The Wisconsin Dells School Board unanimously approved plans to alter English courses for high school freshmen as well as offer biology to those freshmen students who score well on standardized tests and earn good grades in science at the middle school.

The district is also diversifying its courses next year by offering the course, exotic small animal science, by popular student demand, and an advanced biotechnology course which could count for credit at Madison Area Technical College.

The changes to current courses and new course additions were approved by the full school board Monday after they were recommended for approval by the district's policy committee last week.

As freshmen, students will be able to take either physical science, biology or integrated science. Integrated science was renamed; previously it was referred to as applied biology and chemistry and is essentially the same class. It won't be offered through the agriculture science department anymore, however.

Part of the motivation for allowing freshmen to take biology is to improve sophomore scores on the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Exam, administrators explained at a committee meeting Nov. 10. Though Wisconsin Dells High School Principal Randy Kuhnau said a positive change in students' test scores in science might be seen sooner on the ACT college entrance exam than its seen on the WKCE.

Director of Curriculum and Instruction Linda Bruun said the change in the science offerings will also make college-bound students more competitive, possibly allowing them to earn college credit before going to a university.

Bruun said middle school students should be ready for the courses at the high school if they earned As or Bs at Spring Hill Middle School where they get a sampling of all the sciences, but she promoted the integrated science course at the high school as being one that will offer more "hands on" education.

"The traditional read it, see it, write it, do a couple labs is not how they (students) learn best. They learn best by taking it apart and putting it together...They need a chance to manipulate science, to discover it, and learn it that way," she said.

Students will be placed in the science courses at the high school based on WKCE test scores, grades, parental input and teacher recommendations. Before the change, freshmen at the high school had one option of taking physical science which they had already had some of in middle school.

Students interested in earning two biotechnology credits at MATC can take the currently offered course, Introductory biotechnology and pair it with the newly offered course next year, Advanced Biotechnology, and be eligible for MATC credit.

The new exotic small animal science course in the agricultural science department will address the U.S. Exotic pet industry, jobs in the field, animal nutrition, the kinds of exotic small animals, their treatment and how they reproduce.

Amanda Levzow, the agricultural science teacher who requested the new course, said in her proposal that 70 percent of students in the small animal science course already offered and the other classes she teaches indicated in a survey that they would be interested in the course.

Besides changing course offerings and adding new courses in science, the school board also approved changes to how English is taught to freshmen.

In English 9, the freshman English course, students will be performing their work and addressing topics in a reading and writing workshop format. Topics like speed-reading and brain research and study skills will be eliminated from the course. The English department which is proposing the changes reports that these topics are taught elsewhere such as in freshman seminar, civics and psychology. Students will still be instructed on the themes of poetry, research, spelling, genres, plot structure, descriptive language, author's purpose, titles, proofreading and editing, figurative language and leads.

In other business, the board approved the following:

- A field trip to Texas for the National Power Lifting Competition.

- Resignations of Juli Mor, head football cheerleading coach and Benjamin Hickethier, junior varsity boys basketball coach.

- The hiring of Joseph Kutzler as technology education teacher.

- Co-curricular contracts for Larry Martin as Level I initial educator, Joseph Kutzler as VICA advisor and Jillian Surman as student council advisor.

- The placement of $65,465 in a two-year certificate of deposit where it will earn more interest at 4.3 percent; the funds are being invested for a future theater for the arts.

 - Changing courses from Beginning guitar to guitar/drumming and music theory to applied music theory/piano keyboarding.

- A policy establishing the official school logo.

- A teacher self-assessment survey.

- Donations totaling $2,080.