Themed AP Lang and Comp: Biology

The Advanced Placement English Language and Composition exam is focused on analysis and argument based on nonfiction texts, which means there's a lot of opportunity to theme the readings for a course that prepares students for the exam. I'll write about a few different themes; this post focuses on a biology theme.

The key components of a class preparing students for the AP Lang & Comp exam are:

• writing narrative, expository, analytical, and argumentative essays
• writing multiple drafts of essays
• some informal writing (journaling, etc.)
• writing assignments based on a variety of prose styles & genres
• nonfiction readings of a variety of types (essays, journalism, political writing, science or nature writing, biography, diaries, history, criticism, etc.)
• graphic/visual image analysis
• citing sources

With those components in mind, here is an example set of readings for a biology themed class. I tried to assemble a set of readings that could fit together coherently while covering different types of writing and fields within biology.

National History Day 2016: Arts and Religion Topic Ideas

The theme for 2016 NHD is Exploration, Encounter, and Exchange History.

Art topics tend to be underrepresented in NHD, so here are some arts topic suggestions for this year's theme! I also included religion topics because this year's theme is particularly good for them; so much of religion is about encounter. The theme book encourages pulling in elements of all three parts of the theme, but it's not required, and it's natural for a project to focus much more on one than the others. This post might be updated occasionally throughout the year.

Religion
--John Wesley and the Moravians. Wesley was the founder of Methodism, and his theology was heavily influenced by a group of Moravians he met on a ship to Georgia.
--Methodist Circuit Riders in the early United States.
--The establishment of the San Antonio Missions. You could do similar things throughout much of the southwest US (as well as Mexico and Central and South America), these are just the missions I'm most familiar with. They're Spanish missions that were established to spread Christianity (and as part of colonization).

Visual Art and Architecture
--Paul Durand-Ruel and Impressionism. Durand-Ruel was an art dealer and one of the first supporters of the Impressionists. See this National Gallery exhibition for more information.
--Frank Lloyd Wright. This is more on the exploration side. Wright was known for incredible innovation in his work.
--Picasso. Again on the exploration, but he also drew from a lot of different influences as he explored different styles. He was one of the earliest Cubists and Neo-Expressionists.
--Matisse or Duchamp. Along with Picasso, really helped shape 20th century art across a variety of media. Matisse helped lead Fauvism but also did great work in classical painting, collages, and sculpture.

Dance
--1956 Bolshoi performances in London. There hadn't been touring between the East and the West in decades, and ballet had gone in very different directions on the two sides of the Iron Curtain. The Bolshoi's tour to London in 1956 created exchange that led to the modern story ballet in the West and choreographic symphonism in the Soviet Union. Read Swans of the Kremlin and Apollo's Angels.
--Ballet defections from the Soviet Union. There are three famous/major ones: Mikhail Baryshnikov, Natalia Makarova, and Rudolf Nureyev.
--Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. Ballet truly came to the US through the Ballet Russes, and their travels brought Russian technique out of Russia. Also, this is how Balanchine ended up in the West, which even without the rest would be significant. Again, read Apollo's Angels.
--Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. This was a touring company formed by members of the Ballet Russes, and they primarily toured in the US. While the Ballet Russes was responsible for exposing Americans in large cities to ballet between 1910 and 1930, from 1940 or so on the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo brought ballet to cities throughout the US, and their dancers established companies and schools. (Look for a local example!) And yes, read Apollo's Angels. (Seriously, for any ballet ideas: read Apollo's Angels.)
--Vernon and Irene Castle. This pair helped expose large audiences in the early 1900s to a variety of popular dances and music styles, popularizing them and making them "respectable."
--Martha Graham. This definitely falls most into exploration; Graham made modern dance what it is. Read Agnes de Mille's Martha.
--Lester Horton. Horton was another leader of modern dance, as much in his role as teacher as in his role as choreographer. He developed a technique still widely studied today, drew from a variety of styles for inspiration, and he was the greatest influence on Alvin Ailey. Alternately, talk about Ailey (the person or the company).

Music
--Stravinsky. Stravinsky pushed music to new places just as Martha Graham did for dance. It was strange and revolutionary and provocative and very controversial.

National History Day 2016: Math, Physics, and Technology Topic Ideas

The theme for 2016 NHD is Exploration, Encounter, and Exchange History.

