The son of our good friends did this, and our oldest son just signed up in April. Our friend's son planned a camping trip for his family for his exploration part, and that is what my son is planning. I know he didn't give it much thought at all, certainly not to come up with great ideas like you have! I don't have any idea what other things would get approved, though.

We here are pretty much all about math and science in high school. Art, not so much. But I want my kids to recognize well-known paintings, know about the different main periods or art and masters of those periods--that kind of thing. We can take a few field trips to the National Gallery of Art, even though I despise driving our big van into downtown DC, LOL. What I don't want is the high school kids to have to try to imitate styles themselves, and do a lot of project-y stuff, because it really wouldn't fly, and they both have heavy loads this year. So what would a class like that possibly be called? Art History Survey? Intro to Art History? Art History for Boys Not very interested in Art But Whose Mother Wants Them to Appear Well-Rounded? : )

Ha! I said this exact same thing to my husband!

I can think of a couple of other girl names that end in "i" like that, such as Tori or Toni, and I don't think people are constantly confused about pronouncing it "Tor-ee" or "Tor-ii". So I guess I would assume the "Julie" pronunciation.

Ha! It was funny to see my response up the thread, from almost a year and a half ago! We ended up preparing for the AP exam, which was definitely not the original plan. But by the time we decided to do that, the other families in the co-op had already bought the DIVE cd, so we still sort of used that. We mainly used Biology by Campbell and Reece, though, instead of the BJU book. It turns out that there isn't a DIVE lecture each week (some weeks he just tells you to read the chapter in the book associated with the topic of the week), but for the weeks he had lectures, I had the boys watch them, figuring hearing him explain the concepts would provide a good overview and solidify whatever was in the Campbell book (which was always a ton deeper and more complicated). Three of my students did take the SAT 2. They got a 780, 770, and 730 on the exam, so they did well. I just asked my son (who got the 770) if he felt like the DIVE/BJU combo would have been enough to prepare him for the exam. He didn't think he would have done quite as well, maybe in the 600s. I think that it is a thorough program (and I do really like the BJU biology book), so I would think that if you also diligently used test prep books, esp. for the evolution part, then you would do fine. Ironically, with the change in the AP bio exam, the SAT 2 is the one that more focuses on just rote memorization of biological facts. At least it is easier to prepare for, in that there are lots of sample tests, and the general test hasn't changed over the past several years!

Good friends of ours just visited West Point, and she told me the guy who briefed them told them that USMA required the ACT with writing. I was surprised to hear that! I had assumed our oldest would take the ACT, but I figured he wouldn't need to take the writing part, since he had already done the SAT. Learn something new every day! One of the comments I heard a bunch of times from kids who took the redesigned AP biology exam this year was "it was just like the science part of the ACT!" Since ds took the AP exam, I'm curious now to see what he thinks of the ACT!

My son also got a 4 on biology. He got a 770 on the SAT 2 and also felt the test was pretty easy. But when I saw the percentages of 5's this year (only 5.4%), I was not expecting one for him! He's actually away right now, volunteering at a conference center for Christian military families for 2 weeks, so he will have to wait to find out! He will be happy, and I must say I am relieved. 21.4% got 4's, and 36.3% got 3's--with such a high percentage of 3's, I thought that would be what he ended up with! I'm still waiting to hear how the other 3 boys in in my class did.

The chemistry AP exam is changing this year, so it will be pretty near impossible to find good practice tests for it. Biology changed last year, and none of the review books really had a handle on what the new test ended up being. They were not of much value at all. I think you could easily prep for the chem SAT II if you could do both Apologia books and go through a chem SAT II prep book like Barrons. But I would not attempt the AP exam. Even having done AP bio last year, we are not attempting AP chemistry this year! We're just doing a regular honors-type course, and prepping for the SAT II.

You won't need dissections for the new AP exam. (Sorry, "enter" button isn't working here.) One thing I found really helpful for my students this past year was the guided reading questions put out by Fred and Theresa Holtzclaw. This link is for the 8th edition of Campbell. Another website that has a TON of helpful links for AP bio is the AP bio part of http://www.biologyjunction.com/welcome_to_ap_biology.htm. I used a lot of resources from there.

I have! That is part of what is producing all this curriculum angst, LOL. I spent a long time reading the chemistry threads last night! I'm looking at this one too. I guess I want to know if anyone has been successful taking the chemistry SAT II test using BJU's chemistry book, and so far it doesn't seem like anyone has. Hmmmm . . . Thanks for the input!

