- Biology (Scott, Foresman and Company, 1980)
- Besides the fact that this book is 20 years old and the
"Breakthroughs in Biology" sections are out dated and the book has
little to offer for a teachers addition. Along the outer margins of
the pages there is a comment for a teacher to "emphasize" certain
topics. I was lucky if I found a sentence on every other page about
what the teacher should be "emphasizing." The text itself is filled
with pictures and graphs, at least one per page (which I believe is
part of the student addition also). At the end of each section there
are a handful of open ended questions that I could have came up with
myself. There are no answers or guidlines to what a teacher should be
looking for in the answer (but most of us could answer these without
even looking at the text). At the end of each chapter there are Review
or Chapter test questions either mulitple choice, true/false, one word
answer, and short answer. The answers to all of these questions except
the short answer questions are listed in the teachers addition. To me
it seems like the publisher did not want to waste his precious blue
ink (the color used for the comments to the teachers). This book had
a total of 10 Units (27 Chapters).
The only semi-possitive comments that I have about this book is that
the order of about half of this book makes sence. It starts off at
Organisms and Humans and then breaks everything down in chapters from
the cellular level all the way down to genetics. Then from that
point, the book turns for the worst jumping to vertibrates and
invertebrates, and then into more human bio. Some editing would need
to be done there. Although there are so many pictures an graphs, they
are simple and easy to understand.
Overall, I would try my best not to use this text unless I
absolutely had too. [reviewed by Mylissa Burns, fall 2005]
- Biology: The Dynamics of Life (Glencoe/McGraw Hill, 2004)
- It was written by 7 authors and The National Geographic
Society, and published in 2004. This is the first teacher's edition that
I've ever looked at. So I'm not sure how well I can critique it, but I'll
try.
To me, this book has it all. It begins each chapter with a section called,
"Why it's important", which answers the question "Why do I need to learn
this?". The front of the book has teacher tips, including how to plan the
course to encompass all 39 chapters in either 160 days or 80 block days.
There are modified assessement ideas and inclusion strategies for dealing
with disabilities. This book has standardized test practice questions which
allign with the Biology standards. Another important feature was that it
had a "Connections" section, listing areas in the text where connections
were made between Biology and Math, Physics, Health, Chemistry, Earth
Science, Art, Literature, and Social Stuides. I think it is important to
teach Biology students that it is not a stand-alone science. Careers
related to Biology are also discussed, which again relates to, "Why do I
need to learn this?". Each chapter lesson features a 2 minute chapter
launcher, which was a demo or other attention grabber. This is nice to see,
instead of encouraging teachers to begin with the material. I only have one
complaint about this text. Ecology is Chapter 2 (out of 39). I think you
need to teach many things before ecology, such as cells, mammals, etc. I
wonder why they put it so far in the beginning? [reviewed by Megan Donovan, fall 2005]
- Biology: The Dynamics of Life (Glencoe/McGraw Hill, 2004)
- The authors are made up of two high school biology teachers,
three college professors, one research associate, an international
curriculum consultant, and lastly The National Geographic Society.
In the teachers edition the contents page or "teacher handbook page"
includes page locators for topics such as; Teaching Tools, Laboratory
Guides, Lab Safety Tips and Assessment. Throughout the chapters of this
book the margins provide teachers with an abundance of useful
suggestions on learning strategies, laboratory experiments and internet
web sites where they can get more information on the topic. You will
also find in these areas information on subject relevance, critical
thinking skills, specific terms that may be a problem for the students
and popular misconceptions students may have about the subject matter.
For those concerned about standardized testing you will also find
connections that the current material has towards the national science
standard tests.
I think this book offers a lot of information to the teacher, some
useful and some not. I have yet to find a text book where I would teach
from it and nothing else. This book provides teachers with a variety of
alternative teaching methods, materials and strategies besides what's
between it's covers. I wouldn't mind having a copy of this book on my
shelf for reference. [reviewed by Pete Peterson, fall 2005]
- Biology: The Dynamics of Life (Glencoe Science, year?)
- The book appeared to be well layed-out. The first couple of
pages were devoted to explaining the layout of the book for the
teachers. It also set up a planning guide where it listed how many
days are needed to cover the material in each chapter. The chapters
offer bellringers and "Chapter Launchers" as well as chapter
organizers. It offered suggestions such as challenge activities,
inclusion strategies and projects throughout the book. Each chapter
also tried to pull in information from previous chapters. There was a
lot of information on each page to deicpher but a lot of it would be
usable in a classroom. [reviewed by Marilena Carranza, fall 2005]
- Biology: The Dynamics of Life (Glencoe Science, year?)