History of science topics tend to be underrepresented in NHD, so here are some math, physics, and technology topic suggestions for this year's theme! This year's theme is particularly good for scientific topics because so much of science is about exploration. The theme book encourages pulling in elements of all three parts of the theme, but it's not required, and it's natural for a project to focus much more on one than the others. This post might be updated occasionally throughout the fall!


Math and Statistics
--Paul Erdős and collaboration in mathematics. Erdős was hugely influential in combinatorics and graph theory in general but particularly in a few subareas like Ramsey theory and extremal combinatorics. More importantly, though, Erdős helped build collaborative networks in mathematics. He worked with many different people, connected people with each other, and connected people with problems that he thought they could solve. Read The Man Who Loved Only Numbers and watch N is a Number.
--Newton, Leibniz, and calculus. Newton and Leibniz independently developed calculus and then famously argued over it. This actually had consequences for the communication of mathematics between Britain and the continent for the next century, really negatively impacting British mathematics.
--G.H. Hardy and Ramanujan. Both men were incredible number theorists, and Ramanujan could see connections among numbers better than anyone else. Hardy discovered Ramanujan through letters and then invited him to come work in England. Read The Man Who Knew Infinity.
--Janos Bolyai and non-Euclidean geometry. Bolyai wasn't the first mathematician to explore what happened when we break Euclid's fifth postulate (about parallel lines), but his work was more complete than what had been done previously, and he did it independently. He wrote about this work in a letter to his father and said, "Out of nothing I have created a strange new universe." (Something from that quote would make a great project title!)
--Leonhard Euler. I could put a specific field, but Euler shaped a lot of how we talk about and write mathematics today as well as being extremely prolific in a variety of fields. There are so many possibilities here. Look at the biography Euler, Master of Us All.
--Augustin-Louis Cauchy and complex analysis. A lot of mathematicians believe complex analysis is the most beautiful subfield of mathematics, and Cauchy pretty much developed it all on his own. (Half the theorems in an intro complex analysis course are named after Cauchy.)

Physics and Technology
--The development of the theory of special relativity. Start with the Michelson-Morley experiment and move forward. This is an extremely well-tested theory, and the Michelson-Morley experiment which started hinting towards it was intended to detect aether...and failed.
--Quantum mechanics. There are a lot of possibilities here, and the whole story is really interesting, but especially in thinking about exchange the Bohr-Einstein debates would be a cool topic.
--The Einstein-Szilard letter and the Manhattan Project. Hungarian physicists and Einstein warned the US government that Germany might develop atomic bombs. The result was the Manhattan project.
--The space race. Some of the exchange is more a lack thereof, but this is definitely exploration.

National History Day 2015: Assorted Topic Ideas

The National History Day theme for 2014-2015 is Leadership and Legacy in History. I do special posts for STEM topics because I think they in particular are underrepresented, but I've come up with some other topic ideas that I thought I'd post. Hope this is useful!

Political Leaders
--Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, the first PM of Singapore, responsible for really shaping modern Singapore
--Heydar Aliyev. Led the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic for years and then was president of the Republic of Azerbaijan after the Soviet Union dissolved. (A lot of Central Asian countries have similar leaders, so check them out!)
--Saint Steven I, King of Hungary. He wasn't the first leader of the unified Magyar tribes, but he made a lot of changes and really established the kingdom.
--Charles I of Hungary, the first of the Angevin line of kings, who reunited Hungary under royal power and under whom the Renaissance began in Hungary
--Janos Hunyadi, who led Hungary against the Ottoman Turks in the 1400s
--Count Istvan Szechenyi or Lajos Kossuth, Hungarian reformers and leaders while Hungary was ruled by the Habsburgs
--Ferenc Deak, who negotiated the Austro-Hungarian Compromise with the Emperor
--Imre Nagy, a prime minister of Communist Hungary who supported/was supported by the 1956 revolution but was executed when the revolution was crushed

Religious Leaders (of the Protestant variety)
--John and/or Charles Wesley, founders of Methodism.
--Coke and Asbury, the first Methodist bishops in the United States.
--The most common topic choice here is Martin Luther, leader of the Reformation and founder of Lutheranism. You could also look at John Calvin, another leader of the Protestant Reformation.
--John Knox, leader of the Scottish reformation
--Jerry Falwell. You could go lots of directions with this, but one is starting Liberty University

Dance
-- Martha Graham and modern dance
-- Balanchine and neo-classicism (as well as American ballet in general)
-- Rudolf Nureyev and the Paris Opera Ballet
-- Bournonville and Danish Ballet
-- Yuri Grigorovitch and the rise of choreographic symphonism in the Soviet Union
-- Ninette de Valois and Sadler's Wells (the Royal Ballet)
-- Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes

Disney
-- Walt Disney and animation (or choose an early Disney animator)
-- Walt Disney and Disneyland
-- John Hench and Disneyland (or choose an early Imagineer)
-- The Sherman brothers and Disney music

National History Day 2015: Chemistry and Biology Topics

The theme for 2015 NHD is Leadership and Legacy in History.

