EDT 1303
TEXTBOOKS EVALUATION.
INTRODUCTION
Geography is one of the subject that been teach for secondary students. This subject need skills on evaluate and analyze information regarding the environment structure, economic, and natural resources especially in Malaysia and also in south east Asia. The textbook provided by the ministry must be appropriate with students level in order to develop those skills and fulfill the students need in terms of understanding and make them aware about their environment in scientific, systematic and entirely.
From my review, this textbook provide table of content, glossary, and index that was very useful for students especially for findings the specific topics or pages of the selected topics that they want to read and this is indirectly increase their understanding and make their work easier and systematic. Beside that, the arrangement of the content shows the development of the topic which means started with basic knowledge for instance they teach about direction, how to read scale and then they teach how to read map that is need specific skills. The textbook are not really uniform in appearance and content layout throughout the chapter because some chapter has more attractive layout so it outcome is not balances. This textbook also provides references from books and other resources such as internet that might be useful for students to gain additional information for their own knowledge. To make the students more understand and clear about the chapter, it provide mind mapping for the summary and give a briefly explanation on introduction for every topic so that students can easily capture the contain of the topics. Furthermore all the pages are numbered so that it will not confusing the students.
As I go through this textbook I could say that the content meet local and national standard because it fulfill the criteria of a good textbook means that easy to understand, attractive to read, and some of the information given are from other resources such as internet and Petronas beside the content neatly pack together . It also an up to date and accurate information given to the students because it provide latest research and accurate value for the contents of this textbook. These textbooks are supported by other references textbook that students used because it was complete and the content are facts that cannot be easily change by the author.The used of the font and the style age are clear and easy to read, they must to do so to enhance student’s interest in order to read the book.
After the students finish a chapter there will be a quizzes and question at the end of every lesson, it is to make sure that the students really understand and to test their comprehension in that lesson. Geography subject are linked to other subject areas such as economic and science for instance when we study geography we will aware about the natural resources such as petroleum and then the strategic structure for cultivate paddy that contribute to economic sources. The contain of this textbook make students engage with active learning because there are many activities involve students in term of developing critical thinking. This can be proven with the questions that are provided and need students to find the answer themselves whether through internet or other resources. This lesson encourages higher level thinking because it provides questions that sharpen the students mind and need them to think about it themselves. This Geography textbook was published in 2004 and has been used about 4 years, so, from our suggestion, it can be used for several years but not more than 5 years because the contains also need to be updated suitable with the changing of time and the facts.
This textbook provides appropriate size and weight for student who used it because it is not thick and not too heavy. It is because the ministry doesn’t want burden the students because lately there are an issue regarding student’s complaint about their beg is heavy. The used of the font and the style age are clear and easy to read, they must to do so to enhance student’s interest in order to read the book. The material to produce this geography textbook comes from high quality material so that the binding, pages and cover are durable. Although the textbook have many pictures, there are some pictures are not colorful so it make the textbook look dull and it will cause the student loss their interest to review and read the book. For the illustrations, tables, figures, graphs, and charts are relevant and functional because it provide all the data and it makes the students understand and easy to read the information given.
