GRADES 9-12   Overview

While the high school curriculum is essential preparation for postsecondary study for many students, it is the last formal instructional experience for others.  To enable all students to become scientifically literate, the science curriculum in Grades 9-12 provides students with the knowledge and skills necessary for the twenty-first century.  Therefore, the Alabama Course of Study:  Science offers the following cores:  Physical Science, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics.  It also defines ten elective cores in the more specialized areas of Aquascience, Botany, Earth and Space Science, Environmental Science, Forensic Science, Genetics, Geology, Human Anatomy and Physiology, Marine Science, and Zoology.  Each core specifies the minimum required content students must achieve in order to receive credit toward graduation.  The scientific process and application skills located on page 10 of this document should be incorporated into the teaching of the core content standards.

In compliance with state and national laws and regulations, the Alabama Course of Study:  Science specifies required science content in a manner intended to balance a need for rigor in course offerings and consistency statewide with the need for local flexibility in designing local course offerings.  Options to satisfy current graduation requirements for students seeking the Alabama High School Diploma and the Alabama High School Diploma with Advanced Academic Endorsement are shown below.

Minimum Number of Science Credits

Required for Graduation

*   Requirements fulfilled only by courses incorporating the Physical Science Core, Chemistry Core, or Physics Core

** Two additional courses designed from the elective cores in this document or rigorous courses designed locally and approved by the Alabama Department of Education

***Advanced-level courses required for the Alabama High School Diploma with Advanced
 Academic Endorsement

The Alabama Course of Study:  Science provides content standards within fourteen core areas.  The content described in these cores represents fundamental concepts and skills that all Alabama students should know and be able to do to become scientifically literate.  Local school systems may develop courses expanding the core content to address specific needs of the local student population or to utilize local resources while retaining the identified core as the foundation.  The presentation of the minimum required content in the Alabama Course of Study:  Science is not intended to restrict local school systems from designing course offerings or a multiple-year sequence of course offerings of a more integrated nature.  The classroom instructional sequence need not follow the order in which content standards are presented in this document within any course.

In designing instructional units and strategies, teachers are encouraged to integrate scientific processes, applications, and knowledge within lessons.  As advocated by the National Science Education Standards produced by the NRC, the emphasis is on acquiring understanding and developing a foundation for using scientific knowledge and processes.  All science courses in Grades 9-12 are laboratory-based courses and address the scientific process and application skills identified on page 10 of this document.  Instruction should ensure the ability of students to apply data analysis techniques, including identifying significant digits, calculating quantities involving significant figures, writing numbers in ordinary and scientific notation, identifying SI units, and performing scientific conversions.

The increasing demand for technological proficiency makes the use of technology essential in all science classrooms and laboratories.  Students are encouraged to conduct research in particular science areas and relate it to the community in the form of service projects.  Student achievement in these areas should be measured with a variety of assessment tools.

The cognitive level of students in Grades 9-12 must be considered when planning for instruction.  Many students are still making the transition from concrete thinking to formal operational reasoning.  Field and laboratory experiences help bridge this transition.  Misconceptions concerning many scientific phenomena are also abundant at this age level.  Teachers should work diligently to uncover these misconceptions and help students to recognize them as such.  This can be done through the use of discrepant events and demonstrations that cause students to ask “why” their logic or experiences do not always agree with scientific explanations.  Small- and large-group discussions, essay questions, and laboratory reports all help reveal students’ understandings and misconceptions to the teacher, and student verbalizations — written and oral — help students realize whether or not they clearly understand a concept.