Welcome to AP Biology at Allen High School! In choosing to take this course, you will be getting a firm foundation in Biology at the college level. This will serve you well whether you decide to become a biology major/minor, or whether you decide that biology is not the field for you. Either way, I hope that the experience you have in my class is a positive one and that you come out of it having learned not only about science, but about learning and most importantly, about life.

Advanced Placement Biology is the equivalent to a general biology class offered at the university level. This class will expand on the concepts and themes you learned in Biology I, and will cover them in much more depth and detail. The eight major themes our course will revolve around are:

• Science as a process
• Evolution
• Energy Transfer
• Continuity and Change
• Relationships to Structure and Function
• Regulation
• Interdependence in Nature
• Science, Technology, and Society

You will see these themes interwoven throughout the course all year long.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

Upon completion of the AP Biology course, you will be able to:

• Demonstrate a mastery of basic biological concepts
• Have a clear understanding of the nature of scientific thought
• Recognize patterns in natural events and phenomena and analyze how these patterns can be studied to solve problems
• Use principles of experimental design to solve problems
• Read scientific literature and popular science literature with a critical eye and analytical mind
• Use your knowledge of biology to resolve social, economic and ethical issues