History of science topics tend to be underrepresented in NHD, so here are chemistry and biology topic suggestions for this year's theme! Some of these might be a bit of a stretch of the theme or might interpret it in an unusual way.

Something I find cool about this topic is that the 'legacy' bit explicitly requires discussing the impact in the present, so think about all of these with that in mind! Another thing to keep in mind is something that is specifically called out in this year's theme handbook: not everyone who "leads the way" shows leadership. The handbook actually specifically calls out scientists: "Does a scientist display leadership because he or she invents something that is historically significant? Not necessarily." The people I've listed here did great things in their field. The question to consider is whether they displayed leadership of others.

Chemistry

Kathleen Lonsdale, one of the first women elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society and a pioneer of x-ray crystallography
Elsie Widdowson and nutrition
Dorothy Hodgkin, x-ray diffraction, worked out the structures of penicillin and vitamin B12
Anne McLaren and in vitro fertilization
Louis Pasteur and pasteurization or vaccination
Svante Arrhenius, founder of physical chemistry
Otto Hahn, father of nuclear chemistry
Fritz Haber, father of chemical warfare. This could make for an interesting argument about leadership.
Dmitri Mendeleev and the periodic table

National History Day 2015: Math, Physics, and Technology Topics

The theme for 2015 NHD is Leadership and Legacy in History.

History of science topics tend to be underrepresented in NHD, so here are some math and physics topic suggestions for this year's theme! Some of these might be a bit of a stretch of the theme or might interpret it in an unusual way. This post might be updated occasionally throughout the summer and fall.

Something I find cool about this topic is that the 'legacy' bit explicitly requires discussing the impact in the present, so think about all of these with that in mind! Another thing to keep in mind is something that is specifically called out in this year's theme handbook: not everyone who "leads the way" shows leadership. The handbook actually specifically calls out scientists: "Does a scientist display leadership because he or she invents something that is historically significant? Not necessarily." The people I've listed here did great things in their field. The question to consider is whether they displayed leadership, showing an ability to lead and inspire others.

Math and Statistics
--Paul Erdos and collaboration in mathematics
--David Hilbert's 23 problems
--Mary W. Gray and the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM)
--Charlotte Scott and women in mathematics
--Kuratowski and Polish mathematics
Choose a mathematician who helped create/made a lot of progress in an area of mathematics. Here are some suggestions:

Language Learning at Home

I'm very in favor of kids learning foreign languages, and I've recently been thinking about teaching kids languages at home and how it can/should be done. First, I'm assuming that the parents have been speaking only English to the child; this isn't a kid who has been raised bilingual. Second, I'm not really going to say much about what I think about any of the "curricula" I mention; I do like some more than others. Third, so much of all of this depends on the child, so rather than constantly repeat that, I'm going to make that a disclaimer: timing, pace, and manner of learning are all so, so student dependent. (Also, questions and comments would be really appreciated. I love thinking about this, and there's still a lot about which I'm unsure.)

Q: When should a child start learning a foreign language?

I started learning French when I was five, and I think it was about the right age. I've gone back and forth about how much a student's level in English should impact when to start. I could already read, for example. Is it better to wait until the child can read? I'm not sure that's necessary because the early stages of learning a new language at this point are not going to focus too much on writing.

Q: Okay, so what language?

For this first foreign language, I would choose a language with a lot of material available - movies with tracks in this language, music, books, and whatever the main learning tool is going to be (whether that be software, DVDs, CDs + books, or something else).

What languages does this open up? Spanish, French, and German, certainly, but there's more and more material for kids in other languages. For example, Little Pim has Mandarin, Russian, Italian, Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew, and Portuguese; Learnables has Mandarin, Hebrew, Japanese, and Russian; and Muzzy has Mandarin, Italian, Russian, and Portuguese. (Dino Lingo has dozens of languages, but I don't know much about it.) Other places to look at what's available, particularly as far as books go, in various languages are Language Lizard and the International Children's Digital Library.