Science Detective Beginning

Critical Thinking Press has taken their excellent approach for improving subject-area skill and higher-order thinking skills and applied it to science in an effort to help students improve both their science knowledge AND thinking skills at the same time! The emphasis here is in helping students learn and understand science with a critical language arts slant so that they will learn to read science passages critically, and write full explanations of their thinking to reinforce their understanding. The book is divided into three units: physical science, life science, and earth science. Each unit contains over a dozen activities, each on a more specific sub-topic, and tied to national science standards. Each activity consists of a reading portion, and a question portion. The reading selection explains the concept in detail, with paragraphs separated and labeled by letter, and important vocabulary highlighted. The right-hand page features questions on the topic the student has just read about. Questions are presented in a variety of formats, including true/false, short answer (full-sentence responses), multiple-choice, graph questions, comparison/contrast and more. An answer key is included at the end of the book. The questions emphasize using "evidence" from the text, and really basing their answers on text evidence before choosing an answer. This helps reinforce what was read, and in many cases, requires the student to really think about their answer before giving it. This would be an excellent supplement to any science curriculum that will aid the student in really understanding concepts, where other workbooks may merely ask the student to regurgitate facts. I could even see using this alongside a full science curriculum, for added reasoning and critical thinking benefits! Currently, only the Beginning level is available, but we look for more levels to be available in the future. - Jess