Preparations

I've usually done a lot more work at this point in time to prepare for the beginning of school. But then again, I don't usually have the luxury of teaching the same topic a second time, so I don't need to work as much to get prepared. Nonetheless, I would like to spend the remainder of this week immersed in praparations.

I have decided to follow, roughly, the NYC draft scope and sequence as described here. I find lots of fault with it, but then again I find lots of fault with my own sequence from last year. And I find plenty wrong with the textbook my school uses, the Prentice Hall Biology: NY State Edition. (I already complained about this "NY State Edition" marketing BS here). There is, of course, no perfect way to sequence a biology course. My preference is to start with big ideas or concrete phenomena, then work down to the abstract or microscopic level, but that is often a tme-consuming approach and I've yet to find a textbook written in this manner.

The Prentice Hall, for example starts as many texts do with the abstract scientific method, as if it were some piece of information to be learned, when in fact it is really more of a skill and way of thinking that has to be practiced. Then they move into the atomic/molecular level. Next a jump to Ecology, then back to an extended period of study of the microscopic & abstract world of Cells and then Genetics, followed by a unit on Evolution. I don't quite get the logic. The NYC draft doesn't improve much on that by throwing Human Biology and Reproduction in between Cell Bio and Genetics. But until I can write or patch together my own textbook, I'll have to just fit in with the existing paradigms.

So, here's a link to my rough outline, skeletal and subject to modification.