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Welcome to the Teachers' Center at Explore Biology. Here you will find resources to help you teach biology at the high school level.
TEACHER CENTER ANNOUNCEMENT
PLEASE NOTE: The password access to the Vault has been updated for 2009-2010, so your old password will not work. Please e-mail me from your school e-mail address to gain access for the year.
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Some of my Regents lectures are supported by Powerpoint presentations. If you are not familiar, Regents is a 10th grade very simplified introduction to Biology, that is limited by a statewide exam. These PPTs are not appropriate for AP Biology courses! I have just started to upload these, so please check back if you need. You may need a compression program to unzip some of them, like WinZip (PC) or Stuffit Expander (Mac), but most are posted as native PPT files. 
Check out what we're doing online to expand beyond the classroom to the virtual world -- to catch students wherever they hang out and entice them to think! 
These daily worksheets are aligned with the Raven (7th ed.) textbook. The goal is to give students a daily assignment to get them to open the textbook, read it, and think about the material each night.
Building Macromolecules
A paper-scissor-tape activity used to help students envision the process of synthesis -- building macromlecules out of smaller subunits
- Instructions
- Photos -- my classes in action (both Regents and AP Biology).
- Glucose -- print on many different colors of paper to symbolize different sugars. Have students name each sugar with any name they want as long as it ends in -ose. Kimose is one of my favorites... or "ILoveBioTheMose"! Students can get very creative!
- Water Drops (large) -- I print on blue paper to symbolize water.
- Water Drops (small) -- easier to use for building fats. I print on blue paper to symbolize water.
- Glycerol (legal)
- Glycerol (letter) -- in case you don't have legal size paper.
- Saturated Fatty Acid (legal)
- Saturated Fatty Acid (letter) -- in case you don't have legal size paper.
- Unsaturated Fatty Acid (legal) -- print on different color paper than saturated fatty acid to accent difference.
- Unsaturated Fatty Acid (letter) -- in case you don't have legal size paper. Print on different color paper than saturated fatty acid to accent difference.
- Amino Acids -- I have been wanting to improve these a bit but I haven't had the time. They are fine the way they are. Please use them. I have used them for years -- I just wanted to (obsessively) polish them. I print each one on a different color as much as possible. I give each student lab group an amino acid sequence to build (included in this ZIP archive). I ask them to use their text to identify & label each amino acid in their sequence and determine if each is polar (hydrophilic) or nonpolar (hydrophobic). They then bond the sequence using the water droplets for dehydration synthesis and then they have to predict how this chain will behave in the aqueous solution of the cell -- which parts will fold inward and which outward. I give them a lot of leeway on the last part. They then have to name their polypeptide with a name ending with -in, like most proteins. BTW, the amino acids may look slightly differently in the book depending if they are illustrated as ionized or not -- that makes for a good discussion about the effects of biochemistry in the watery environment of the cell.
- DNA template -- have each group cut this template page down the middle and tape the two template strands end-to-end to make a longer chain for the template. I tend to copy these onto card stock so they are sturdier to hang in the classroom.
- DNA monophosphate bases -- Print each base's page in a different color and have students cut apart to build the complement to the DNA template from above. I tend to copy these onto card stock so they are sturdier to hang in the classroom. These are monophosphate nucleotides for the introduction to building the DNA molecule.
- Replication Acivity -- althouugh we end up with a poster, the goal of this activity is to re-enact replication. The group of students (I usualy do groups of 4 since there is a lot of cutting) must act out replication for the teacher using these "players" and only in the end do they memorialize everything as a poster.
- Photos -- View some photos showing the end result of our DNA replication modeling activity.
- DNA template -- have each group cut this template page down the middle and tape the two template strands end-to-end to make a longer chain for the template. You'll see in the photos I make two different colors on cardstock so we can identify leading and lagging strands.
- DNA triphosphate bases -- These are triphosphate nucleotides for a higher level of understanding of how a DNA molecule is built (for AP students). All triphosphate bases are on one page. Have students cut apart to build the complement to the DNA template from above, but have them model the cleaving off of the diphosphate by DNA polymerase so they understand the energetics of the process. I tend to copy these onto 4 different colored cardstocks so they are sturdier to hang in the classroom.
- RNA primer bases -- These are the RNA primers that primase adds on for the start of replication. I tend to copy these onto yet a different colored cardstock than the triphosphate bases, so they stand out, like bright red.
- Replication enzymes -- I give the students a variety of colors of blank paper or cardstock and they have to make their own enzymes: helicase, single-stranded binding proteins, primase, DNA polymerase III, DNA polymerase I, ligase, telomerase (if you want). They also have to label 5 and 3 prime sides of everything and leading strand, lagging strand, and Okazaki fragments.
