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Makayla Coffey

TCH-LRN 409 sec. 2


Textbook Review
February 23, 2015
Holt, Rinehart and Winston. World history: People & Nations : Ancient World. (2000).
Austin.

Text Review:
This textbook could be used for advanced ELLs for many reasons. The sections in
the book are set up chronologically. It starts with the beginning of civilization and then
covers different civilizations up to the point of modern times. The lessons are not the
easiest to navigate. There is too much text. An ELL student would be very overwhelmed
with the amount. The Focus sections are in a different color, which help to separate it
from the main text. But the focus sections are themselves very lengthy. The beginning of
the unit does have sections about the themes, terms to define, people to identify, places to
locate, and chapter them questions, and an overview. One nice feature about this book is
that it gives a teaching objective on the top of each page. These are ideas for the teacher
of an assignment that the students could do to demonstrate their knowledge. The key
words are bolded, which made them easier to identify. The terms are defined in the
reading but their set up can be hard to understand.

The book does not specify the age or grade range that is intended for the textbook
but I would assume it is meant for 5th on up. It does not appear to be aimed at ELL
students. The book is meant for proficient English speaking students. The book does
include all the terms and had their definitions.
The textbook would take a year to finish because it has a lot of information to
cover. With it being about civilizations, a teacher would need to take their time with each
one so that the students gained a throughout knowledge of that civilization before moving
on to a new one. Each section could be covered in a day if not two. The reason I say this
is because the section I chose was about civics in the Roman Empire and it discussed the
rights of the various citizens within the Republic. This section could be covered for a
while depending on how long and throughout the teacher wanted to be.
Unit Overview:
One of the things I thought was good from this book was the Overview; it gave
students a short description of what they would be reading. I also like the Teaching
objective and the questions they had based off of the reading. I liked the pictures they
included because they were colorful and related to the text. The bolded font for the
critical terms was good because it drew the eye. The nice thing about using this textbook
is that students would feel very accomplished when they have finished a section. They are
able to see that even though it was hard to understand in some places they were able to
progress and cover many civilizations (Woodward, 146)
What I did not like about the textbook was how lengthy it is because an ELL
student would be intimidated by it. The vocabulary used would be too difficult for an
ELL because they use a lot of advance terms and verbs. The set up could be a bit

confusing if they did not know that the colored pages on the side were related to the text
but not actually the text. The problem with this textbook is that it might not be the best fit
for how the students can learn and might not work in the way the teacher wants it to
(Woodward, 147).
The things I would supplement would be the definition of the terms because this
would fill in the gaps missing (Brown, 166). I would have the terms listed and their
definitions because when reading the text it could be confusing for students and they
might forget to look them up in the back of the book. I would also provide additional text
for the ELL students who are really struggling and not proficient enough to understand
the text and its terminology. I would need to analyze the adapted material afterwards to
figure out what was useful. Without doing this then the effectiveness of adapting material
and the time spent has been wasted (Brown, 157).

Bibliography
Brown, Ch.5. Materials (pg. 156- 167).
Woodward, T. (2001). Planning courses and lessons: Designing sequences of work for
the language classroom. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.

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