Is anyone using Miller/Levine Bio 2019 text?

[mountains27]

I am using this with my 9th grader and bought the text directly from the website. Without being a teacher or school admin it was the only thing available to buy from the website. I can't access any of the labs, teach manuals or any of the online stuff without school affiliation so we are using just the text and a study guide for it that I could find on Amazon.

I really love the text book and it wasn't too expensive so I dont feel like I wasted money it is just frustrating to not have access to labs or an answer key 😕 I am wondering if anyone else has this text book and how they are using it? are you able to find labs anywhere for it?

 

Thank you!

[BusyMom5]

I have the Macaw version.  I bought the teachers Assessment book for tests,  the student workbook for worksheets, and for labs- Pintrest!  I found www.biologycorner.com has some, and I have RSO Bio2 which has tons of labs!  I would pick and choose which ones to do.  I also used Biointeractive,  Amoeba Sisters, and the Biology coloring book by Princeton Review. 

[cintinative]

We are using the dragonfly text which is prior to the Macaw version. For our version there is a Guided Reading Notebook, tests, and a lab book. We are not using the labs though--we are using labs from Biology Corner with a few others I have added in.  Note that many courses do not cover the entire textbook.  I would think you could use the lab book for our version or the biology corner labs.  We are doing a lot of dissections which the text lab book does not include.  Our tests are actually from a friend of mine but are based on the guided reading notebook. 

https://www.biologycorner.com/bio1/index.html

https://www.biologycorner.com/bio2/index.html

[cintinative]

It looks like there is a Reading and Study Guide Workbook for your 2019 version as well.

It looks like the assessments are supposed to be here: https://www.savvasrealize.com/index.html#/  but you would need to see if they will let you have an account.

[blue plaid]

If you call Pearson/Prentice Hall, they will sell you other pieces. I did this last year and bought a workbook and the teacher’s answer key for it.  I had to fill out some sort of form saying I homeschooled or something like that but it was easy.

[A MOM IN GEORGIA]

[this is an edit in which I totally rewrote this, I hope it didn't confuse anybody!  but my prior post became moot and I have a different question!) mountains 27 what did you wind up doing regarding labs etc.?  I just bought the 2019 textbook as well but cant' find lab manual except for older edition.  I wonder if it's possible that the older edition lab manual will work

Edited December 11, 2021 by A MOM IN GEORGIA

[cintinative]

I don't know why the older lab manual wouldn't work. The lab are aligned with the different chapters. I wouldn't think that the content changes would affect the labs. 

[A MOM IN GEORGIA]

thanks for your perspective cintinative!

[BusyMom5]

I would think you could find lots of different lab ideas on Pintrest, BioInteractive, Biology Corner,  even TPT.   Go through the chapter list, then search for labs that illustrate those concepts.  

[A MOM IN GEORGIA]

thanks BusyMom5!  Yes I realize I can do that and those are wonderful ideas!  at the moment though I'm so stretched you can't imagine as I am also trying to work and on top of it my mom's developed dementia and it's just a lot.  I will probably have to do a lot of that already as I have twins but one of them requires extra supports (A LOT of extra support) and a differentiated curriculum, so ... anything I can do to simplify will help me out enormously.  I was hoping that for the twin who can handle things as they are written it would be so much easier for me to just roll with someone else's plan if at all possible.  I'm just exhausted and there is no money at the moment for paying to outsource it unfortunately, as we've spent it all on other things.  I found this other mom's blog which I skimmed and it seemed helpful but she used that 2010 version with the parrot (maybe I should have bought that book instead?!?).  I wish I knew if it will easily match!

[cintinative]

8 hours ago, A MOM IN GEORGIA said:

thanks BusyMom5!  Yes I realize I can do that and those are wonderful ideas!  at the moment though I'm so stretched you can't imagine as I am also trying to work and on top of it my mom's developed dementia and it's just a lot.  I will probably have to do a lot of that already as I have twins but one of them requires extra supports (A LOT of extra support) and a differentiated curriculum, so ... anything I can do to simplify will help me out enormously.  I was hoping that for the twin who can handle things as they are written it would be so much easier for me to just roll with someone else's plan if at all possible.  I'm just exhausted and there is no money at the moment for paying to outsource it unfortunately, as we've spent it all on other things.  I found this other mom's blog which I skimmed and it seemed helpful but she used that 2010 version with the parrot (maybe I should have bought that book instead?!?).  I wish I knew if it will easily match!

