How We Learned the Earth is Round

The book does foster a development of processes through the facts and history it conveys, as well as by providing a couple hands-on activities that students can do to understand certain concepts. The book presents the idea that the Earth is round, and details certain ways why people had a difficult time understanding that idea at first.

Author: Patricia Lauber
Illustrator: Megan Lloyd
Year Published: 1990
ISBN: 0690048602

Summary

This book discusses the different beliefs from many years ago about what people thought the shape of the Earth was. The book uses ideas of history and science to talk about former and current beliefs about the Earth.

Evaluation

Appropriateness: Medium
Authority: Medium
Accuracy: Medium
Liteary Artistry: Low
Appearance: Medium

Questions

Does the book foster development of processes?

Does the book provide an opportunity for children to ask and answer their own questions?

This book provides an immense amount of opportunities for students to form and answer their own questions about the shape of the Earth, the changes between beliefs of back then and now, and about the relationship of the Sun, Moon, and Earth. The students can ask questions about what people thought in the past about why the Earth is flat and test out their questions with some of the hands-on experiments that are presented in the book to simulate what past circumstances caused people to believe a certain idea, such as a ship disappearing in the distance.

Does the book encourage children to think for themselves?

I think due to the fact that it encourages and provides students with the opportunity to take part in two hands-on activities to understand what made people realize that the Earth is round allows them to "test the discovery" (Page 16) for themselves.

Is the science topic addressed in ways that are appropriate to the lesson?

I think the ideas presented in this book are more history-based rather than science-based, because the main idea of the book is how the Greeks discovered that the Earth is not flat, but round. The book details the ideas of why people thought the Earth was flat and how their ideas began to change based on certain occurrences. The book does however close with the fact about how satellites and spaceships of today now allow people to see the Earth as round. A science lesson utilizing this book could be about how technology continues to improve peoples' knowledge of science ideas.

Is the content based on sound scientific principles? Is it accurate?

The book does present a little bit about the relationship between the Sun, Moon, and Earth. It talks a little bit about the phases of the Moon and gives some information about eclipses as well. The ideas are not very detailed, because it is discussing it more from the viewpoint that people had in the old days, so the book could provide more details to make it more clear and accurate.

Does the book distinguish between fact and fiction?

The book tells somewhat of a story about what people believed in the past to be true, but it does distinguish it between what people believed in the past compared to what we know in the more recent present.

Are the illustrations clear and accurate?

The book utilizes colorful drawings to depict images of what people believed to be true in the past. The drawings include a couple of the moon phases and the position of the Sun, Moon, and Earth relative to each other that are not very clear or accurate. Some of these images could be confusing to students that are being introduced to these concepts. The last image of the book is a photograph of a satellite in space that does a good job to illustrate what we know to be true in current day versus the illustrations presented throughout the book of the beliefs of the past.

Is the book written at the level of your students?

This book is quite wordy and includes various vocabulary that may be new or unfamiliar to most students, so I would definitely present this as a read aloud for 1st-3rd grade, and I think you could just read a certain part of it that you wanted to focus on and give students the opportunity to try out one of the hands-on activities in the book.

Is there a multicultural component? Is it free from stereotyping?

The illustrations depict students that appear to be of various nationalities and ethnicities. The book does portray certain stereotypes about Greek people such as the sentence that says "certain Greeks were great thinkers (Page 8)."

Is the book free from gender bias?

I did notice only discussed male explorers, but it did present a few illustrations of females taking part in the hands-on activities presented in the text. I think the portrayal of only male explorers could lend/contribute to the idea that only men figured out that the world was not flat and that only males can be scientist.

Does the book show the close association between science and other disciplines?

The book is strongly tied to ideas of history and hands-on activities involved in science. I thought it was incredibly interesting to read a science book that was connected to history, because I have not really seen that presented as much.

Does the book present a positive attitude toward science and technology?

The book presents an extremely positive attitude towards science and technology, due to the fact that it talks about how science has helped people understand important facts about the Earth and our solar system. The book conveyed that science is vital to understanding a great deal about the universe. The idea that technology is beneficial was stressed at the end of the book that displayed an image of a satellite and said that technological advances have helped us greatly in discovering new ideas about the Earth.

Science Topics

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