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| (How I feel when I read science text books) |
After the first day of class, the UGA bookstore is flooded with students who are rushing to get their "required text books" for the semester. Thousands of pages, hundreds of dollars, and tens of pounds (I weighed all of my textbooks freshman year and they were a whopping 33 lbs total), but how much do we actually benefit from these dense textbooks? Well, according to Subjects Matter, not much! Textbooks can be a great tool for teachers to use to SUPPLEMENT their lessons and help prepare students before class. However, many teachers today use textbooks to replace their own lectures, activities, and lessons-- this is neither an effective nor an efficient way to teach students.
In order to use a textbook practically, teachers cannot assign the 30+ pages that have become customary. Honestly, in high school (and college as well) when a teacher assigns reading in a textbook, I rarely read the entire chapter. I skim, read bolded terms, and the summaries that tend to follow each chapter. It is virtually impossible for any student, no matter how good their reading skills are, to both comprehend and remember the magnitude of information in just a single chapter of a textbook.
The main issue with textbooks is addressed in this chapter-- teachers are struggling to cover the sheer magnitude of information they have to cover in their classrooms, so they are assigning chapters to read at home. Unfortunately we cannot change the curriculum (usually); so an important factor in solving this problem would be using the time we DO have in the classroom with our students more effectively so we do not feel the need to cram information through at home reading of textbooks… this is obviously easier said than done!
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Sarah,
ReplyDeleteI love that you emphasized the word “supplement.” I can understand how, as an educator, it would be easy to see a text that contains all of the knowledge your students need to pass a test and rely on that to give them a comprehensive understanding of the subject. Textbooks only put me to sleep in high school and were never as useful as the teachers originally hoped. Just because it would be easy doesn’t mean it is the best thing for your students.
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Hi Sarah! I agree with Maddie regarding your emphasis on the word "supplement." That's absolutely right: teachers should avoid making textbooks the core of their curriculum, even if the textbooks market themselves as being able to do just that. Your blog makes me wonder, though: are you reading our textbook?!
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