This is the TOC for the Miller Levine Macaw Version. Compare it with the 2019 text you have: http://www.millerandlevine.com/macaw/chapter/toc.html

This is the TOC for the Dragonfly edition http://www.millerandlevine.com/chapter/toc.html

[J-rap]

I used the Macaw textbook 11/12 years ago.  I LOVED it.  Someone on here gave very specific step-by-step instructions on how to access all of the online extras ~ including quizzes, lab suggestions, fun activities, video labs, etc.  All at no extra charge.  It was so great!  Perhaps that has all changed now for homeschoolers, and I wish I could find that post for you.  I would remember her name if someone said it;  she is no longer on this board but apparently posted a lot of helpful information like that back then.

[A MOM IN GEORGIA]

cintinative, thank you for sharing those TOCs!  I'll do that!   J-rap that sounds really wonderful.  the thing is I actually have found LOADS of helpful stuff for this book but most of it is for those older editions.  I wound up buying hte most recent edition and now I'm nearly regretting that because I don't know if all those great materials out there will match with the newer book.  sigh.  of course I'm just trying to save myself time so having to go through and compare everything feels like such a chore!  it's just because I'm already overextended, but you know sometimes that's just the way it is.  I actually have to do a deep dive regardless due to the one kid needing differential instruction, but normally I can do that on kind of a day by day or at least a week by week basis.  the problem with labs is that they require SO MUCH MORE PLANNING!  (purchasing supplies and what not)  and it feels like I practically need to have the whole semester figured out just to start. 

[cintinative]

1 hour ago, A MOM IN GEORGIA said:

 the problem with labs is that they require SO MUCH MORE PLANNING!  (purchasing supplies and what not)  and it feels like I practically need to have the whole semester figured out just to start. 

YMMV but I generally plan out my labs for the whole year and order supplies over the summer. I don't function well with last minute lab stuff--it's a personality thing.  

For Biology we did a lot of dissections. If you use the Miller Levine lab book, you will not do very many (or at least, you don't have to).  

We did not use the Miller Levine lab book other than the first lab which was about lab equipment and how to use a microscope (which you can really find anywhere online).  My friend had used it and had mixed success with the labs, and I just wanted to do different things than the lab manual had planned.  I really like science so I had some opinions on which labs I was interested in.  

If you decide to use anything from Biology Corner, we did a lot of those labs, so you can feel free to ask if you have issues.  BTW, she has keys for most things for sale on Teachers Pay Teachers. 

One thing I can tell you as a been there done that is that I regret not lining up my labs with the chapters initially. I originally set up our year with a lab every Wed, but that meant that we were doing labs for content we hadn't covered yet. Eventually I set it up differently which meant some weeks had multiple labs and some weeks none. That meant I needed to be on top of things a bit more but it also meant that they were learning through the lab concurrently with learning through the book, so I felt like that was better.  

[A MOM IN GEORGIA]

thank you so much for your input and I totally get it.  I'm actually not a science person (and neither are my kids I don't think), but I am that way about American government as that is my area (I'm a lawyer) so I am super opinionated and hate everything we read LOL and can't really stick to someone else's curriculum on that.  I like to pick out the cases we read/look at.  On the labs though I was not strong in science so I don't know that I am knowledgeable enough to be picky for the reasons you are, although I will need to modify for other reasons as mentioned above, so that they will work well with my kid who needs something different.  I had hoped for something off the rack just because I literally have no good time for planning but I am going to look at Biology Corner.  I totally hear you about the need to get the labs lined up with the material though.  that will be extra important for my kid who needs extra support.  It will be hard for him to get anything out of it at all if they don't.  If you planned out the whole year in advance, and yet you customized it, may I ask how you did that and what kind of time did you have to put in to do that?  for some of this stuff I'm likely to need to learn alongside my kids so it's just not plausible probably for me to read through an entire biology textbook before I even start with the kids.  It might  not be quite so bad if I wasn't so old, but I'm 52 and I believe it has literally been 40 years since I took biology!  well, I had botany in college, but you can do that math and see it's been a very very long time ago.  Even if I remembered it all, I suspect quite a lot has changed.

