Survey of the Science Textbook

This is the book for which the survey below was written.

Here’s one way to introduce your students to their new textbook and familiarize them with some of its features.

It’s also something that students can work on while you’re doing some of the other beginning of the year paperwork.

This is obviously something that would need to be personalized to your textbook, but I’ve provided my version to give you some ideas of where you can take the activity.

1. The TITLE of your textbook is _____

2. The text is written by (choose one)
a. one AUTHOR
b. more than one AUTHOR

3. Look at the TITLE PAGE of the text
a. What is the COPYRIGHT DATE of the book? ______
b. What does that mean to you as a student studying science?

4. Does your text have a TABLE OF CONTENTS?

5. Does your text have a GLOSSARY?

6. Does your text have an INDEX?

Using the TABLE OF CONTENTS, write the name of these chapters:

7. Chapter 1: _____
8. Chapter 3: _____
9. Chapter 7: _____
10. Chapter 8: _____
11. Chapter 9: _____
12. Chapter 11: _____
13. Chapter 13: _____
14. Chapter 15: _____
15. Chapter 16: _____

Fill in the following chart. Put “yes” in the GLOSSARY column if the word is found in the glossary. Put “yes” in the INDEX column if the word is found in the index.

GLOSSARY INDEX
16. Anemometer
17. Batholiths
18. Hypothesis
19. Meter
20. Metric
21. Petrifacation
22. Scientific Method
23. Seismology
24. Troposphere

25. Notice that each chapter has two yellow pages. The headings of the yellow pages are:
a. _____
b. _____

26. What color is the APPENDIX in your textbook? _____
After looking through the APPENDIX, name at least one thing you might use it for. __________

27. Find the LAB BOOK in the back of your textbook. What color are those pages? _______
Take some time to look through the LAB BOOK. Name at least one experiment found in the lab book that you would really like to try this year.