From this weeks readings I learned
many important lessons about textbooks.
Chapter three of Subjects Matter discussed why textbooks should not be
the only reading material used in the classroom. The authors claimed that textbooks have a number of issues
for both teachers and students. Some of these issues are that textbooks are
superficial, hard to read, badly designed, authoritarian, inaccurate, not
written for students, and cost too much. While there are many issues with
textbooks they do serve as a useful reference guide however, they should be
supplemented with other kinds of readings.
In
chapter six Daniels and Zemelman discuss how to use a textbook. They explain
that what we really want to do as teachers is to help student understand the
big ideas and that to remember the big ideas students must act upon them. There
are six ways to help students use textbooks more effectively that are listed in this chapter.
These six ways are checking out the textbook, jigsawing, guide-o-rama study
guides, vocabulary word sorts, textbook circles, and SQ3R. My favorite method
of these six is jigsawing. With jigsawing students are assigned to focus on a
certain topic or chapter of the textbook to read. After reading their section and
writing down the big ideas they meet in a group of their peers who read the
same section as they did or an “expert group” and discuss what they read. They
then decide what they think were the key ideas of the chapter and present
their findings to the class. I have experience this type of activity in high
school and seen it used in a class at CF High School and think this is a great
way to make textbook reading more interesting for students. It allows them to
focus more on their assigned section and allows them to work with and learn
from their peers.
Overall theses
chapters got me thinking about how I want to use textbooks in the classroom as
a teacher. As someone who never enjoyed reading textbooks I agree with
everything the authors are saying in these chapters. Textbooks should be used
sparingly and only as a reference material. While using textbooks it is
important to help and guide students to understand the content they are reading
in fun and creative ways.
What is the future of textbook use in the classroom?
I liked that same method Jennifer. It really gets the students involved but I also thinks it gives them a sense power for lack of a better word. The students are the ones that are the teachers. They each become the expert on that part of the chapter of the textbook. I saw this too at CF High, not in the context of the textbooks but when a teacher made the students experts of a certain assignment in the science class. Each group was responsible for a medical condition and that group would then teach the class on that condition. I agreee also that textbooks are really just a source and should not be the sole source of info for the content. Bring in more sources to keep the content fresh.
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