The book A Handful of Dirt talks about all of the tiny living things that can be found in what most people would think was just a handful of dirt. The book ventures into territories about microscopic organisms and how life lives almost everywhere. I used this book to tie to the NGSS standard about Ecosystems, Interactions, Energy and Dynamics. This standard asks students to develop a model to describe the movement of matter among plants, animals, decomposers, and the environment. I think this would be a great book for 5th graders and would stimulate their thinking in new ways.

I found this book to be excellent! It talked about the importance of soil, what it is and why it is so important to us as humans and to our world. This book would be a great source of resource for teaching science in the classroom.

A book simple about dirt and what it is made of and what it does for us. The book uses very good examples in its pictures to help the readers understand the importance of what the book is about. It’s able to talk about all walks of life, from the beginning till the end, and what each living things has to do when it comes to soil. The book was a very good read, one that I know that will be beneficial to student’s projects in the future. This book allows for students to use it as a resource with a lot of factual information.

This books teaches the importance of soil, what is in it and why it is important to the environment, life and planet. This could be used with all ages when doing a plant/soil unit. I am going to tell my cooperating teacher about it and maybe we'll use it during our upcoming plant unit. This pictures are fun to learn from because they are real.