Title :
100% Música
Subject :
Music
Authors :
Antonio Neves, David Amaral, Jorge Domingues
Country :
Portugal
Evaluation
- Complete and seamless integration of a wealth of materials and media with totally easy access to all of them. Works on and scales to all platforms.
- A rich source of local and international music through the centuries with a clear focus on the contemporary - as befits the target group.
- Excellent and unbiased background information on all artists featured.
- Intercultural and cross cultural throughout, bridging the gap from Carl Orff to Adele.
- Full of lovely ideas like the Loto Sonoro which starts each chapter and the pop-up orchestra for the classroom.
- Great encouragement for students to pick up an instrument - including karaoke versions of each song.
- The whole course is geared to active students' involvement and brings music to everybody even if the student's background is not at all a musical one.
- This music course applies an interesting concept, i.e. a very pragmatic action-oriented learning by doing approach focused on listening, playing and composing music activities.
- The course package is very impressive with a whole range of different and complementary materials enabling the teacher to easily cater for differentiated activities according to the learners' needs and levels.
- The learner's manual is well structured and easy to work with, thanks to a systematic and useful signposting of the theme, topic, skill and type of activities dealt with, in the page header.
- The teachers´ resource pack file is remarkably comprehensive with numerous supplementary printed and digital materials, aimed at planning the course, reinforcing the learners' motivation or evaluating the students' achievements.
- The teacher's manual is efficiently designed, with a footnote on each page displaying which printed or digital resources are available for the unit presentation as well as the connected learning activities.
- The material offers the learners a really large variety of exercises, practical tasks, games or tests which will motivate wide-ranging audiences to enjoy music.
- The different activities and exercises use an extensive selection of musical genres enabling the teacher to introduce and expose his/her learners' tastes to all sorts of music.
- Clear and rare example of the unique possibilities of digital delivery: the ´Karaoke´ type applications make music transparent in a way not possible previously; the same is true for virtual Orff instruments
- The unbiased treatment of traditional folk, pop, classical and non-Western music simply as different expressions of music is laudable; the same is true of the different abilities needed to appreciate music, from listening, understanding and learning about music to making music.
- The digital material - with a printed directory for the teacher - has a consistent appearance throughout and is extremely rich and helpful
- The teacher´s guide contains extremely detailed material with descriptions right down to the single lesson and single (multiple choice) tests.
- The integration of the learning of Orff instruments and recorder into the school music education system is an excellent idea, providing chances specifically to children from disadvantaged families.
- Comprehensive audio material on the CDs.
Title :
Explore 6, My Textbook
Subject :
Foreign language: English
Authors :
Ellen M. Tudor Edwards, Tone Omlan, Isabelle Royer, Victoria Amstrong Solli
Country :
Norway
Evaluation
- The textbook has 7 chapters based on topics relevant for the 6th grade such as animals, fairytales, diaries, transport, film history, the planet, and USA and differences between American and British English.
- The topics are presented in an engaging way with a mixture of facts and knowledge,
- linguistic exploration and activities.
- The book starts with a useful spread presenting the different elements of the chapters and helping the students to navigate through the pages.
- The role of a funny character, Mr. X. Plore, is also presented. He gives tips, shows strategies for better reading, writing and talking and shows how model texts can be used.
- Every chapter starts with clear learning aims and ends with self-evaluation tasks so that the students can control their learning outcomes.
- The book builds on modern methods for foreign language teaching using model texts with an
- increased emphasis on grammar and vocabulary. Writing English texts is taken more seriously compared to many similar materials.
- The book gives a good understanding of differences in global English.
- The layout is student friendly, and offers great variation from spread to spread. There is also a great variation in photos and in the use of humorous illustrations.
- Different ethnic backgrounds are represented on photos and in texts.
- Songs and raps are integrated, and support the variation and motivation.
- There are many differentiated exercises both in the textbook and the workbook.
- The teacher's book is rich with explanations, background information on the content, activities meant for Smart Board etc.
- Consistent and transparent differentiation concept with one (easy) to three (hard) dots
- Very explicit coverage of the rationale, and the competences to be developed by the materials as well as a comprehensive collection of materials.
- There is a lesson plan, proposals for the single chapters, jokes and links to digital resources and smartboard matters. In each case they are clearly arranged around an image of the corresponding textbook double-page spread (teachers 'guide).
- Lively, varied visual style with a sufficiently clear lay-out and illustration of an appropriate size as well as useful learning-to-learn sections (« Mr X. PLORES´s Writing Tip »)
- A very broad range of topics from cinema to environmental protection, not just the usual ones, bringing into play a wide range of different text types from different settings.
