Books, Books, Books!

Here is a trade book I encountered as a student.

October 6, 2011

What happens when you give a university student a picture book?  Well usually they look through it and read it.  Today was no different. It is important as a teacher to know what resources are available and many classrooms and libraries have picture or trade books available.  While these books are fun to read, they may not always be as educational as you would hope. Today we went through a few books to determine what value they could have in a science classroom.  Some books were about specific animals and habitats with vibrant pictures and would have a place in almost any classroom.  Other books had a high entertainment value, but lacked facts and information necessary to educate students on a specific topic.  The books with high entertainment value but a lack of facts would be great to be used in the set of a lesson plan, but an explanation would need to be provided to the students how sometimes things in books are not true and they may be exaggerated in order to create a story.  Even as an adult and an educator it may be difficult to differentiate between fact and fiction in a book, especially if the fiction is presented like facts and if the teacher has little information on a particular topic.