How should I use a textbook in my class?
From what we've read and talked about in class, we know that textbooks aren't the end all be all they used to be in education. We used to place such an emphasis on reading and memorizing the textbooks, but now we know that many times textbooks have errors or the information just isn't relevant to what students need to be learning. Personally, I've had different experiences with textbooks especially in college where I either don't open it the entire semester or I rely on it solely because what my professor teaches and what we're supposed to know don't necessarily line up.
I liked the different strategies mentioned in the chapter about how to incorporate textbook reading into the classroom, but make it less content heavy and more engaging. I liked the Guide-o-Rama strategy because my political science TA would give us something like this for weekly readings and it helped a lot because I would still get the content that I needed and focus more on the things I knew were important than reading a whole lengthy chapter and only retaining a few bits of information. I feel like this can really be useful in middle school classrooms because everything is so content based and we can allow our students to have access to the information without also overloading them with facts that they will never need to know.
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From what we've read and talked about in class, we know that textbooks aren't the end all be all they used to be in education. We used to place such an emphasis on reading and memorizing the textbooks, but now we know that many times textbooks have errors or the information just isn't relevant to what students need to be learning. Personally, I've had different experiences with textbooks especially in college where I either don't open it the entire semester or I rely on it solely because what my professor teaches and what we're supposed to know don't necessarily line up.
Hey Calli,
ReplyDeleteI totally relate when you mentioned that we buy these textbooks for our college classes and either don't touch them or our entire class is taught directly from the textbook. I remember being in EPSY and all the material, the entire semester, was directly out of the textbook.
For middle grades students, it is important to direct their attention to useful information rather than giving them multiple chapters from the textbook to read because like you said, they will only retain a limited amount of information.
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Calli,
ReplyDeleteI thought you made great points in your blog post! I feel like textbooks are being used less and less, but they are still required for every class. I think it is important for teachers to tie in textbooks to class information, while reminding students what is and is not important to read in the textbook. I think these tips can be used in each of our content areas, as we each focus on literacy. It helps students to know what to read and how it applies to the class.
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