AP Biology aims to challenge students with a rigorous, college-level curriculum. The following “Big Ideas” will be the focus of our study as we move through each unit. Students will begin to understand that each big idea does not exist alone, as a solitary area of study, but rather that each blends into the others to create the complexity of processes and interactions that exist among and within living things.
| Big Idea #1: |
The process of evolution drives the diversity and unity of life. |
| Big Idea #2: |
Biological systems utilize free energy and molecular building blocks to grow, to reproduce, and to maintain dynamic homeostasis. |
| Big Idea #3: |
Living systems store, retrieve, transmit, and respond to information essential to life processes. |
| Big Idea #4: |
Biological systems interact, and these systems and their interactions possess complex properties. |
In addition to the “Big Ideas” outlined above, this class will seek to push students toward a higher level of scientific inquiry and understanding. This will require students to think creatively in the classroom as they engage in the following scientific practices: - Use representations and models to communicate scientific phenomena and solve scientific problems
- Use mathematics appropriately
- Engage in scientific questioning to extend thinking or to guide investigations
- Plan and implement data collection strategies appropriate to a particular scientific question
- Perform data analysis and evaluation of evidence
- Work with scientific explanations and theories
- Connect and relate knowledge across various scales, concepts, and representations in and across domains.
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