Book Criticism

"Science Belongs to Me 5-Edition 2015"-Moukarzel's Collection for Science Books

From the early beginnings and all over the world, knowledge and wisdom were the goals for all civilizations and communities, that’s why people were very interested to have great teachers with great knowledge and abilities that can influence their students in a way to build their personality and their minds. But greatness in teaching has certain conditions that when well understood can give all teachers a standard of excellence to strive for and guide schools to retain the best teachers and reach these previous goals. One of these conditions are the books that are used in teaching the curriculum, which have a great influence on the way of representing knowledge and gaining it in the best ways by the students. To reach the best ways of learning, all schools try to select the best editions of books that can give the appropriate knowledge and understandings of topics and give them the opportunities to enhance their thinking in a well manner with respect to the school's objectives.

This paper will talk about a science book that is used to teach grade five of the second cycle used in the Lebanese International College which is a private school in Rashaya-Bekaa Valle.

"Science Belongs to Me 5-Edition 2015" is one of Moukarzel's collection for science books that aim to help learners to observing and understanding the direct environment and to address later all aspects science, especially biology, physics and geology by imposing the problem to the learner and helping him/her to ask about it.

To talk about the strength points of this book, one can be impressed about its topics that are interesting for students in the fifth grade. It is composed of five units: Plants and Environment, Man and Health, Animals and Environment, Matter and Energy in addition to Earth and Universe. These topics are well chosen for this class where they can be a perfect introduction for knowledge to split later into biology, physics and chemistry in the following years. They have sufficient amount of knowledge about every domain in science, which is a good thing to make the students ready for two additional courses in the near future.

There is also a "zoom on" space before every unit to show within it some figures that are related to the topics in order to get the students closer to the upcoming topics of the unit. These figures can be discussed by the students in the class with the teacher to approach the student's thinking and the level of knowledge or memory that they have to be a base for building the upcoming knowledge on it.

With respect to the design, one can be impressed about the way where information are shown. It is neat and arranged in a very well manner for the students to stop at each point of them, where the related ones are put in boxes with different colors and small drawings that are able to grab student's attention and can seriously affect the feelings, attention, and behavior of students when learning.

It is also a strength point regarding the pictures and drawings found in this book. Students can clearly see what they are supposed to, because of the suitable figures in the pages and the clarity of them whether they are drawings or photographs of simple things that can see around them in their homes or in the environment surrounding them to help the brain buzzes with extra neurological connections that are trying to establish patterns, cause and effect, and sequences with their verbal and visual nature, and offer those students a way to widen their minds.

One can also talk about the way of representing written information, where they are as points. This form of presenting information is much easier for students where they can recognize the main points that should know from each document easily and supports or develops the memorization of a single controlling idea.

Assessment in this book can be a strength point in the academic point of view, where the exercises are diverse and cover all the topics of the units in several ways whether by remembering, discussing and interpreting the information explained in the lessons of each unit. This can help teachers to recognize if the students know it, and how well can they use what they know.

With respect to the weaknesses of the book they are several also as for the strength points. One can say that the content of this book is large for the students to finish within the academic year. Although the topics of the units are interesting and seems to be present good topics for the second cycle of the group, the lessons within these units are plenty and diverse in a hard way for the students to complete as they should in three hours a week, unless they can complete it without proper understanding of the materials.

One can also criticize the hierarchy of the units. It is better if the unit titled Animals and Environment is directly after the Plants and Environment where they are related in their cycles. However, the unit titled Man and Health can be after them where it not tightly related to the environmental cycles of the nature.

For the lessons of the units, they are more than expected. Each unit have plenty of lessons which in turn expose plenty of various points in each with a brief explanations, where two figures in some designed to fulfill the whole ideas of the lesson. This means that the students are responsible to write certain extra explanations given by the teacher to complete their understanding of the topics. They are also supposed in this case to write notes, which is a skill that is not mastered yet at their age and abilities. Also, there is no space on the book to write these notes and explanations and gather all the information together with the documents which is preferred for some figures or experiments found in the activities.

