Schools and Instruction Books

This book is commonly used by grade schools as a transition for students to get acquainted with algebra topics and prepare for high school math courses. Sadly, this book is poorly laid out, skipping back and forth between topics like a ping pong ball, and often pampers the reader to an extent of which is clearly childish. Even grade school students who were polled often find the pictures both useless and distracting. The chapters of this book also waste space, while providing very little mathematical content. If you are reading this book, or thinking about getting this book for a school environment, you should seriously consider that this book in no way prepares students for high school math courses. Why 2 stars then? The overwhelming use of pictures and comics to portray mathematics may provide easier to understand concepts for children with learning disabilities; but is often distracting.

It is hard to imagine a worse math book, except maybe the earlier editions of this title.

This book demonstrates just about every bad teaching and typographic practice I know. Every page is splattered with colored text in a menagerie of fonts. Most pages feature irrelevant or misleading photos, perhaps several. There are dozens of distracting sidebars, many full of errors in fact. Just looking at a typical page, I feel my attention batted about in a pinball trajectory. Holding a thought for the length of a Glencoe page is quite a challenge.

Math skills are cumulative; each new technique is founded on the earlier one. I can't think of a case where this book seems to sustain an idea for more than a few pages. Some students, through chance or a teacher's skill, may manage to glean some mathematical fact from this book. It will do them little good, though. The book's complete lack of continuity gives no reward for that success, measured in skills used later in the course.

Students who can't squeeze understanding from this book - the ones it calls "alternative assessment" students - are very nearly abandoned, as far as any real education goes. Instead of being offered meaningful help, they are invited to draw pictures and write essays about their feelings. Such students are not only left in the dust, they are patronized and insulted in the process.

I have examined earlier editions of this book, back to 1997. The only thing I can say in favor of it is that, in preparing the 2001 edition, some of the worst errors and blatant commercialism were removed. It improved, but its basic flaws remain.

Do yourself and your math student a favor: find a different title. A little web searching will point you to sites that review and recommend better books, as well as more detailed analyses of this one. Or just pick another title at random - this is so bad that almost anything would be an improvement.

(based on the 2001 edition)

I had to prepare for some college placement exaims and needed a refresher course. This book was a trememdous help to me!

i just can say that this book is a great block of paper! pooooorr and very old! Unfortunately i loose money!

The book reviews a wide range of digital illustration issues in a very graphical and clear way. Its illustrations are beautiful and its very well designed. Unfortunately its huge amount of themes makes it a little bit superficial. A great guide or reference book, not recommended for total beginners. Due to its techical information, the book will become practically useless very soon.

Okay, I am sitting in the library right now and loving this book so much that I wanted to weigh in on it at Amazon. It is the fifth book like this that I have read and it is the best of the lot so I just wanted to share my opinion.

About me: I am a fifth year HS science teacher who is okay at teaching but really unhappy with my planning and how to motivate the students. I turn to these books once in awhile hoping for some inspriration. I have just spent about an hour reading Chapter 9, Implementing Instruction and have learned about Ausubel's "Advance Organizers", some suggestions for closure of a lesson, and two relevant, well-chosen biographical anecdotes from teachers.

I think this book is better than the other ones like it I read, including the one we had to read in Ed School.

Unless you are forced to read this book for a class my recommendation would be to avoid it at all costs. There is precious little useful information or guidance for the prospective teacher.

The author presents a very readable and, I might add, persuasive case for homeschooling as a viable option for children's education. In answer to one of the other reviewer's critique about dated research, I think that homeschooling is still "new" enough that research is probably somewhat limited due to the relativley few numbers of subjects available.

Sadly, many of the author's statements were rather generalized or contained emotional overtones. I don't need convincing that home schooling is viable, I need facts (i.e., pros and cons, what a parent must deal with day-to-day, short- and long-term considerations, etc.). Then, my spouse and I can judge whether home schooling is appropriate in our family. Finally, many of the statistics the author used were very dated. 1980?!? Come on, Ms. Gorder!

This book was ok ,but this book is more for smaller kids instead of older kids. If you are a 4th grader it would be good for you to learn about the basic history of the Indains. But if you are older I would read a more advanced book for you. Some of the things in the book were nice ,but there were some things that where ok about the book. Here are some good thing about the book: they give you some of the tribes that used the instruments,food, clothing in the book.My favorite things in the book was:the food, instruments,and the paints,dyes. If you like to learn about some of the indians you sould read this book. But if you don't like to read about indians but you have to do a report on history this is a good book to do a report on.

This book was ok ,but this book is more for smaller kids instead of older kids. If you are a 4th grader it would be good for you to learn about the basic history of the Indains. But if you are older I would read a more advanced book for you. Some of the things in the book were nice ,but there were some things that where ok about the book. Here are some good thing about the book: they give you some of the tribes that used the instruments,food, clothing in the book.My favorite things in the book was:the food, instruments,and the paints,dyes. If you like to learn about some of the indians you sould read this book. But if you don't like to read about indians but you have to do a report on history this is a good book to do a report on.

This book was ok ,but this book is more for smaller kids instead of older kids. If you are a 4th grader it would be good for you to learn about the basic history of the Indains. But if you are older I would read a more advanced book for you. Some of the things in the book were nice ,but there were some things that where ok about the book. Here are some good thing about the book: they give you some of the tribes that used the instruments,food, clothing in the book.My favorite things in the book was:the food, instruments,and the paints,dyes. If you like to learn about some of the indians you sould read this book. But if you don't like to read about indians but you have to do a report on history this is a good book to do a report on.

The book is NOT for children. It might appeal to a high school student with previous experience in lettering. The pages are FULL of detail and include MANY ideas for creative lettering. However, you need to be able to take the idea and then create the rest of the alphabet. For example, it shows a "graffiti style", but it only shows a few "letters". I would prefer to see the entire alphabet!

Instead of this book, I would recommend "Letter Art: Based on Alphabet Designs by Becky Higgins (Spiral-bound)". This book is produced by American Girl. This book offers a generous variety of "letter styles" with creative ideas for using the letters, such as greetings cards, gift tags, and scrapbooks. Each "letter style" is then shown in the full alphabet.

It would have been superbly useful to be able to look inside this book before I bought it so I could have saved myself the return shipping. I bought this book for my 10-year-old daughter who enjoys drawing and using interesting lettering styles. This book is WAY BUSY. Every page is full, full, full, from top to bottom, left to right--I found it very overwhelming. It does include neat details like drawing a word tower (writing a word vertically in tower form, keeping in mind perspective and vanishing point). However, the book was just so crowded and busy that it was hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Definitely not recommended for someone who simply wants to leaf through it to look for a lettering style they'd like to use on a project--which I think the front cover implies you'd be able to do.

Usborne is a trusted and respected name in children's books, but I was disappointed by this one. Most children would find its format overwhelming, unable as they'd be to EASILY find what they want to draw.

I was disappointed. I read other reviews of this book but still didn't realize how young the students are assumed to be who will be taught from the resources in this book. I was hoping for more mature content. It's cute enough for little ones, but I don't normally teach little ones. It's too cutesy for older beginners, let alone teens.

This guide seems to be written primarily by Robert Cowden and opens appropriately with a quote from Machiavelli. Examples (both real and fictional), of administrative and evaluative practices from the Department of Music at Indiana State University (Terre Haute, Indiana) are given. An overview of other music department's procedures is lacking.

I bought the book for my son. It is OK. But the CD is bad. The lady ready read the book monotoniously. She is not speaking, just reading like a machine. Very dispointing.

yet another out of touch professor sharing ideas that are cute but don't have an real educational value. Save your money!