For the past few months, I have been working on redesigning my SIMPLE Learning model in AP Biology. Many good ideas surfaced during my brainstorming sessions a few weeks ago but I decided that one of these ideas needed to come first – building each SIMPLE lesson around a question rather than around one of the AP Biology Standards. My hope is that this organization will allow each lesson to be more exploratory, while also reducing the total number of lessons from 55 (based on standards) down to around 35. Once I finalize these lesson questions, I will then organize them under unit questions which will in turn be organized under a few course questions. At that point, I will start worrying about how the students will answer these questions.
As I began to work on my prototype of lesson questions, I realized that I had a bit more work to do first. I first needed to lay out the units of my AP Biology class and then note what AP Biology standards fit under each unit/topic. Many standards fit multiple places while a few are more specific. In the end, I reorganized my units a bit (mostly the cell unit) and was able to assign 52 of the 55 standards. At this point, I went back to my outline and attempted to turn my topics in questions. I found this very difficult at first as I was trying to come up with the perfect question each time. However, I then remembered that this prototype would just be one of many drafts and that allowed me to just start typing. I am hoping that as I begin to test this prototype by sharing with several AP Biology teachers, many revisions will be made.
Please click here (or the picture below) to see the complete organization. If you would like to collaborate with me, please leave me a comment below or request access on the Google Document. That will give you the ability to comment.
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