Post-AP Activities -- what to do wth the students after the AP exam
Summer Assignments
An archive of syllabi submitted for the AP audit to help you develop your own. These are presented by permission of the authors to help other AP Biology teachers.
A resource for AP teachers developing their curriculum. This is an Excel spreadsheet. Input the total number of teaching days that you have in your school year and the spreadsheet will automatically calculate how many days you can devote to each AP Biology unit, roughly based on the percentages recommended in the College Board's AP Biology Course Description "Acorn" book.
Review Resources
Here is a list of review PPTs and activities. If you would like to add a contribution, please e-mail me directly.
- CB AP Biology Practice exam -- This is how to download the practice exam from the CollegeBoard Audit site.
- Lab Review PPT -- a PPT that reviews each of the AP "Dirty Dozen" labs and reviews past essay questions that target them.
- Lab Essay Questions
These are sample essay questions related to the 12 AP Biology Labs. Use this document to practice answering the essays.
- Course Overview
Have students use this to help check their understanding of each topic and to review the concepts they need to know for each unit.
- Confounding Terms Cards (Version 1.0) -- These are sheets of terms with similar roots that may have nothing to do with each other except that students can confuse them since part of the word sounds alike. They often get clusters like these in the Class Sets in the second half of the exam. I envision copying these sheets on cardstock and then cutting them up into individual cards and putting each set in an envelope. Then give the envelope to a small group of students and they must discuss, define, and clarify. I hope it gets students to review across units by having to go into random access memory.
If you would like to add a contribution to improve these, please e-mail me a term and a proposed answer at
.
- alphabet soup -- common AP Biology acronyms. Make sure they tell you where this shows up in biology (where it is important and what function it serves), not just what the acronym means.
- -ation -- terms with an "-ation" or -tion" root
- co- -- terms with a "co-" root
- -cyto- -- terms with a "-cyto-" root
- -derm -- terms with a "-derm" root
- eu- & hetero- & hypo- -- terms with a "eu-" or "hetero-" or "hypo-" root
- glu- & gly- -- terms with a "glu-" or "gly-" root
- -osis -- terms with an "-osis" root
- -phyll & hydro- -- terms with a "-phyll" or "hydro-" root
- trans- -- terms with a "trans-" root
- Pairs across the Phyla (Version 1.0) -- These are sheets of terms organized in rows. The items are functions and structures paired across different phyla. I envision copying these sheets on cardstock and then cutting them up into individual ROWS and handing each row to a PAIR of students.
Their task: HOW ARE THEY THE SAME? HOW ARE THEY DIFFERENT? For each pair, one person in the team should research the first item and the partner should research the second item. Highlight the most important commonalities and differences and list that information on an index card. When the team is finished, review the cards together. The goal is to review and also to see new connections between living organisms that are classified in different groups.
If you would like to add a contribution to improve these, please e-mail me a paired question and a proposed answer at
.
The original idea for these pairs came from another teacher on the AP Bio Listserve. If this is your brainchild, please contact me at
so I can give you credit.
- Thematic Review Cards (Version 1.0) -- COMING SOON! These are sheets of concepts organized by the eight CB AP Biology themes. I envision copying these sheets on cardstock and then cutting them up into individual cards and placing each set in a thematic envelope. Then give the envelope to a small group of students and they must research, discuss, explain, and clarify. I hope it gets students to review across units. Maybe this is challenging enough that students need to choose 2-3 on one day and have overnight to research and then discuss with their groups the next day. If you would like to add a contribution to improve these, please e-mail me a question and a proposed answer at
.
- Top Ten Lists -- Ask your students to develop quasi-Letterman "Top Ten" lists for each unit. "If I learned anything from this unit I should have learned these ten (or so) things." We share on the board and then we practice MC and essay questions that test those concepts (which I have collected). Here are some samples that we have developed as a class:
The Vault is the password-protected private Teachers' area -- where I store the files for teachers' eyes only. To gain access, you need to have received a password from me by contacting me directly. When you e-mail me, you will need to prove you are a teacher by mailing me from your school e-mail address and by giving me the following information: (1) your school contact info (address & school telephone), (2) chairperson's contact, (3) principal's contact, and (4) if you have, a link to a Web page listing you as faculty member. Please include the word "Vault" in the subject line of the e-mail. For security purposes, I may follow up first to confirm your status as a teacher, so access to this section is never immediate. Enter the Vault. PLEASE NOTE: The password access to the Vault has been updated for 2009-2010, so your old password will not work. Please e-mail me from your school e-mail address to gain access for the year. For security purposes, if you had access in 2008-2009, tell me last year's password. |
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