More About Our Homeschool High School Biology Curriculum: General Biology by Core Academy
This is a general homeschool high school biology course for tenth grade. The first semester covers introduction to science, human biology, ecology, and zoology. In the second semester, students learn about botany, microbiology, cell biology, genetics, and origins. Christian, creationist worldview informs the lessons throughout the semester where appropriate.
Each session has a reading assignment, video lessons, notes, worksheets, and a vocabulary. Most have a quiz.
- The reading assignments are optional for taking the quizzes and tests (since all of the material needed for the quizzes and tests comes from the videos and notes). However, the readings are necessary if you need to acquire a certain number of credit hours. The reading assignments are keyed to a variety of popular Christian textbooks (including BJU Press, Apologia, A Beka, Alpha Omega, and Christian Liberty Press). In addition, a free biology textbook download is available to Schoolhouse Teachers members, but it is not written from a Christian creationist worldview. This class presents arguments against the secular view of science, but parents and students should use discretion in choosing the reading text.
- The notes are simplified outlines taken from the lecture notes used by the professors in the video lessons. Material on the unit tests come from these notes.
- The worksheets contain the same material as the notes but with fill-in-the-blanks for students to work through. They could be used as homework assignments after the lesson or as note-taking aids during the lesson.
- The vocabulary lists are just lists of key terms from the lesson. These should be used as an additional exercise for students to write their own definitions from the video lessons or notes or to look up definitions in textbooks or online.
- Each session’s vocabulary quiz is derived from that session’s vocabulary list. The quizzes are all matching.
Each session is designed to take no more than a week of work, but students are encouraged to work at their own pace if they want to work ahead. Each unit concludes with a unit test. The tests are mostly multiple choice and matching questions with a few short answer questions at the end.
This high school biology course includes approximately 25 hours of video instruction, supplemental readings, and answer keys.
Special note to parents: Session 8 contains a lesson on human reproduction. Even though the lesson does not discuss intercourse, we fully support some parents’ preference to educate their children about sexuality in some other way. We, therefore, included a test “supplement” for the third unit test. The regular unit test contains questions about human embryonic development, but we placed questions about the reproductive process exclusively in the supplement. Parents can opt to use that supplement or not. The vocabulary quiz for session 8 is available in only one version, and it asks questions about human sex organs and hormones. We also placed a warning on the human reproduction video lesson to remind students to check with parents before watching.
If you’ve ever wondered why it is critical that students understand the scientific evidence for Creation, we invite you to check out Fallout, by Creation Ministries, International, available to watch free on SchoolhouseTeachers.com.
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