Social Studies Textbook Evaluation
 
    In my comparative analysis of social studies textbooks I choose two third grade examples, which were:  From Sea to Shining Sea and Adventures in Time and Place – Communities.
 When you open up From Sea to Shining Sea, one would be able to find a Table of Contents, glossary, index, and an appendix.  The overall content of the text did not always reflect what I thought was the course’s concepts, which is community.  I found only one chapter that dealt specifically with the community and that was chapter eleven.  Because of this I do not feel that the scope and sequence of the book is appropriate to the material covered in the text, which is presented in a topical manner:  the beach, the desert, etc.  This book does however focus on more recent material.  This particular book was printed in 1994 and it had many pictures of the election at that time and the students are not looking at graphs that deal with population in the 70s but rather that in the early 90s and late 80s.
Adventures in Time and Place – Communities also has a table of contents at the beginning of the book, a glossary, index, and an appendix.  The overall content of the text reflects the essential concepts in the course, which deal with the community.  One difference between this book and the one listed above is that Adventures in Time and Place – Communities combines the two methods sequencing their material topically and chronologically.  When looking at the table of contents it starts off the different colonies and follow in the order that they were established.  This book was printed in 1997, and it shows up-to-date material (late 80s, early – mid 90s) in the same manner as From Sea to Shining Sea.
From Sea to Shining Sea, each chapter specifies the main idea of the selection and the chapters are also broken down into subtopics.  The titles and subtopics appropriately reflect the main ideas specified in the section and the chapter also contains introductory sections for each.  In the chapter introduction, there is usually a question that that causes the readers’ to focus their attention to what they should learn from the chapter.  Other things that are evident in this particular book include:  being able to find sufficient background knowledge so that students can link new knowledge with information previously learned, and the author including statements which remind students about information they already know about the topic and the material provided following the introductory paragraphs.  The author does not summarize the essential concepts in the conclusion nor does the summary reflect ideas presented in the introduction.  This book does however provide questions to help the students evaluate the information in the text, ask the students to analyze the information, and guide the students to generate their own ideas.
Adventures in Time and Place – Communities, provide introductory statements, which focus the readers’ attention to what they are supposed to learn from the chapter.  The title of the chapter specifies the main idea of the selection as well as appropriately reflects the main ideas in each section.  As stated above with the other textbook choice, this one also included statements which reminded students about information they already know about the topic, the material follows the introductory paragraphs and the author follows through in developing ideas specified in the introduction.  The author did not however always place sufficient background knowledge so that the students could link new knowledge with information previously learned.  Unlike From Sea to Shining Sea, this book summarizes the essential concepts in the conclusion and reflects ideas presented in the introduction.  From reading over the questions, students can evaluate the information in the text, analyze the information and generate their own ideas.
Main idea in paragraph development found in From Sea to Shining Sea, are generally explicit, usually specified at the beginning of paragraphs, and sometimes they were specified at the end of paragraphs.  Since main ideas could be found at the beginning, middle, and end of the paragraphs, there is no specific pattern of main idea location.
However, the only difference between the social studies textbook mentioned above is that this one does contain a specific pattern of main idea location.
Details in this book are relevant to the development of the main idea and there are a sufficient number of details for the development of the main idea.  In looking over the sentence level, sentences are consistently short and simple, most verbs are in the active voice, and the author uses explicit signals to indicate comparison.  New concepts are linked to a student’s prior knowledge, concepts are first defined, and followed by clear examples, concepts are also explained clearly, with sufficient explanation, and questions are provided for students to self-review concepts.  I did not however find that the author used explicit signals for conclusions.  Although it was not constant, I often found that the author used explicit signals to indicate sequencing of ideas, the use of explicit signals to indicate sequencing of ideas, and the use of explicit signals for illustrations in the Social Studies text – From Sea to Shining Sea.
In Adventures in Times and Place – Community, the details were relevant to the development of the main idea, but consistency was not found when looking for sufficient number of details for the development of those main ideas.  Sentences were consistently short and simple and most verbs were in the active voice.  The author used signals to indicate sequencing of ideas, placed emphasis words to indicate important concepts, and explicit signals to indicate comparisons.  When reading one could also find explicit signals for illustrations and conclusions, but they were used less consistently.  The author did however use new concepts that linked to a student’s prior knowledge, concepts were defined, and then followed by clear examples, explained clearly, with sufficient explanations, and questions were provided for students to self-review concepts.
When placing focus on vocabulary and contextual material, I found that there were less vocabulary words in a section located in From Sea to Shining Sea, that would cause a problem for the students and the author used context to develop meaning behind those words that might cause a problem for students.
In Adventures in Time and Place – Communities, I found many vocabulary words that might cause the students problems.  In this one little section about Native Americans, the author did not provide enough context to develop meaning of what they were reading.   Many of the vocabulary words depicting the different tribes were difficult to pronounce and the author only provided a couple of pronunciation examples, so that the students could learn or attempt to pronounce it write.
When examining pictures, graphs, maps, charts and other visual aids, From Sea to Shining Sea, the author used a sufficient number of visual aids and placed them appropriately throughout the text.  They were also labeled appropriately and were very representative of different races and genders.  Once again there was no consistency when the author was trying to direct the reader to refer to a particular visual aid.
When evaluating Adventures in Time and Place – Communities, I found the same results as those in From Sea to Shining Sea.
If I had to choose between the two books that I evaluated, I would choose Adventures In Time and Place.  Even though this book had vocabulary that was not explained, it contained diverse pictures that represented communities across the United States.  Graphs, pictures, maps, and charts were labeled appropriately and were very representative of different races and genders.  This book also went better with the curriculum, which provides for better teaching materials when making up lessons for your classroom.

Third Grade Social Studies Textbook Sources:
Armento, Beverly J., et al.  From Sea to Shining Sea. Houghton Mifflin, 1994.
Banks, James A., et al.  Adventures In Time and Place – Communities.
MacMilloun/McGrauw – Hill, 1997.