For our homeschool my 12th grader wanted to do Zoology so I put together a High School Zoology course with resources from all over. Here I share what I used in creating a highschool zoology course from scratch.
Creating a Highschool Zoology Course from Scratch
Course Outline
First I used ChatGPT to create the course outline. I share my process in this video about Using ChatGPT to Create Courses and Unit Studies. Here is an image of part of it. (ignore the red underlines). If you’re going to do this, make sure to specify how many weeks and how many days per week at least.
Here is my prompt:
give me an outline for a homeschool zoology class for high school for 1 semester, 5 days a week with suggested activities, resources and materials.
Break Down Days
The next thing you have to do is decide how you will break down the days. On the left I write down the dates. Then on the right I make bullet point for each school day. For example, I see on my calendar if we have all 5 days of school and if so, make 5 bullet points. If there is a day off, I make 4 or whatever there is. This is where I will write down what we are doing that day.
Also if there is anything special you want to do on a certain day, write that down. For example every Friday we do Zoology with my Grade 5. So on Fridays bullet point each week I put “With Aria – Lesson 1-2” and so forth. That’s because I already know we are working out of a book on Fridays with readings and activities. More on that later.
So I didn’t with this one but I started printing it with more margin on the right to write down my lessons. You can see how I marked up the first part of the outline below. I wrote the dates on the left, the bullet points on the right (-) and eventually marked in what exactly we would be doing. Also some notes on the top.
Use Your Outline
Read the suggestions on the outline for what to learn when. Let’s look at week 2 (week 1 is a little messier). Classification of Animals aka Taxonomy is what we are to learn. I ignored the part about dissecting a flower because we are focusing on animals. I checked out the iNaturalist suggestion and it’s cool. I’ll be recommending it below. We have a bird field guide and some animal books. I also scavenged Teachers Pay Teachers for freebies and downloaded a bunch. Some were meh but some were worth using.
So as you can see for Week 2 I have five bullet points. Day five is the group lesson. Day three I decided would be notebooking day so I added the N beside it to mark that. I had found two zoology chapters free on TPT (links below) so I decided we’d start with one chapter on Day 1. Day 2 is a Taxonomy video from YouTube (YT=YouTube). Day 3 is a comparing taxonomy worksheet I found. Day 4’s I decided she would read from a book about animals. I’ll share the books we are using below. Day 5 I already mentioned.
Then it goes on to the next week. After Day 1 on Week 3 we will be familiar with a website called Metazooa. We will be using this website whenever she has free time after this point. More on soon.
Resources
So what resources are we actually using to put together this course? I share them all below. A lot of them are free but a few are books we already had so if you want those books, it would have a cost. Unless you find them at the library. Or just see what animal books you already have.
Books
(affiliate links included)
Smithsonian Zoology – I really wanted this book but it was expensive. However she got it for Christmas so that worked out well. Watch for sales.
Zoology for Kids – this is the book we got for review and will be using on Day 5 when we do a group Zoology lesson
Veterinary/Zoology Coloring Book – this is one of a bunch of related ones. I honestly don’t even know if this is the one we got as we haven’t used it yet. But any of them would be a good addition.
The Who, What, Why of Zoology – okay I didn’t buy this one but it looks good!
Why Pandas Do Handstands – we use this as a reader for Day 4. It’s just a book I already had but it works!
Wild Animals I Have Known – we are going to use this as a reader for Day 4. I picked this up used.
The Soul of an Octopus – we are going to use this as a reader for Day 4.
Documentaries
I’m not going to suggest certain documentaries because what is available on what streaming platform keeps changing. I tried asking ChatGPT for suggestions and what they said was on Prime or Netflix wasn’t actually there. So just go through whatever services you have and add to watchlist anything you think would be good.
Websites/Apps
iNaturalist – this website/app is a community for naturalists. It allows people to share photos they take of animals or plants and have others help identify them or confirm your findings. Your child can add to it or just start off by learning more about real animals in their area.
Metazooa – this is a game that has you guessing the mystery animal by saying an animal and seeing how your guess is related or not related to the animal of the day. So fun and great for taxonomy.
Free Resources
These resources are free and available as of the writing of this blog post.
Zoology Textbook Lesson 1 and Lesson 2 – the rest of the lessons are paid, I’m just using the free ones
Animal Evolution Research Project – planning to use this at the end of the semester/year.
Crash Course Zoology – YouTube Series for Highschool+
Possibly Free
Twinkl – Twinkl is a paid subscription but you can often get a month free trial where you can download as much as you want. Also often there are free days and the newsletter allows you to download a premium resource for free often. The link is for the Canadian site, just change the .ca to your local URL ending. Twinkl is not really for highschool but you may be able to use some of it.
Great Courses Zoology – Great Courses is a paid subscription or purchase but we get it free a week at a time through our library. Every library is different though. Check with yours.
Sidenote:
For anything they are supposed to learn that I don’t have a specific resource for, I just search the internet and find one offs. For example week 1 says to learn about famous zoologists. I found this article and had my student read it one day and make a research report about one of them the other day in her journal.
Sidenote 2:
You can also ChatGPT further by asking for notebooks prompts, art lessons, vocabulary words or whatever you need.
I hope that helps!
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