Discovery

YEAR 9 SCIENCE ASSIGNMENTS by Anne Wignall and Terry Wales; Longman Write-on Assignments, 1999; 84pp; $9.95

Reviewed by Mike Delceg

This exercise book is designed as a homework resource for junior secondary science, but would also be useful as a source of worksheets for formative activities in conjunction with other resources such as dictionaries, encyclopedias or Web sites.

As exercises are completed, students may record their marks to see how they measure up in Knowledge, Language, Mathematics, Thinking and Research, with more difficult tasks being given more marks. An answer key is provided in the centre which is thus easily removable allowing for student or teacher marking.

Topics covered include many that would be part of a Year 9 course at most schools and some that would be in a Year 10 course, so the book could be useful for extention activities in addition to normal classwork or homework. Although there are the inevitable crosswords and fill-ins, many tasks require students to answer questions in sentences. Some diagram drawing is required, but most pictures for labelling are already provided, emphasizing recognition over recall. A reasonable number of the sheets provide graphing exercises.

In general, this book is successful in avoiding cliched examples while reinforcing core concepts through encouraging students to reason using these concepts in real world situations. The word from the chalk face is that it is good value.

Michael Delceg is a maths and science teacher from Nelson.