on that yet. The notion of doing labs after taking the course is unusual, I know, but I didn’t want biology to become “biology-light” for her. I also think doing labs for two different courses this year might be confusing. What do you all think?
Hmm. You could try a number of different things. If she is definitely planning on doing chemistry and physics later (good!) then you could do an “expanded biology” program this year, with some special topics if she is interested. You could get a reading list of living books, maybe visit a science or natural history museum or two, watch a video program or do an online MOOC or something of that sort. You could consider getting one of the optional Apologia books–they have a marine biology and an anatomy one–and let her work through that at her own pace. If she didn’t get through all of it, you could just give her a half credit for it.
Has she chosen any topics of interest? Botany, astronomy, marine biology, entomology? I hope she has fun choosing. If you decide to do an expanded Biology this year, I second Bookworm’s suggestions.
….or, if she would like to study anatomy, how about Ratcliff’s “I am Joe’s Body” along with keeping a science notebook. At the Living Education Retreat, I attended a breakout with Jennifer Gagnon who showed how they used this book along with an anatomy & physiology coloring book to keep a science notebook. Each highschooler’s science notebook was amazing and unique. John Hudson Tiner’s “Exploring The History of Medicine” might be a good fit with this.
There are really some good living science books out there that could really whet the appetite for further study. The difficulty is probably narrowing it down to one or two. “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” and “Darwin’s Black Box,” “The Disappearing Spoon” are some that come to mind.
Let us know how it goes. My oldest is just entering sixth grade and am looking forward to planning out science.
Warmly,
Richele
Well, she is not planning on taking both chemistry & physics, but I’m the mom, so she will be taking them!
I had thought about an expanded biology course, if she had something specific she wanted to cover. She seems to comment most often on what she’s learned about cell structure and such, so maybe, between the two of us, we’ll see what kinds of books and dvds are available to study that. Unless she comes up with a different topic….
She has been talking about studying fashion design in college, so I was thinking an anatomy course would be helpful, since I recall (back when I was the registrar at a two-year fashion & art college) that the fashion design students had to take two semesters of Anatomy & Figure Drawing to learn how to accurately draw the human figure. However, I’m not so certain she won’t end up studying fashion merchandising instead since she hasn’t really taken to sewing! She’ll still need to get into college if she wants a BA in either field.
If we do some sort of biology topic this year, what would I call it on her transcript? Has anyone done this & what did you call the class? I’m planning on keeping a portfolio of her work to document what she did for the class if she doesn’t take something with a textbook like marine biology or anatomy.
I think an Anatomy and Physiology class might be a great choice. Since she likes artistic pursuits, she might enjoy using an anatomy coloring book to solidify her understanding. Maybe one like this one: http://www.amazon.com/The-Anatomy-Coloring-Book-Edition/dp/0321832019.
If you choose to do biology but not a specific field like Anatomy & Physiology or Zoology, you could delve deeper into the topics that interested her most and call it “Advanced Topics in Biology” or even “Biology II”. I would just make sure you are very clear on the course description and materials used so potential colleges can appreciate exactly what she did.
Hope this is helpful.
Kristina
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