AP Biology is a rigorous, college-level course designed for the ambitious high school student who has a strong interest in biology and who wants to learn more. This course requires students to be independent, self-directed learners, with the teacher serving as a facilitator. At this level in your academic career, students and their teacher are a team.
This AP course is structured around the four big ideas, the enduring understandings within the big ideas and the essential knowledge within the enduring understanding. Students are given easy access to a digital version of the big ideas and enduring understandings to self-monitor mastery of these major organizing tools. Additionally, the appropriate learning objectives will be posted on the learning management system as an aide to provide a more focused coverage of required curriculum content and its link to specific scientific process skills.
THE 4 BIG IDEAS
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