Wednesday March 4th, 2020 from 3:30pm to 4:30pm (CST)

Illinois Science Teacher's Association Storylines

Three-dimensional learning that incorporates the disciplinary core ideas, the science practices and the cross-cutting concepts is the driving force of the Next Generation Science Standards. In order to better integrate the different topics typically taught in the high school biology classroom, storyline units that are coherent and phenomenon-driven have been created so that students can make sense of how science works in real world situations. For example, units have been written to address the phenomena of albinism, for the teaching of genotype to phenotype, group hunting in lions to address social behavior and genetic relatedness, and tusklessness in elephants to introduce keystone species and natural selection. These units, written as part of an Illinois inter-district collaborative, have proven to be great models of how three-dimensional learning can be applied in today's biology instruction and lead to students becoming self-directed learners and thinkers.