Integrated Science

I teach a course called Integrated Science. It is a college prep level course in CA that is tested during the CST’s in the Spring. While it doesn’t satisfy the A-G requirement for a Lab science (it should), it is a great course to teach high school freshmen. 

Our department had noticed about 4 years ago that a lot of freshmen coming into high school lacked an acceptable science background. Some of it had to do with a large migrant population, some of it was language issues and some had to do with the quality of their Elementary school education. We began looking for a course that would fill in this gap in their science education.

Integrated Science I (there are 4 different courses recognized by CA) requires you to teach 1 quarter of Biology, 1 quarter of Chemistry, 1 quarter of Physics and 1 quarter of Earth Science. It is a challenge to be sure, but I absolutely love it. After spending a few years developing the curriculum for our site, it has shown itself to be an incredible investment.

The way we structured it was that all freshmen not taking Honors or GATE level science must be enrolled in Integrated Science. We have “integrated” the scientific method, Lab Reports, outdoor education and many other concepts into this course. We have seen a marked improvement in the upper level science courses such as Chemistry and Biology since we expose the students to many of their introductory concepts so early. For example, instead of “introducing” the Periodic Table during their Chemistry course, they “review” the Periodic Table. Much, much faster.

The course is working out very well for us and I encourage you to investigate further if would like your students understanding of science to increase. Just how the Next Generation Science Standards will affect is not known, but it has been absolutely worth it for my school.