Honors Biology vs Regular Biology

[Debra Garcia]

My school is looking to revamp its curriculum and the idea of offering honors courses has been brought up. Presently we offer just a general biology course to all incoming freshmen. All sophomores take chem, juniors can take physics or an AP, and seniors can take AP or an elective science. I teach at an independent school with a 1-1 laptop program.

So if your school offers both courses:

• How are the courses different or similiar as far as what is taught and how it's taught? Is honors just a pre-AP?
  
• How do you decide who takes honors?
  
• Do you like this setup? If so, why or why not?
• Do your honors students do internships with scientists in your community- say once a quarter for a day or some other setup?

I am sure I will think of more questions to ask. My department is trying to get a feel for this and see if it would be worthwhile to do. But I need to do some research first before we discuss it further.

Thanks so much for any information you can offer!

[Chris Ludwig]

My science department and I have been thinking of revamping our course offerings, too. Thanks for starting a discussion along those lines.

My first question would be is the honors bio that you are talking about in place of regular biology or is it essentially year two of biology? Is this about tracking or about additional coursework in biology?

We've gone the route of having additional coursework in biology. Our freshmen and sophomores take semester-long survey science courses (physics, earth, bio, and chem) so that they are reasonably rounded in science content knowledge. Juniors and seniors choose from biology (college concurrent credit), anatomy and physiology (concurrent), chemistry (concurrent), geology, and AP biology (offered every other year, usually).

I'm wondering whether we need to ditch the one-semester courses because they are so shallow in what we teach. Lots of topics in very little time. The problem is that most of our year-long courses are concurrent credit classes which need to be reasonably rigorous academically and don't always appeal to the general student population. Thus the discussion on whether or not to offer 'regular' sections of bio or chem.

[Debra Garcia]

B/c we are an independent college prep school, we have flexibility as far as our curriculum is concerned. We're thinking about a split simply because we have some students who are really geared toward science and hope to do that in college. These are kids who hope to take 3 AP sciences and then some. We have other students who are ok at science but are looking towards the arts and humanities. But our overall goal is to increase science literacy among all of our students and we're trying to figure out the best way to do that.

I really like the concurrent enrollment option at your school and this is something we hadn't really looked into but definitely will now. Thanks!

[J. Gudelsky]

Hi Debra - I am interested in the responses you get as my school is struggling with the same decision. We have always placed all freshmen in biology, leveled our chemistry courses (Chem is also required.), and then allowed students to select their own courses junior and senior years. Over the last 5 years or so, though, we have found ourselves trying to cope with an increasing number of lower-level students in addition to capable students who lack a strong work ethic. As a result the pace of our course keeps slowing down and we are no longer covering the material that we used to and that we need to.
We have a couple of concerns about creating an honors course, though. In our district it seems like every child (according to his/her parents!) is an "honor" level student! Even if we were to hand pick these students, we would have less capable students "waiving" in.
We would also be prejudging students and making guesses about their capabilities and motivations at that critical middle school/high school junction - just when some may be finally ready to kick in.
And we'd lose those top kids from the class sections - the ones that "get it" and often can rephrase concepts in "non-teacher" language so other kids do, too. They also are often the ones that ask interesting questions and spark lively discussions.
I'm interested in hearing what issues your department works through and what decision you reach. It may help us in our process.

Judy

[Colin Matheson]

We offer freshman Bio 1 and Honors Bio 1. We offer sophomore physics and honors physics, and junior chem, honors chem, and AP Chem. As for other bio courses we also offer Bio 2: Anatomy+Physiology, AP Bio, and now AP EnviroSci.
Our issue is that some parents don't want to put their kids in Honors Bio as a freshman because freshman honors courses don't count towards university of california GPA calculations as an honors class (5=A). So why risk a B in an honors class when the child could get an A in a regular class.

When I taught both classes I basically told the kids that the goal was for honors to be about 10% harder. I focused on retention/comprehension in regular bio and in analysis and application in honors bio. The defacto tracking allowed me to be more rigorous with honors (better preparing those students for AP) and to provide a more positive general bio experience in the regular class .

[Jason Braun]

We currently have a 'Regular' or Regent's Level (in NY that what it is called) and an honors course in my school. Unfortunately, the way the Regent's curriculum is written in NY is so watered down it is almost like middle school science (in my opinion it is pathetic). However, the Honors curriculum is more intense and goes much more in depth with many topics. I was not on the curriculum writing the year they made an outline, but I know they used a few of the SAT 2 review books in Biology as general guidelines and resources. We all decided as a department that the honors class would be geared for students who wanted to take the SAT II exam in the spring time. In terms of time, it is still given the same amount of time as Regent's level (class everyday, lab every other day) and these students also take the State Assessment (NY Regent's Exam in Living Environment - that is what they call Biology in NY).

Even though we place them by teacher recommendation (in 8th grade - honors bio is 9th grade) we still have problems. I like the idea of everything, but in practice it does not work that great because as someone else stated, all the parents think their children are 'honors' students and unfortunately they make a phone call and get their child enrolled. Now you get the kids who should be in Honors, with a kid who struggles because his parents thought he/she was so intelligent. This has been going on for a few years now and it is just getting worse. This past year we had 50% of the student's enrolled in Living Environment (about 500 kids in two high schools) taking honors. I think we do an excellent job, but there is no way this many should be in it. The past few years I have taught both Regents and Honors and I see the Regent's classes getting so weak because they lack the upper end student to facilitate with discussions and other projects. In addition, the honors classes are getting weakened and you find yourself slowing down so much because half of the kids are lost when the other half are getting frustrated because we cannot move on.

Honestly, I do not know which way works best. I suppose the only thing that would work is if your guidance department was more strict on who could take it, or have some time of entrance assessment or something like that. As a teacher it is frustrating, as a student it is frustrating and I am sure the administration and guidance become frustrated with all of the parent complaints and pushiness.

Sorry I couldn't be ore positive, but it is something we have been dealing with as a district for some time now and it drives me nuts. On a better note, I will ask some of the other teachers for the outline of regents and honors so you can at least compare the two and see if you can get some ideas.