I am still thinking through my chemistry curriculum for next year. We're not doing an AP course, but I would like the kids to take the chemistry SAT II. What text books have you used that have successfully prepared your students for the SAT II? I have a used copy of BJU (third edition), so I could use that. I'm just not sure if it is in depth enough, or if I should use one of the (many!) Zumdahl or Chang options. I'll have 6 students, and 3 of them at least are planning STEM majors, so I do need something fairly rigorous. Thanks!

They are questions where the student has to solve some sort of problem that yields a numerical answer, which they then "grid in" the answer in a special grid. So if the answer was "3.14", then he would write that in the boxes on top of the grid, and then bubble in the digits and special signs (like a decimal or minus sign or whatever). Here is a link to what the grid-in answer grid looks like. Here is an example of a grid in question: The data below demonstrates the frequency of tasters and non-testers in an isolated population in Hardy-Weinburg equilibrium. The allele for non-testers is recessive. Tasters--8,235 Non-tasters--4,328 How many of the tasters in the population are heterozygous for testing?

Brenda, it was posted by the moderator of the AP Biology teacher forum on the College Board website. I only have access to the biology forum, or else I'd check the Latin one for you! I did see students on a thread on college confidential post the percentages I quoted, so somehow the word is getting out. The moderator did not say it was privileged information or anything. Maybe check college confidential and see if any industrious students have found out the curve? We used Campbell and Reece Biology, 8th edition, which probably over-prepared them, LOL. We all also had BJU Biology, because our original plan had been to do biology using BJU and DIVE, so for some subjects (esp. ones that were not emphasized on the new AP exam like taxonomy and most body systems), I had the boys read those chapters instead of the ones in Campbell, which had SO much information. The boys all worked through a test prep book as well. Two used Barrons, and one used Princeton Review. They used those esp. to review concepts that weren't emphasized on the AP one, and just to get a feel for the question types.

If you had a child who took the new, redesigned AP biology exam this May, or if your child is going to take it next year, or even if your child is going to take the new, redesigned AP chemistry exam this coming May, then you may be interested in the score summary that the College Board released for this year's test. (They won't release the actual individual scores until July, however.) I had 4 students, including my son, who took it. They didn't think it was as bad as they had expected. I figured the CB would probably have an easy curve, since it was the first year of a brand new test, and no one knew really what to expect. Ha! I was quite wrong! Here is the break down of scores, and how they compare to last year's results. AP Grade 2012 2013 5 19.7% 5.4% 4 16.9% 21.4% 3 14.3% 36.3% 2 14.6% 29.5% 1 35.4% 7.4% Here are a few of their other comments: Educators and students had reported perceptions that the multiple-choice section was easy, that it did not require content knowledge, or that it was a test of reading comprehension. None of these perceptions proved accurate. The panelists who took the exam themselves felt that the questions effectively balanced required content knowledge with fundamental quantitative, analysis, experimental design, and data interpretation skills. Student performance does not indicate that the section was easy. In fact, the results show that AP Biology students on average are not yet performing as well as college students on such tasks. On the multiple-choice and grid-in questions, AP Biology students scored, on average, 61% correct. By way of comparison, the mean score on the “old†AP Biology Exam (2012) multiple-choice section was 63% correct. Five questions in a new grid-in question type required students to meet college biology’s standards for use of mathematics to solve biological problems and understand biological concepts. The performance of AP Biology students on these questions was very low, with an average correct score of just 36%. The low student performance, in general, on most of the free-response questions had a significant impact on this year’s AP scores. AP Biology teachers are doing tremendous work to help their students develop the knowledge and skills essential to success in biology majors and careers, and measured by the multiple-choice, grid-in, and free-response questions on the redesigned AP Biology Exam. In many instances, AP Biology teachers are receiving students who have spent years in science classrooms that never moved beyond rapid coverage of textbook content, with very little understanding or retention of such information. The work needed to improve student learning of biology is made visible by very low scores on most of the AP Biology grid-in and free-response questions – the questions that require students to perform mathematics and describe, explain, and predict fundamental biological principles and outcomes. Many incoming AP Biology students have never been taught or required to demonstrate the quantitative, analytic, and interpretive skills now required, so struggled on the redesigned AP Biology exam. College faculty who participated in the AP Biology standard setting agree that their own students are similarly challenged, and that the redesigned AP Biology program is the new gold standard, one that gives them confidence that AP students earning qualifying exam scores deserve placement and will be much better prepared for science majors than students who take their own colleges’ introductory biology courses. The college faculty participating on the panel sang the praises of AP teachers for teaching a course that is now an exemplar for college-level introductory biology. The small percentage of students demonstrating performance needed for a score of 5 signals a need in particular to help students improve their performance on the grid-in and free-response questions. To earn a 5, students must learn the course content well enough to be able to perform the skills required in the grid-ins and the free-response section: when confronted with scientific data or evidence illustrative of the required course content, students must be able to “calculate,†“predict,†“justify,†“propose,†“explain,†“perform,†“specify,†“identify,†“describe,†“pose a scientific question,†and “state a hypothesis.†True understanding requires that students develop the depth of understanding required to perform such tasks with accuracy and precision. We encourage AP Biology teachers to take heart and recognize that shifting years of students’ prior ways of learning science can take time. But what the AP teaching community has shown, year after year, is that they can meet and exceed the standards required of colleges for credit and placement. More importantly, AP Biology teachers are transforming the depth of science understanding and skills when in classrooms worldwide they shift the focus of classroom instruction away from rapid content coverage to help students learn to explain and describe their understanding of science content, and to design and conduct laboratory and mathematical tasks essential to understanding natural phenomena. If a student cannot perform such tasks, the research consistently shows that they will not retain or use the knowledge they have learned in AP Biology, and will be insufficiently prepared for much of what they will be required to do in science majors. Hats off to the AP Biology teaching community for the tremendous change you are seeking to effect in your students’ understanding of biology. There was such a low percentage of 5's, so you may want to lower expectations, especially if they thought it was "not too hard", like my boys, LOL. Evidently, it was! So it looks like it was not a good time to be a guinea pig, and that reinforces my decision to not attempt AP chemistry next year, since it is also changing. We will prep for the chemistry SAT 2 test though. Three of my students also took the biology SAT 2 in June, and they did very well--780, 770, and 730--so they did complete a challenging course, even if they don't end up getting very high AP scores. It was hard to perpare for the new AP test, though, without really knowing what it was going to look like. We shall see! It was definitely a year of learning and stretching for all of us, LOL.

