IPoly High School

Instructor: Denise Cancino

South House - Room 1036

cancino_denise@ipolyhighschool.org

Course Description

Environmental Biology is a UC approved, college preparatory lab course, designed to give students a hands-on, inquiry, and project based experience in the laboratory sciences. The course covers the origins of life on earth, evolution, genetics, extinction, ecology, limited resources, populations and environmental degradation.

Students will complete two semester long projects; Expeditions; A Biogeographical Journey and That’s Infotainment. In the first semester, student teams will ‘travel’ to various geographical biomes and study the geography, climate, people, flora and fauna to explore and ultimately solve a question about an environmental issue affecting the area. Students will keep field journals, send radio transmissions reporting their findings, and ultimately present their work in a presentation to the entire freshman class.

In the second semester, students will continue to explore the environment, in addition to interrelationship with human rights, global pandemics and eco-technologies for a culminating two-hour theatrical stage production, hosted entirely by the students.