In addition to that, the book has no conclusions at the end of the activities to be read by the students and help them to complete the schema building about the main ideas of the lessons. Some lessons contain at its end a small box "I remember" to shed the light on a small idea that is not enough to finish the lesson with. The conclusion is intended to help the students understand why their lesson should matter to them after they have finished it. A conclusion is not merely a summary of the main topics covered or a re-statement of your research problem, but a synthesis of key points and, if applicable, where you recommend new areas for future research

In contrast the ends of the units contain plenty of ideas as conclusions for its whole topic. Some can reach seventy six points for only eight lessons that the students should memorize at once when the unit is finished.

For the assessment part, lessons have no well assessment for the ideas that they contain and even some contain no assessment at all. Lessons with assessment have two sentences at the end with one blank space for each to be filled with one word only. This is obviously not enough in order to assess student's understanding and gives no turn for all students to be evaluated. Only few of the students are assessed this way.

Another point that could be mentioned as a weakness point is that some figures are photos of industrial products with certain logos and explanation about them, as they are in an advertisement for their companies. Children in the fifth grade cannot think like that in their age but, it is not a best way to transfer the idea for them when there are better photos to use or certain drawings for these products that shows no specific information about them.

It is also to mention that there are lots of hard vocabularies in this book. In general sciences have always new scientific terms to accomplish its teaching but, other terms that are in the explanations are clearly hard for the students to spell and write and therefore to get the meaning from to have complete understanding. However in the case of using hard terms students may ignore the location of these terms and even to ignore the content in some cases if the teacher did not transfer the meaning clearly  to them.

In general, this book cannot be considered a bad one for teaching students the curriculum of their grade level. However it can be considered as a hard book to teach with respect to others. The book needs hard work from both the teacher and the students to reach the academic objectives. As it was shown in the weakness points, the book alone is not sufficient through its content to teach the concepts. The teacher needs more given, more documents and more explanations to insure the understanding of his students. On the other hand, the students need to focus on the extra explanations that should be given by the teacher to accomplish the teaching process, which means that they should observe and the documents of the book and get the results through their critical thinking and analysis, not through spoon feeding or memorizing what is found in their books, because what is found in the book is not really enough to get the knowledge.

The closures of the units should be classified and engaged with the lessons as conclusions or reviews to each lesson alone. In addition to the points, the exercises for assessment should also be classified and putted at the end of the lessons to assess each topic alone.

Therefore the class should be always moved on and the students as teachers have lots to do. In fact, this could be a strength point for the class through using specific models in teaching rather than traditional lecturing. As stated before, this book aims to pose problems and help the students to ask about them and find their solutions in order to engage them in the learning process. But in order to do perfectly this task teacher should work hard to get extra materials to add it to the lessons, try to cover the ideas from different sides and help the students to widen their thinking skills. Thus, through teaching process teachers must have the appropriate repertoire for their major in addition to the appropriate social skills in order to make their class active and try to help students to gain knowledge as much as they can. These social skills would not have benefits for the academic propagation and the grading, rather it they are supposed to make students well liked and happy. Students then will enjoy school and look forward to coming to school. But, on the other side, if the child fails to reach a certain level of social skills he could feel disconnected and left out, which can affect the way of gaining knowledge in classroom with his teacher friends.

It is also useful to try to improve the verbal content of the book and combine it well to the pictorial. But on the other hand it should be added in a certain level that keeps the students interested to get the knowledge through the discussion with their teacher in the classroom, not only by reading. It also should be added using simple English terminology to facilitate the transfer to students.

Conclusion

 Although technology is invading our schools and curriculum, textbook is considered one of the most important references and resources for students' learning in the education system. Because of the important role of the text book content in encouraging, providing learner educational needs, and making the student's learning process easy, the school books should be assessed and analyzed with respect to construct of advancement motivation and its indexes, in order to help the teachers play their role and the students to get the best learning that they can.

References

David, B. (2017). Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper: 9. The Conclusion. USC Libraries.

Gutierrez, C. (2016). The Psychology of Color. How Do Colors Influence Learning?. SHIFT DISRUPTIVE ELEARNING.

Hibbard, K., et al. (1996). A Teacher's Guide to Performance-Based Learning and Assessment. ASCDEXPRESS-Ideas from the Field.

Pierce, T. (2010). Five Reasons Why Children NEED Picture Books. Terry Pierce: Children's Author.

 Writing a Topic and Main Idea. Reading Center-MONTEREY PENINSULA COLLEGE.