This mind-bending book brings you to a level of understanding of biology that meets up with modern criteria for high grades in the subject. There are no restraints imposed by any curricular borderlines of present-day biology courses. The different subjects within biology are organized and presented in an order that is optimal for an effective understanding of the subject. The book brings up topics most biology teachers find difficult to teach and topics rarely explained in mainstream biology textbooks. Use it as a complement rather than a replacement for those biology textbooks already in use.
The book is available on www.amazon.com
Most of the illustrations in the book are also included in those packages providing Power-point presentations relevant for biology courses.
Any of these services will significantly ease the workload for the teaching staff.
All you need is to specify the course level you are teaching, for example:
These services are provided at a once-for-all expense corresponding to 1 – 3 monthly salaries.
A specific difficulty in designing biology courses is that an optimal order is not as evident as in physics and chemistry and that most textbooks in Biology follow a common routine rather than a carefully optimized teaching plan. For any school subject, it is essential that the course material is presented in an order so that teaching is based on earlier achieved knowledge. Developing an understanding of Biology is thus dependent on a course plan optimized for effective learning.
A course plan is mainly a help in covering the course content within allocated time. Contrary to IB Chemistry, it is not optimal to study the IB syllabus of Biology in numerical order. As I see it, most things in biology at higher secondary school level have to be founded on some basic understanding of mathematics, chemistry and physics. A chemical approach on cell biology makes a good starting point for further studies on human physiology into which any of Options A or D can be integrated. For climatic reasons, ecology may preferably be studied during a season suitable for outdoor investigations. Option C can be integrated into the ecology part of the course. Studies of evolution benefits from knowledge about ecology and genetics and it may thus be optimal to study this difficult aspect of biology as the last part of the course. Option B about microbiology, however, may as well be studied after all of the core material has been covered.
The optimal order in which the biological subjects are studied is the same as in IB Diploma biology but there is a more free choice of content and the emphasis can be modified according to teacher’s requests or, in the best of worlds, the focus of the majority of student’s interests in the subject.
For designing a course plan it is essential to know which textbook you use and how much time you have allocated (teaching hours per week, school weeks per year, time for revision…). For planning of the ecology part of the course, it may also be good to know in which climate zone your school is situated.
On request, I provide materials for basic Biology courses and preclinical Medicine at University level. Tariffs depends on the amount of time and work required and ranges from £ 150 for weekend seminars up to £ 15 000 for whole year courses. Fees vary and are project dependent
With experience of a high ranked IB School in U.K, I have learnt the importance of teacher’s support material available on the server. On request, I create ingeniously simple presentation material for Biology teaching at Secondary School, basic University level in Biology or, possibly, preclinical Medicine. The presentations made in PowerPoint, use a simple symbolic visual material easily comprehensible for students with native language other than English. The amount of written text is intentionally kept at a minimum. However, the buyer is free to change the content, but I do not recommend to “pimp up” the images by adding flashy backgrounds.
The presentations can easily be used by any subject teacher covering a biology lesson.
In present time (2016), biology teaching at a higher secondary school level is facing great challenges. Let alone the cumulated knowledge doubling within each five year period, the criteria for knowledge and assessment of knowledge is developing. Over the past decade the trend has been towards analysis and problem solving at the expense of detailed knowledge that, with access to online search engines, is obtainable from Internet.
According to a school’s requests, I can work out a bank of exams assessing the students’ performance level at the different parts of the course. For tests you may specify the level of difficulty (range), which subtopics to be included in each test and the time scheduled for taking each test. The material for the test is carefully selected from old IB exams and Biology Olympiads and, if necessary, modified for improved clarity. Mark schemes are included for all exams.
View listing of provided materialsPast the years 1999-2005, I have had five students representing Sweden in the International Biology Olympiad. Apart from highly motivated students, the secret of success lies in making the subject interesting and challenging with cross reference to other subjects and, of course, to get the material covered within allocated time by following a teaching plan optimized for effective learning.
