Rethinking Curriculum Sequence

There is of course a downside to any attempt at circumventing the tedious and traditional approach to teaching biology "from the ground up." There simply aren't any biology textbooks that are at the same time constructivist and content rich, at least not any that I have seen. There was a big discussion within the biology teacher's listserv from NSTA (members only, manage listserv subscriptions from your member page) that I subscribe to regarding textbooks vs. inquiry. Here's an excerpt from one that got me thinking about the ridiculous amount of work I do this year:

I teach high school now, but in my student teaching year I taught a 6th grade science/math core using FOSS kits. We didn't have a textbook at all. I loved the FOSS kits and all of the cool equipment, but the content support was lacking. Without a textbook, I found myself writing little articles for my students to take home and read. That was a LOT of work, I tell you!

Sounds like me now trying to teach "outside the textbook" and searching desperately for materials or in many cases writing my own materials to support the concepts I teach in the classroom. It's not that the textbook I have doesn't cover the concepts I teach, it's just put together the wrong way. There's a separate chapter, for example, for cellular reproduction and heredity. The chapter on meiosis & mitosis precedes the chapter on heredity, and of course the chapter on heredity assumes knowledge of those concepts and incorporates modern understanding into Mendel's model. I chose to teach heredity as much as possible from Mendel's perspective, from a time when chromosomes and DNA were unknown. Thus I can't assign students to read the chapter in the textbook on Mendel, because they will be totally confused by all the meiosis/mitosis vocabulary. In hindsight, without the aid of a textbook to guide me and the students through such a process, I would not do it this way again. It's just too much information for me to try to pull together from too many sources, not to mention trying to structure a sequence of lessons and activities that would allow students to reach some of the conclusions Mendel reached. Finally, I believe the "right way" to do this would involve students actually growing some plants (like Wisconsin Fast Plants, e.g.) and recording some actual data. Of course even "fast plants" are too slow for a regents level biology class, where Mendelian heredity should be prior knowledge already (from middle school).

What this example illustrates is the power of textbooks to dictate curriculum. Developing our own curriculum is overwhelming. Students need more than good classroom instruction - they need enrichment materials, study guides, reinforcement activities. These materials should be aligned with classroom instruction for maximum benefit. Given these needs, teachers make the logical choice to align their instruction to the materials available to them, even if those materials are poorly suited to state standards and good pedagogy. The alternative is to spend 12 hours per day including weekends developing materials and still feeling like you are coming up short.

I will be revising the sequence and structure of my instructional plans in the coming weeks, which I will post & comment on when the changes have been made.