- As a resource I think the book has merit. As I indicated during
the student text review, I would not be comfortable using the book as
a primary resource because of the many errors that exist and many
false ideas that it promotes. Looking beyond those limitations for
the teacher's edition, I again would not rely on the specialized
teacher information because it is a product of what the authors and
special interest groups want accomplished and not what shouyld be accomplished.
For example, I would not follow the suggested planning guide because
it places too much emphasis on some topics and not enough emphasis on
other topics. Likewise, I am not conviced that the lessons they
propose are always presented in the most effective manner.
Like all resources, I think the text provides a jumping off spot for
additional planning and thought. Rather than reinvent the wheel, this
text could be used to improve and improvise from existing ideas to
achieve potentially great results. [reviewed by Ross Ruschman, fall 2005]
- Biology the Diversity of Life (Glencoe, 2004)
- I also chose this same book for the student edition. My feelings
on the book itself remain the same. It was a bit elementary and a
little out of order. But as a teacher edition, I was impressed. I
thought the layout was neat and useful. The beginning of each section
stated what standard would be covered. Before each chapter, a schedule
was set up showing approximately how much time would be needed, what
standards would be covered, what labs should be done, and also some
additional resources from the web and video clips. Many lab ideas are
included and it gave options on how to teach to the different learning
styles. Overall it seems like a useful teaching tool. [reviewed by Jen
LaBar, fall 2005]
- Biological Science: An Inquiry into Life (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; 1980; 4th ed.)
- This book is old! Its sort of a time travel actually. The intro
starts with the now familiar caveat about how fast the world is
changing (and the world of education) and how appropriate and timely
this edition is going to be. (Ha Ha). The write-up in the beginning
talks about how the book is organized by:
- The emphasis of discovery vs. learning of facts
- Development of critical reasoning
- Themes that the text will be developed around
Frankly I didn't this level of organization. My guess is that they
had a bunch of topics they had to cover and, to make their work
palatable, they "thought globally" and put their overarching ideals
in the teachers edition. If they really wanted to draw attention to
the themes they should have had breakout boxes that specifically tied
the whole thing together. (In fact, there were no breakout boxes at
all...)
There is a certain "freedom culture" about this book. The sense of
urgency or "panic" that I feel now in my readings of educational
textbooks is missing. This book is, after all, pre "A Nation at Risk".
As a neophyte, I would appreciate more detail for unit and lesson
planning. They have (for planning organization) a chapter rational,
a rational for the inquiry portion, and objectives. The schedule
section talks only in general terms such as "6 days for this chapter,
3 for text discussion and 3 for inquiry." I'd like to have this
spelled out, i.e. how they intend for this material to taught. I'd
like to have as much detail as possible so as to be able to pick and
choose as I see fit... [reviewed by Chris Briggs, Fall 2005]
- Biology: Visualizing Life (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston; 1998)
- The author is George B. Johnson, a professor of biology at
Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. The text was nicely
formatted and seemed like it would be easy to use. In the front of
the book was a detailed introduction for the teacher explaining how
to best use the book and all of its features and how to integrate
various labs, resources, and the Holt video discs into lessons. Each
chapter began with a lesson planning guide that broke the information
down into class blocks of 45 minutes. Topic outlines, lecture
resources, and suggested classwork and assignments were all provided.
The lesson planning guides all stated that they provided options for
block scheduling, but it was unclear what these suggestions were and
where they were located.
Numerous teacher demonstrations, labs, diagnostic assessments, and
closure activities were described. The text also offered many ideas
for drawing connections to other areas of learning. Links to
previous chapters, other subjects such as mathematics, and real
life/work skills were highlighted as important points to stress to
students. The text would be very useful, provided that all of its
accompanying manuals, workbooks, and media resources were obtained.
However, many of the labs/activities that require other materials
have references pages that include catalogue and ordering information
for those supplies. [reviewed by Megan Morgan, Fall 2005]
- Biology: The Study of Life (Fifth Edition by Prentice Hall, 1993)
- The book has two authors Will D. Shraer and Herber J. Stoltze.
