The First Geologists

The First Geologists is an expository nonfiction text about scientists of the earth: geologists. The text goes into detail about early geologists such as James Hutton, William Smith, Friedrich Mohs, Alfred Wegener, and Florence Bascom. The text includes a section on geophysicist Joann Stock. Readers gain interesting information from text and graphics. Multiple scientists and their work are highlighted in the text. A two-page experiment written in third person procedural language invites students to learn more about rocks by observing them and answering questions in the experiment.

The First Geologists is divided into sections. A range of illustrations are used which add information and support the reader’s interpretation of the text, including charts and labeled photos, diagrams, cycles and maps. Many fact boxes and sidebars are used to provide students with additional learning opportunities. Periods, commas, exclamation marks, quotation marks, and question marks are used. A table of contents, a glossary, and an index support the reader.

Sentences structures and lengths vary with a wide variety of parts of speech. A full range of plurals and compound words are used. Sentences contain common and sophisticated connectives, possessives, contractions, prepositional phrases, and verbs with inflection endings. Glossary words are bold faced throughout the text. Some words appear in the vocabulary of mature language users.

This title is from the Science Readers series from Teacher Created Materials. Build literacy skills and science content knowledge with high-interest, appropriately levelled information texts.