Dear Editor of Five Points Press,

I have recently been asked by my school to evaluate your second grade History and
Social Science textbook titled “Our World Near & Far”. I am writing to you with the purpose of
sharing the results of my evaluation. My initial overall response to this textbook was very
positive. I thought the text was a great length; not too long and not too short, the font of the text
was great, and I noticed that the pages were very colorfully filled with photos, illustrations, and
charts. However, upon deeper evaluation, I discovered that the text is not quiet suitable for the
intended audience of second graders given its advanced readability level.
This text has many strengths, along with some weaknesses as well. Based upon my
review, I found that one of the textbook’s main strengths is its overall format. It is composed of
four different units: History, Geography, Economics, and Civics. Within these four units are
chapters that go into detail about a certain topic. Each chapter contains headings and subheadings
that are very clear and successfully support the content. These format characteristics makes the
textbook very user friendly. Another strength that stood out was the visuals that are imbedded in
the text. There are many illustrations, photos, maps, charts etc. that all accurately and
meaningfully connected to the text. More importantly, each of these visuals have captions and
labels that very informatively supplement the text. The text also does a nice job of connecting
concepts from the past to students lives today. For example, when the text asks students to
imagine a world without TVs and computers in order to show how different life was in the
ancient times. Lastly, the text does a nice job of bolding important words for students to know,
along with a short definition of these vocabulary words. It even provides correct pronunciation of
difficult words for students. On the other hand, one of the biggest weaknesses of the text its
absence of activities and games for students to interact with; not allowing them to use higher-
level thinking. Secondly, the text does not include neither a summary or a bibliography at the end
of each chapter. Lastly, the author does not use many (if any) analogies, metaphors, similes or
allusions to clarify new ideas, making them vivid and allowing students to make connections.
I used both the Raygor and the Lexile Methods in order to generate the readability of this
text. I selected random 100-150 word passages from the beginning, middle, and end of the text.
Looking at the readability calculations, the average readability calculated for the text was grade
5, which suggest that the text is definitely not at an appropriate level of difficulty for the average
second grade student in an instructional setting. The Lexile of the text was calculated as 610L-
800L, which corresponds to the approximate grade levels of grade 3-5. On top of this, the text
relies heavily on the idea that students have background knowledge and insight into the
information prior to reading the text. This unlikely concept of background knowledge, in
addition to the readability ensure that this text is entirely too difficult for the average second
grader. Considering this, if this text were to be used in a second grade classroom, it would
require extensive teacher support, differentiation, and lots of good teaching methods. With this
teaching support, it is possible that this text could be used in a second grade classroom.
However, with the absence of this support, the average second grader would be at frustration
trying to read and comprehend this text on their own. With this being said, I would not
recommend this book because I feel that there could be more harm than good, especially when
students are not sufficiently supported and differentiated by their teacher when using this text.
The last thing that we want as teachers is to frustrate our students, and this text is likely to send
our students to that frustration level given my readability findings.
During my evaluation of this text, I found that it is compromised of many strengths as
well as weakness. I have a few suggestions for your company to take into consideration. These
are simple suggestions with the goal of overall improvement of the text and to decrease the
number of weaknesses that it withholds. Each of these suggestions are made with our second
grade students in mind. First and foremost, I suggest shifting the text so that it is closer to a
second grade reading level. Secondly, I would suggest including various activities and interactive
questions to each chapter in the book. This will increase student encouragement and higher level
thinking. I would also suggest including short and brief summaries at the end of each chapter,
including the big takeaways and ideas that were imbedded in the text. This will help reiterate the
information for the students. Lastly, I would suggest updating the use of “real world
connections” used in the text. While there are great examples of making connections to the
students and their lives, some of them are fairly outdate. The textbook was published in 2005,
which was a substantial amount of time ago. The world is not the same as it was in 2005 and
children are growing up in a very different world full of many technological advancements. This
should be taken into account when making these connections to students.
As a first hand teacher who uses this textbook in my classroom, I hope this information
and evaluation comes as a useful resource for you. I hope that you will take this information into
consideration when writing and editing textbooks in the future.

Sincerely,
Mallory Browning