My wedding invitation read that same way (we got married 20 years ago). As I recall, my mom and I just sort of randomly picked one out of a book. I know I didn't spend much time, if any at all, focusing on wording. It was just the traditional, standard way. I got married when I was 20, and I was definitely the first of my friends to get married, so I had not noticed other invitations and didn't really have any in mind to compare. That said, my in-laws (parents and siblings!) threw an absolute conniption fit that dh's parents were not listed on the invitation. I was mortified that I had offended them, especially since I had NO idea that invitation wording was a big deal. I honestly thought I was just following tradition! Although now that I know them better, they are all experts at taking offense where none is intended, so I am quite sure they would have chosen to be offended at some other thing if I had listed them. Please do not read anything into this, and instead give the benefit of the doubt!

LOL! Thanks for the heads-up. Maybe I'll try one of the other ones. Ive just spent awhile on the library website, and these all look like very popular books! We're #14 for Ender's Game, and most of the Eddings books have us waiting as well, although not as long! Once they start coming in, Nathan should have plenty to occupy himself with through the end of summer!

These all look great! I'm off to check our library online catalog . . . Thank you very much!

My oldest son is looking for some good books to read over the summer. He's almost 16, and he just finished reading the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. He enjoys fantasy like that (and like Lord of the Rings), but he's also enjoyed things like the Horatio Hornblower series and books by Ted Dekker. Any recommendations so we don't just have to randomly browse library shelves, hoping something strikes a fancy and is decent? : ) Thanks!

Hello Dolly! We have the Barbra Streisand DVD. So fun! We love musicals!

Double major in biology and math, with a near minor in chemistry (one class short). They have been handy for homeschooling, but even more handy was all my experience tutoring! I feel like homeschooling is a lot like tutoring--finding the reason one student doesn't understand something, rather than necessarily teaching a concept a ton of different ways until everyone in a big class understands it.

