Reviewed by Teri Cosentino
6th-7th grade science teacher
A wonderful introduction to the study of chemistry, this book purposefully and methodically presents the student to the vocabulary in such a way that it encourages ownership through lab experience. I was especially impressed with the method to make qualitative and quantitative observation part of their observation skills outside of school. Going further, this excellent teacher resource with student pages incorporates writing skills, labs, experiment set–up, student experiment design, presentation of results, and self reflective student evaluation.
Beginning with observation skills, the book continues with inference, defines chemical and physical change through pictogram, and incorporates a series of ten experiments. Here students document the type of change based on the experimental observation. A concept review page further maps the student definition of what they have learned because it asks for student examples and scientific indicators of a physical or a chemical change. For the teacher, there is step–by–step instruction which makes it easy to prep for. For the student, there are hands–on activities, student application of knowledge through designing experiments, and evaluation of how they did. There is no doubt that after following this booklet, your students will be able to recall what they did, or more importantly what they thought, in order to understand physical and chemical change.
This book is not for high ability learners, only! One thing to note is that copies are for single class use, only.
Review posted on 9/6/2012
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