- Concise and clear grammar as well as a varied exercise section (including jokes)
- A visually attractive workbook (in colour) with a wide variety of exercises.
- There is a wide range of different text types presented at an appropriate difficulty level
- The web site provides well worked out suggestions for the teacher.
- The lay-out is easy on the eye as the pages are not crowded.
- The choice of humorous illustrations is highly appropriate for the target group, including funny cartoon characters.
- New vocabulary items are usefully displayed in the bottom corner of all pages.
- The learning pack includes a really well designed teacher's book with detailed and varied recommendations and suggestions (especially for new teachers)
Title :
The Land of Music
Subject :
Music
Authors :
Kadi Härma, Maia Muldma
Country :
Estonia
Evaluation
- The textbook starts with a variety of songs with texts and music notes and with a special explanation of some notes and musical expressions. It continues with a presentation of a classical orchestra with all musicians, instruments and the role of the conductor. The two parts are varied, and seem to have a clear progression.
- The content does not seem too hard for 5th grade students, but seems to take them seriously as learners.
- Both young and female conductors are presented.
- Another positive feature is the presentation of famous musicians and other artists with disabilities, such as Steve Wonder, Andrea Bocelli, Evelyn Glennie, Meelis Luks and Nobuyuki Tsujii.
- Entertaining line drawings follow the presentations and communicate with the students in a
- humorous way. The illustrations make the background of the persons ethnically neutral.
- The layout is clear; the pages are clean and not too full. Important musical terms are highlighted in an effective but discrete blue colour font.
- Some songs have a special background on the spread (see e.g. 8 - 9, 16 - 17) giving a special atmosphere to the song.
- The workbook has a good variation of exercises. It has a clear layout but without any colours.
- Different approaches to learning music are integrated: students are invited to play on different instruments, to sing songs, to fill in tasks in the workbook, to listen to music from the textbook CD.
- The course is made interesting for students through the variety of the tasks and in the selection of songs, by creative tasks, cartoons, and depiction of the episodes from the lives of famous musicians.
- Theoretical part is rather demanding in content.
- Music is related to art, literature (p 39: you will live longer than your relatives), human health (p 37: laughter therapy), history.
- National identity is supported by using Estonian poems and songs. Using Estonian cymbals by famous musicians is mentioned in the textbook as well. In the workbook, a song about sportsmen is used to list the names of Estonian sportsmen (p 24).
- White Russian folksongs (p 10 - 11), Finnish folk tune (p 17) contribute to international education.
- Cartoons are entertaining and often have educational value.
- There is wide variety of tasks in the workbook: simple and demanding ones, tasks for individual and group work, tasks on singing, solving crosswords (p 23) , filling in different blanks (p 19), writing a song (p 17).
- Sets music in the context of the wider artistic environment.
- Encourages sympathy for people with specific difficulties or even unusual talents.
- Provides material for both individual and group work.
- The design and presentation of the pupils' book is attractive and easy on the eye with an intelligent use of colour throughout.
- The workbook is clearly set out and provides plenty of space for both the artwork and the answers to the questions.
Title :
The Great Adventure
Subject :
Maths, Geography, Music, Home Economics
Authors :
A team of authors
Country :
Bulgaria
Evaluation
- This is a very rich set of learning and teaching materials - about 30 units. They all facilitate children's learning and makes teachers' work easier.
- The digital textbooks include important additions to the printed books. There are possibilities for listening to music and texts read aloud, to solve tests, and to see videos.
- The students' books are very child-centered.
- Value education is well covered in the study set. Children are occupied in learning and playing, families contain elderly people and a lot of children. There is also a black girl and a boy in a wheel chair (Okolen svjat).
- The overall design of all the materials is very attractive and age appropriate. The use of strong primary colours and humour in child friendly illustrations used consistently across the whole set helps to motivate children.
- Individual books and workbooks are suitably slim, and the page layout (apart from Maths textbook) with large illustrations and large fonts is very appropriate for this age category.
- In addition to developing cognitive skills, the set provides ample examples for developing social and emotional skills. Respect for others, friendly and polite manners, and intergenerational relationships are consistently promoted in the whole set.
- The visuals include illustrations of children and adults with disabilities depicted in various real life situations and in interactions with other children. This is very laudable.
- The differentiated approach allows greater flexibility and adaptability to various contexts and diversity of learning styles and the needs of young learners.
- Using the same characters and design throughout the material provides a sense of continuity for the students.
- The animations illustrating how to form a letter or number in the online resources can be especially helpful to children with visual learning styles.
- The introduction of spatial awareness exercises in the mathematics material prepares the students early on for more complex concepts.
- The textbooks are accompanied by a detailed teacher's guide with differentiation opportunities and ideas for individual and group work.