Hmm . . . all I have experience with is biology. There they had 4 sample syllabi online at the college board website. I used some elements of those, but some of my own stuff too. I definitely didn't just copy one wholesale, although I'm not sure if that is okay to do or not. I thought I saw somewhere when I was submitting mine a place where you could submit a syllabus that you thought was a "direct copy" of yours or something like that, like if you were complaining about it. But I could have misread something. I needed my own because I already knew the book I was using, the order I ws teaching things, etc., and those things didn't line up in any of the online syllabi I found. Before looking at the college board website, I searched "AP apporoved biology syllabus" or something. Tons came up, but the vast majority were syllabi that the teachers were sending out in a packet to their students. That gave me ideas for the pacing of the class, but they didn't not include half of what the collage board actually wanted for the official submitted syllabus, which for biology, requires tons of specific examples of how you are going to connect different Big Ideas to each other, and what non-lab activities you are going to use for various learning objectives (at least one for each Big Idea), and which labs you are doing (2 per Big Idea), along with what Scientific Principles you are covering in each lab, as well as a ton of random statements about things like how lab time is 25% of your class, and how you are going to have your kids present lab data. No one puts that stuff on the syllabi they hand out to students, I think! So definitely the first step would be to go to the college board history website and see exactly what the requirements are for a syllabus for history. After you go to the AP whatever history home page, click on the "AP Course Audit" link. They should have some helpful links there that walk you through the process. You actually have to make an account with the college board (you register as a teacher, and your access code is the one for your state--the same one your child uses to take the PSAT), and then submit your syllabus to them. They approve it or send it back with a request for changes. I think you have 2 times to get it right? I can't remember. I submitted mine under my name. That gives me access to secure documents (released practice exams, etc.) under my own audit portal. Very helpful! Oh, and I am most certainly not a certified teacher, so that is a false rumor! I teach my class for a little co-op, and students that take my class can put on their transcript that they took an AP biology class with me as their teacher. Then the college they are applying to could look up my name for whatever year and see if I was approved (I am pretty sure that is how it works, anyway!). The approval email says to keep it for your records. I don't think any other parents need their own approval--YOU are the teacher, so as long as the class is linked to you, it should be okay, and their kids who are taking the class can legitimately call it an AP class. I hope this is helpful!

I have heard that Campbell has a new book, revised for the new exam, and that it is 1/4th the size of the old book. But I haven't gone searching for it! There is definitely a lot that is not necessary anymore, like most of the chapters on the different phyla, body systems other than nervous, endocrine, and immune, and a lot of the plant chapters. Like I said though, I just heard about this and haven't actually seen such a thing myself, so I'm not 100% sure about it!

I taught this class unofficially this past year, and my 4 students (all boys) took the exam on Monday. I just got my syllabus approved a few days before the exam, so (now that I have some extra time, LOL) I have been reading the teachers forum for AP biology over on the College Board website. I also have kept up with the big thread for this year over on College Confidential. I thought I would jot down a few notes from those places, as well as from my students, in case people were wondering about the new exam. The College Board redesigned the exam this year, based on a new curriculum framework that came out last year. The idea was that instead of focusing on knowing a ton of random esoteric facts about biology (the old-style exam), the students would be more able to think and reason like scientists, within a framework of biological knowledge. No one really had any idea what exactly the exam would be like. I am still praising the Lord for allowing me to get AP approved so quickly, so that I could access the practice exam! My son was glad to have done the practice problems, but he wasn't sure they were all that helpful, other than helping with pacing. The College Board sent out a second set of a little more than 30 practice problems, which I also sent out to the boys, and Nathan thought those were more helpful. What was universally agreed that was NOT helpful were any of the test prep books. We used Barrons, which came out in February, but they were just guessing on the questions like the rest of us, and their questions were still geared more to the old format. People who used other books felt the same way though, based on comments from both teachers and students. Hopefully the test prep companies will learn as well and offer better, more helpful books next year. (So don't buy used AP biology test prep books next year!) There were 63 multiple choice questions, and most of them had big, long sections of reading accompanying them, along with graphs or tables. They would literally take up an entire page. One big complaint from students on the collegeconfidential website, as well as from AP teachers on the biology discussion board (passing along their students' comments), was that they couldn't finish the multiple choice questions because of all the reading. One of my students had trouble finishing the questions, but the other 3 had no troubles whatsoever. Apparently a lot of students felt like the multiple choice part was "the ACT science section on steroids". Nathan hasn't taken the ACT yet, so I don't know, but it sounded like a lot of logic/reasoning/problem solving, more than just knowledge of tricky biological concepts. A lot of students were upset by this, feeling like they could have just taken any honors biology course and done just as well. Some teachers felt that students who slacked off in the course could potentially have done just as well as students who really studied, as long as the slackers were good test-takers. Since the boys aren't supposed to discuss the specific questions, I don't know really, but from the sample problems, you did have to know the concepts to be able to make sense of the reading, and to do it in a timely manner. I don't think someone could have just taken it cold and done well. None of my boys thought the questions were as hard as they could have been. Some kids on collegeconfidential thought they were really easy; some thought they were extremely hard. I am glad that just in general we focus a lot on logic and problem solving around here. Who knew it would be so helpful in so many different areas? : ) As some teachers pointed out, we live in an age where we can easily look up random facts. But being able to analyze data and draw conclusions is a more important skill for scientists. I personally expect the questions will get harder in the coming years. In the first section, which was 90 minutes long, there were also 6 "grid-in" questions. These are questions where you have to solve some sort of math problem, so the answer is a number, and you bubble in the correct number on your answer sheet. Nathan again felt prepared for these. There aren't tons of different math problem possibilities out there for biology, so it was pretty obvious to me that for example, one problem would be a Hardy-Weinburg problem. And it was! I was glad we hammered that! The main problem experienced by some kids was that at the end of the multiple choice section, there was a message that said "END OF PART A. DO NOT STOP. CONTINUE TO PART B." Somehow, maybe just due to the stress of the test, kids saw that message, and thought the proctor would tell them when to move on to the grid-in problems. So time ran out, and they didn't do them! The good news is that the grid-ins were weighted exactly the same as the multiple choice questions, but still . . . the teachers said a lot of their best students didn't do the questions, which may cut their chances for a 5. I had told the boys to do the grid-in questions first, since if they were running short on time, then it is at least possible to randomly guess and fill in a bubble on multiple choice questions, unlike on grid-ins! There is now a thread on the teachers forum about how to make the directions more clear (take out "STOP" completely?). It sounds like this is partly a problem due to all the high-stakes standardized testing all these students take all the time--where they are conditioned to stop after each section. Another advantage of homeschooling! The last section were the essays or "free response questions". In the new format, there are 2 long FRQs (which are supposed to take about 20 minutes to write the answers for), as well as 6 shorter one paragraph FRQs that are only supposed to take about 6 minutes each. The College Board has released all the FRQs for the "Form O" test that most students took. You can look at them here and ascertain for yourself whether or not you could answer these questions without a college-level biology course! Nathan thought these questions were easier than he expected, and he wrote something down for each one. Who knows yet what the scoring rubric will be, though, and if he put in his answers everything the readers were wanting to see! The general consensus on collegeconfidential also was that the questions were not too difficult. There has been a lively thread on the AP teachers' forum discussing potential answers to these questions! So my students felt like they were pretty well-prepared, but we shall see how accurate their impressions were once scores come out in July! It was a hard year for me, anyway, and this course consumed a TON of my time, but it was really rewarding. Next year we're doing chemistry--and we are NOT AP-ing it! I can't do another new course right now!

