Storylines: Diving in

Update #1:

So I have been eager to try out the storyline way of teaching science that has been developed with the NGSS aligned standards. I love the focus on science skills with content intertwined. Since I did not want to make a full year commitment without having tried it, I decided to start my year normal and then try to incorporate a storyline during the school year to help make a decision for the next year. My colleagues were a little nervous about jumping in as well and we really try to plan together and share a similar calendar, labs, and assessments.

Starting second semester I decided to jump in with both feet. We cover genetics and DNA the start of second semester. After examining storylines, I decided to go with the Melanin storyline from the Illinois Science Teachers Association. They have a supportive Facebook group and one of the key developers is very active with answering questions.

I told my Biology teaching colleagues that I was just going to do this and they could jump on board or stick with the old plan. Both of them decided to stick with the old plan---- and then changed their tune and are going to try some elements of the storyline.

The first day was rough --- it involved watching a video about albinism and come up with questions about albinism. I was very disappointed at the number of students snickering about the albino children. I was worried about how this would go with their insensitivity. The questions they came up with were very simple. "Why does this happen?" "Why are they so white?" "What percentage of people are albino?"

On day two, I supplemented with basic genetics notes about vocabulary before we talked about pedigrees.

Today, we are going to try out Hidaya's story where the students read and create their own pedigree.