Customer Reviews

Biology Teacher's Survival Guide (J-B Ed: Survival Guides)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I found this biology survival guide to be very helpful in my first year of teaching high school biology. The book was filled with a alot of good ideas, puzzles and sponge activities. The guide was very easy to follow and had well written worksheets with the answers available in the back of the text. The guide covered all the major areas in biology so I could always use something from the guide (including labs and fun projects). It also includes helpful classroom management suggestions such as dealing with parent teacher conferences, writing letters to parents (good and bad),etc...I have enjoyed this guide and would reccomend it to anyone.

This book contains several ready to use worksheets. They are easy to adapt to a particular unit. I have especially appreciated this book when expecting a substitute teacher, because it contains activities to help reinforce prior teaching. The activities include complex as well as basic ideas. It has been a big help to me during my first year of teaching Biology.

I found this to be a very useful tool for teaching Biology. There are many puzzles and activities covering different Biology units, including genetics, physiology, and cell biology. Students enjoy the variety and the puzzles go along with most typical high school Biology textbooks.

Happened to peruse a copy of the book that I found in the "discard pile" of a retiring teacher's stuff. I was horrified to find a section that recommends that teachers approach the teaching of evolution by natural selection in a way that casts it as merely one viewpoint to be placed on the same level as creationism and even recommends bringing in guest speakers to elaborate on creationism in addition to ones on evolution. Following the author's advice could very well end up getting an official reprimand for violation of state education law (creationism and ID have been ruled as religious, not scientific, arguments by federal courts time and again). Bad advice based on an almost incompetent grasp of scientific knowledge. I tossed the book in the trash and would never recommend it to a new or veteran teacher.

I think this book is a great resource to make copies and transparencies of sponge activities or bell works but the rest of the book I did not find useful. It included some of the same things you are already introduced to as a new teacher in an induction program. But if you're looking for a good amount of sponge activities than this is a pretty good book.

I am a new Biology teacher and will have Biology I, Bio I Honors, and Biology II Advanced Placement classes. This book had a lot of good ideas on activities to do and procedures to use in the classroom. I think that it will be a help to me this year.

I will be a first year Bio teacher this fall and so I went ahead and bought this book. In addition to the poor layout, the first 160 pages were useless. The only good thing about it was the sponge activities in the back of the book but even then I would probably only use them when we have a sub or as a "fun activity" to fill time. Going back to the layout, the author would put page after page of forms or examples in the MIDDLE of explaining what was going on. For example, you would start to read about a technique, or whatever, and then its 5 pages of example forms some related to what you just read, others related to something else, and then it would go back to discussing the technique.

Everything else in the book was common sense and taught in my graduate teaching courses (and my grad classes taught it much better).

I wouldn't suggest this book to anyone.

An excellent book to many facets of classroom management/teaching. The controversial subject of evolution is handled in an ingenious way. A must resource book for any science teacher.

lots of great ideas that should help me in my first classroom - THANKS!

This book spent a lot of space on activities that I would never use (example: Anatomy awards). I found that many of the sponge activities were quite advanced for Biology 20. Generally I did not find much that was useful or helpful to me for teaching high school biology.