The book has a good layout and provides enough information to cover
the material but nothing too in depth. It breaks the units into
sub-units and highlights the important points of the chapter (I would
assume this would be in case one does not have enough time to go into
detail). The book included several extra features for the teacher to
consider using. It included several overheads, exam and quiz
problems. These questions were basic but were good because they
could easily be changed to tailor the educational assessment to fit
to each level the teacher might have. In addition to this, there are
several classroom activities involving the dissection of animals.
The book also includes a rubric for the short answer questions that
are to be assigned for homework. The book is ok if used as an
additional resource to numerous other tools. I do not think that the
book would be sufficient to use as the only resource to use to teach
a class. [reviewed by Chris Erdo, Fall 2005]
- Chemistry (Prentice Hall, 2002)
- The most useful section of this teacher's edition for the teacher
is called "Recognize the Relevance." It has been my experience that
we as teachers must often answer the relevance question about our
content area for the students. These sections have more than just
explanations in the margins about careers in chemistry. The
explanations bring to life the chemistry we see in our everyday lives,
but may not recognize.
The "Use the Visual" section is also good. It has explanations of
concepts to point out to your students in the photographs and
illustrations. This helps these types of learners.
The "Check Prior Knowledge Section" in the margins is also very
useful, and I believe that I would incorporate this in my lesson planning.
I do not like the order of concepts or the way some major concepts are
segmented. However, the teacher features are good and useful.
[reviewed by Lou Pacchioli, fall 2005]
- Chemistry: Connections to our changing world (Prentice Hall, 2002)
- I felt that this is a decent book for what it had to offer. At
the beginning of each section it had pointers for the teacher to begin
the chapter. Throughout on the bottom of the pages it has good
examples of the topic that relate to real-life situations as well as
lab activities that correspond with the chapter. Overall, not a bad book.
[reviewed by Lauren Ricci, fall 2005]
- Chemistry, Principles and Reactions (by Masterton and
Hurley, Brooks/Cole, 2004, 5th Edition)
- This text is written for advanced students. I was disappointed
to find that all of the instructor materials are contained in a
separate section placed in the beginning of the book rather than
interspersed in the corresponding chapters. I found myself having to
flip back and forth between this special section and the chapters to
get all the information I would need as an instructor. However, the
information provided was very practical and useful. The only
information provided to the instructor in the chapter itself were
links to the texts companion CD.
As I mentioned this text has a CD-ROM that contains tutors, interactive
simulations; media based exercises, interactive models and 100 video
segments. Each chapter is augmented with a section called Chemistry beyond
the classroom that focuses on real world/ current events that feature
chemistry issues.
There is also a biography section for each chapter titled "The Human Side of
Chemistry". These feature scientists whose work is discussed in the
chapter.
This text has an associated website that is accessible to teachers and
students and gives chapter quizzes, links, and lesson descriptions.
[reviewed by Michele Fogarty, fall 2005]
- Chemistry (Addison-Wesley, year?, 4th edition)
- It was absolutely loaded with resources. Each chapter has a
mini-lab, a big lab, and several smaller activities to do to enhance
student understanding. There is a book that gives ideas for a block
schedule. There is a book of overheads, and several books worth of
worksheets and quiz problems for students to practice with. There are
ideas in the margins about how to question students and how to connect
things to real life. I was pretty happy with the resources. There
were a ton of lab ideas, though none were of the inquiry type. Maybe
future editions will focus on that area of need. [reviewed by Jeffrey
Wisnoski, fall 2005]
- Chemistry (Holt, 2004)
- The teacher edition (TE) of Holt Chemistry Textbook, written in 2004 is
absolutely phenomenal. Holt, Rinehart and Winston made a conscious
effort in designing a book that is user-friendly for both the student
and the teacher. The book is designed to strengthen a teacher's lesson
with every chapter/section in the book. There are a plethora of
activities and experiments that would be useful in adapting a
student-centered, hands-on environment in the classroom. The topics
covered in each section include: accessing prior knowledge, real-world
examples, common misconceptions, motivators, supplemental reads,
teaching tips, demonstrations and much more. In addition, the
information is presented in a logical order and it is readable and
written in everyday language. If I was able to choose a textbook for
my classroom, I would certainly choose this one!
[reviewed by Natasha Chromey, Fall 2005]