I would like to join. I've never actually joined a social group, so I don't know what to do, but I'm teaching 6 kids in our little high school co-op next year. We just got done with AP biology, and I have not really thought too deeply yet about what text we'll be using. I have a Zumdahl Chemistry book, as well as BJU. We'll probably use Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments for labs. I'm in charge of standardized testing for the families in our big elementary co-op, and that is taking place next week. I figure after that, I will turn my attention to planning for chemistry!

Three years ago I made up a 32 point timeline of important dates in history that I had my kids memorize (one date for each week of our little co-op). Now that the kids have that timeline down well, I need to go back and fill in gaps, but it is a start anyhow! We had done CC for a year, and that timeline felt overwhelming, plus we weren't memorizing dates associated with it. I felt a smaller number of events, but with dates, would actually be more useful in the long run. Also, obviously there are huge ranges of possible dates, especially for the early events/people. I just sort of picked a date and went with it, LOL. Here it is--maybe seeing it would help you! Timeline of Important Dates in History 1. Unification of Upper and Lower Egypt by Pharaoh Menes--3100 B.C. 2.Code of Hammurabi—1792 B.C. 3.Reign of Tutankhamon—1333 B.C. 4.Davidic Kingdom—1011 B.C. 5.Founding of Rome—753 B.C. 6.Reign of Julius Caesar—59 B.C. 7.Destruction of Jerusalem—70 8.Pompeii Burns—79 9.Split of the Roman Empire—286 10.Constantine and the Edict of Milan—313 11.Justinian the Great—527 12.Charles Martel and the Battle of Tours—732 13.William the Conqueror and the Battle of Hastings—1066 14.The Magna Carta—1215 15.Gutenburg Prints the Bible—1456 16.Columbus Sails to the New World—1492 17.Martin Luther Begins the Reformation—1517 18.The Defeat of the Spanish Armada—1588 19.Jamestown is Founded in Virginia—1607 20.The Mayflower Lands at Plymouth Rock—1620 21.America Declares Its Independence—1776 22.The Storming of the Bastille and the French Revolution—1789 23.Napoleon’s Defeat at the Battle of Waterloo—1815 24.Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War—1861 25.The Great World War—1914 26. The Bolshevik Revolution—1917 27. The Stock Market Crash and the Great Depression—1929 28.World War II—1939 29.Neil Armstrong, First Man on the Moon—1969 30. The Berlin Wall Comes Down--1989 31.First Gulf War—1990 32. 9/11—2001