[cintinative]

41 minutes ago, A MOM IN GEORGIA said:

 If you planned out the whole year in advance, and yet you customized it, may I ask how you did that and what kind of time did you have to put in to do that?  for some of this stuff I'm likely to need to learn alongside my kids so it's just not plausible probably for me to read through an entire biology textbook before I even start with the kids.  It might  not be quite so bad if I wasn't so old, but I'm 52 and I believe it has literally been 40 years since I took biology!  well, I had botany in college, but you can do that math and see it's been a very very long time ago.  Even if I remembered it all, I suspect quite a lot has changed.

If I am understanding your question correctly, it was a case of the best laid plans. I had a plan for labs using stuff I found on Biology Corner and other labs I found online.  I had originally  planned to do some of the plant based stuff and insect stuff early because they are hard to find in winter, but that didn't work well because the lab didn't line up with the text.

For most of the labs we did you did not need to have a huge background in Biology to do them. For all the dissections, I watched a video dissection on youtube the night before, and then the day of we also watched it as we did the dissection.  

I did have aspirations to read the whole text, but in the end I just skimmed a lot of it.  I did create quizlets for every chapter though and that helped me refresh some of the ideas from college/high school.  The quizlets had the material from the student review notebooks.

I also ended up revising our tests.  The original tests I had were written by a friend and were unit tests. This ended up being too much material for my kids, so I used her tests and split them into chapter tests and added questions from the Miller Levine Chapter tests. That helped me review the material also.

[A MOM IN GEORGIA]

thanks for sharing!  my entire hs journey for the last decade has basically been nothing but one best laid plan after another.  sigh.  if you could see the amazing things I had planned for my kids!  sigh.  it's all that experience that makes me usually just take it week by week, but I know I cannot do that for labs.  whew I have to say I never ever ever dreamed I would homeschool for this entire time much less high school.  it's quite hard!  I feel like it's worth it but it truly is a lot of work.  thanks for your inputs!

[Sebastian (a lady)]

Does Kolbe Academy use the 2019 edition? I used their schedule and tests for the Dragonfly edition and found it worked well. There were some Catholic specific test questions that I would cross off before giving my kids their tests.

[cintinative]

11 minutes ago, Sebastian (a lady) said:

Does Kolbe Academy use the 2019 edition? I used their schedule and tests for the Dragonfly edition and found it worked well. There were some Catholic specific test questions that I would cross off before giving my kids their tests.

It looks like they use the Macaw Edition 

https://books.kolbe.org/search?q=hs09blgprk

[A MOM IN GEORGIA]

thank you so much for all these great helps!  gosh I wonder if I just should have bought the macaw edition.  I just saw it was 10 years old and I was afraid I would accidentally mess my kids up by teaching them something outdated.  my guess is that if you are a "real" biology teacher or scientist you might know it when you encounter something updated (like if I use an old government book I know how to update things like case law), but I would not even have a clue LOL.  so I thought maybe I'd better roll with something truly up to date as much as possible since otherwise there's no telling how I might accidentally mis-teach them.  I do remember that when it comes to classification stuff it seems like it was changing all the time, even when I was in college.  I recall that my college professor was teaching something different than my  high school teacher, for example, about the classification of fungi!  that is ALL I remember but anyhoo, that's just to say that my own ignorance is the thing that made me feel like I'd better get up to date materials.  Well it looks like I will probably need to just kind of dive in and figure it out rather than just trusting in someone else's plan, or maybe call Pearson and jump through their hoops to see if they'll sell me the lab manual that goes with this book. 

I'll bet they are a pain about it, as I live in a state where the state government does not give us something.  we just send them in a notice that we're homeschooling, so sometimes people balk at my lack of a certification or what have you that I am really a homeschooler.   and I'll bet that it's not cheap either to get it brand new from the publisher!  but what can you do?  at least it's still cheaper than private school!