Indiana Strengths And Weaknesses

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The book I chose to analyze is named Indiana Social Studies and was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt School in 2010. This book is for fourth grade. I chose fourth grade because I think that is the grade that I am going to student teach in. I investigated the curriculum by first doing a picture walk of the entire book, reading unit 3, which is about Indiana’s later history, and then used the MPEAC Curriculum Bias Tool to rate my whole experience with the book. I tried to keep my eye out on anything that was biased, and in doing so, I noticed this textbook had both strengths and weaknesses. One strength of this textbook is that it includes stories and narratives about non-white male people. At the end of some lessons, the textbook would …show more content…

There are many quotes throughout the book that are from important people or from someone who said something about the important person. There are also many pictures throughout the book to offer a visualization of what something looked like during the time. For example, in the geography section there are pictures showing places in Indiana and pictures about how the land was changed overtime. A third strength of this book was how each unit started with a timeline. On this timeline, students would be able to see what was happening in Indiana and what was happening in the United States at the same time. Students could use this timeline to make connections or to develop a deeper understanding of why something was happening in Indiana because of what was happening in the rest of the world. A weakness of this book is that it has limited perspectives, especially when the topic is about a culture or race that is not white. For example, when the book talks about the Indian Removal, there are no perspectives about how the Indians felt when they were forced to leave Indiana. There are pictures of other races, such as Native Americans and African Americans, but I do not think that is enough to demonstrate other perspectives because pictures can have many interpretations that can be …show more content…

The book has limited perspectives, the time management was not efficient, and it appeared that Indiana was on the forefront of some events but they were not at all. Along with weaknesses, there came strengths as well, such as providing time lines at the beginning of each unit, stories and narratives were provided of people who were not a white male, and the textbook included primary and secondary sources. Even though this textbook did have some strengths, I think the weaknesses still outweigh the strengths. The weaknesses wanted to me to include investigating other perspectives, incorporating cross-curricular, providing students with opportunities to get a closer look into the world, and giving students different ways to show their knowledge in my creation of a new Social Studies

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