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Favorite textbook for middle school life science?


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With all the extras, then it is high school. Just by itself, E.O. Wilson's Life on Earth ibook. It has great embedded technology, lots of wonderful content, and it's free! The extras are data analysis, labs, articles from outside sources for reports, that sort of thing. They are avaliable through iTunesU. The ibook is beautiful and a good one for middlers just as a great text.

 

We are going to use it with lots of art for Ds.

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With all the extras, then it is high school. Just by itself, E.O. Wilson's Life on Earth ibook. It has great embedded technology, lots of wonderful content, and it's free! The extras are data analysis, labs, articles from outside sources for reports, that sort of thing. They are avaliable through iTunesU. The ibook is beautiful and a good one for middlers just as a great text.

 

We are going to use it with lots of art for Ds.

 

I downloaded the one that included information about nervous systems to accompany our current neuroscience study, and it's quite good! The animations will help with further explanation about synapses for sure. Do you have any recommendations for other interactive iBooks for any subject or tips on how to find them?

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I downloaded the one that included information about nervous systems to accompany our current neuroscience study, and it's quite good! The animations will help with further explanation about synapses for sure. Do you have any recommendations for other interactive iBooks for any subject or tips on how to find them?

The Breaking the Barrier Spanish is quite wonderful for only fifteen dollars. No animations, but all the audio is embedded, the exercises are all self checking, and the flash cards come with versions in English, Spanish, and images. All the flash cards have audio as well. You can create your own study cards as well. Though that feature is not ideal, it is quite nice. So you get an entire year system for 15 dollars other than the test packet. The tests are twenty dollars extra. I have found it a wonderful way to do Spanish in a far more independent way, as my son can listen and "participate" with a conversation when the iPad "speaks" one side and he has to figure out his to respond. He can work on verb conjugations, vocabulary, and reading comprehension by himself as well.

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We are considering this next year. How do you like it?

 

 

We haven't started it yet, but there are a lot of threads about it by people who use it on the boards.  Going through the book and the investigations and planning it is making me giddy though!  :D

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I like CPO life science with a couple TOPS science life science units tossed in for good measure.

 

I like CPO as a text, it is fairly straight forward with none of the 'Hey Kids, Science is Awesome To The Max!!!!" bits that I see in so many middle grade text books. Of course my 'straightforward' is another person's dry and boring so obvs, YMMV.

 

CPO as a text is nice if you like the style (which I do) but it is going to cover what most middle grade life science text will cover. What makes CPO stand out is their hands on part. They do a hands on demonstration and then you use the book, then another hands on, and then you use the book.

 

http://www.cposcience.com/home/2/ForEducators/MiddleSchoolLifeScience/tabid/276/Default.aspx

 

I should add that it is mostly demonstration type work, not true experiments. There is an expected outcome.  However, that is where some TOPS science units come it. I just added those in at the end of the year, nbd. If you download the student record sheets, you can see all the needed supplies on the right hand side of the page. I just went through them all and had an open shopping cart at Home science tools. I just loaded it up and was all done.

 

There are a lot of CPO threads in this forum. I know that I have written a lot. People have also posted links to online CPO books you can download. I found the teacher's book for a reasonable price on Amazon. You just want to be aware that there are 2 versions of CPO, the national version, called CPO Life Science, and the California version, called Focus on LIfe Science. Just know which one you have because it effects which teacher book you need and the order that the "student Record sheets" are used.

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