Discovery

ALIVE AND WELL II -- A SYSTEMS APPROACH by Rosemary Hipkins and Lindsey Conner; Longman, 1999; 124 pp; $24.95

Reviewed by Hertha James

This is a new edition of an existing year 11 Human Biology textbook of the same name. The book tries to be interactive, with exercises and challenges for the students. As a teacher of Human Biology, often with low literacy students, I found pluses and minuses with this book.

In order for students to grasp new ideas, they must learn the new words needed to express those ideas. Little attention is given to this. There are many good exercises in which students have to apply the information in the text. These could have been made user-friendly by numbering the questions or sequences, to allow for easy marking or self-checking of work.

The chapter on gas exchange and respiration is called Refuelling which seems strange because this term usually refers to food. The chapter covering digestion and circulation is called Repackaging and Distribution. While I can understand what the authors are trying to do, it may lead to confusion.

Efforts to keep the cost of the book down are evident in the quality of the diagrams. I found the instructions for many of the "activities" somewhat wordy and many of my students would find them hard to follow without help.

I would recommend purchase of a class set of these books, with an awareness that a great deal of teacher preparation of parallel resources would be needed in order for lower ability students to access and be able to learn the information needed to do well in a Human Biology course.

Hertha James is a freelance author with a background in high school science and biology teaching.