Cheryll M. Adams

For teachers in a classroom setting this book may be useful but I would not recommend it for home educators. I thought this book would offer interesting and unique ideas for science learning opportunities that might translate well to homeschooling but I was mistaken. One of the main ideas on this book, involving more than one subject in a given lesson, is something that comes naturally with homeschooling. Please note that my opinion of this book is based solely on it not being useful for homeschooling; I would not want to discourage a public or private school science teacher from reading this book as it may very well be more suited to their purposes.… (más)

The book serves to introduce the NGSS (Next Generation Science Standards), and how to work according to them. The idea is to encourage and further scientific thinking in all students, starting with Kindergarten age. While the goal is to identify special talents early and further them in particular, this book aims at presenting all students with challenging (age appropriate) science problems and thus helping to identify special talents very early. You will find the examples worked out both for gifted and normal students - tasks are differently given (smaller steps for normally talented students, more freedom in the organization of the work for gifted ones, and the like), and the evaluation process is also differentiated.

If your mission is to further scientific thinking, this book will probably be inspiring and helpful, both for school teachers and home schoolers.… (más)

You can't tell a book by its cover, and sometimes you can't tell a book by its title, either.

When this book arrived, I opened it and found a volume full of jargons and acronyms and effectively no science at all. So I thought, "Oh, this will be easy; I'll write a review that is a dignified way of saying 'Pfui!' and have another item off my checklist."

Then I saw the first two LibraryThing reviews of this book, both quite positive, and thought, "Huh?"

It took me a while to figure it out. I have a degree in physics and mathematics, and I have been known to tutor those subjects, and I was a gifted child. But I am not a "teacher." Teachers in America, it seems, don't teach; they enforce standards. So this book is not for me; it is for people who administer science courses. A truer title would not be A Teacher's Guide to Using the Next Generation Science Standards... but An Administrator's Guide to Using the Next Generation Science Standards. Apparently, if you have enough buzzwords poured into your head, this book not only makes sense but is useful.

It is a point I cannot judge. For this reason, I am not going to rate this book. For me, or for someone who wants to just teach science, it gets one star. But I am not the target audience. And the authors of the book certainly aren't to blame for the checklistification of education.

To be sure, this book has genuine problems, such as the overuse of passive voice ("students are encouraged," p. 6. Perhaps, in the spirit of the authors, I should say "problems are found..."). There is no index, and there are no separate sections (that I can see) for teachers of physics, mathematics, chemistry, astronomy. It will not be much use as a reference.

And there is one other thing. One of the handful of examples, starting in chapter 4 (p. 93) is how a class dealt with the problems of a decaying creek bed. It does this through... a checklist of seven items. In other words, a cookie cutter recipe.

Which makes me truly wonder if the authors have ever actually dealt with advanced science students. Memo, folks: Half the best STEM workers in the country are mildly autistic (as am I). You don't teach autistic students with a group checklist. Maybe individual checklists, but not one for the whole class! Even though the goal is to encourage creativity, I strongly suspect this approach will in fact stifle it in those who "learn differently." This is "neuroconformity" in a "neurodiverse" field.

I hope it works even so. We need better science teaching. And better science teachers. I guess I won't be tutoring in schools that teach from this text....… (más)