Forensic Science for Homeschooled High School Students -

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Are you looking for (like I was) Forensic Science for homeschooled high school students? Then you’ll love reading about this new curriculum from MasterBooks called Intro to Forensic Science for 11th and 12th graders.

Disclosure: I get commissions for purchases made through affiliate links in this post.

Intro to Forensic Science

Today, we are going to be looking at the Intro to Forensic Science, a brand new curriculum in 2023 from Master Books. I am planning on using this, not this coming school year, but the year after, because it says it’s for 11th and 12th grades, and my daughter will be in 10th grade this coming year.

I am really excited to use this with her in a year. Let’s look at the inside of the two-book set.

Here’s the Table of Contents of the Lessons:

Scroll down for an Overview Video of the Forensic Science Curriculum.

Student Textbook

The first book in the Intro to Forensic Science set is the student reading book, the textbook. The other book is the teacher guide and has some other materials in it.

Who is the Author?

Jennifer Hall Rivera has a PhD in education and works for answers in Genesis. She has been involved in educational research and high school lab programs and has been interested in forensic science since an early age. Her father was a renowned fingerprint expert. She has had experience in employment in a crime scene unit, as well as in teaching and writing.

The Basics of Intro to Forensic Science

Intro to Forensic Science is a full-year curriculum. It will provide your homeschooled high schooler with one full science credit with lab. Specifically, they recommend it for 11th and 12th grade, and one reason is because of the subject matter that the students will be interacting with in the curriculum.

The Scope and Sequence of Intro to Forensic Science

Forensic science includes learning about crime scenes with physical evidence such as drugs and weapons. They will also study biological evidence such as DNA toxicology, death scenes, and transitory evidence like fingerprints. Students will study forensic tools like microscopes and crime labs. Furthermore, they will learn about odontology (studying teeth/dental records) and forensic psychiatry. And, they’ll end the course learning about the judicial system, like chain of custody and courtroom testimony.

There are 36 weeks of this curriculum, and it’s five days a week for about 45 minutes at a time.

Other Features

I really like the way the chapters are laid out. It’s, it’s nicely written with lots of colors and graphs and photographs. It’s a paperback book, which makes it a bit lighter. A the end of the book, there is a glossary and footnotes.

The Teacher Guide Book

The Intro to Forensic Science Teacher Guide has quite a lot of information in it. This book is bound with three-hole punch and perforated pages so you remove certain pages for the students to use.

There are “exercise” pages for each lesson. The student could remove these and use them to take notes as they are reading through a lesson. And then there are questions to help them review what they’ve learned.

These also help prepare for the tests, which you’ll also find in this book. And, of course, they include all the answers for the lesson exercises and tests.

Mature Case Studies

Some of the case studies that will be studied in the curriculum are some of the trials of OJ Simpson, Ted Bundy. There are lots of murder cases, including serial murder cases, so the subject matter is very graphic. These are hard topics to deal with. So that’s why they recommend it for 11^th or 12^th graders instead of younger high school students.

Forensic Science Labs

Labs are included in Intro to Forensic Science, and some of the things they would be doing during a lab include sketching a mini crime scene, processing fingerprints, taking shoe impressions, identifying a criminal based on blood analysis, calculating the trajectory of a bullet, and criminal profiling.

Each lab takes one to two days to complete. They have detailed supply lists included in the Teacher Guide, and many of the items are easily found at home or a local store, such as a potato and olive oil.

But, there are some other things that you would most likely need to order. I checked at the site where I like to order my homeschool lab materials: Home Science Tools. At the time I’m publishing this post, they don’t have a box for Intro to Forensic Science yet, but they do have for the Chemistry curriculum by MasterBooks. So my guess is that they will have a lab supply box for this one soon.

Conclusion

In conclusion, without actually having used it yet, it looks like Intro to Forensic Science is really an incredible curriculum. I’m glad to have this forensic science course because my daughter’s interested in it, and that’s what we will use for her next science after she does chemistry.

**My Video Overview of Intro to Forensic Science for Homeschool High School Students:**

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