Textbooks: Useful or Not?

Second week, and here is my second blog post! I didn't know what I should make this blog post about this week, as it's been sort of a slow week at the university.

In my Reading, Writing, and Thinking Skills class we have been talking about text books and whether or not their use is appropriate in the classroom. We also learned methods about how to help our students read textbooks.

I found this discussion quite interesting because in university, I have actually used my textbooks a lot. The first few years of university I would buy my textbooks and never read them, and I was not a very good student. In my third year I started reading my textbooks and I found that I would take in the information and became a better student as a result of this.

In university, we are mostly choosing our classes, so most of the content we are reading is somewhat interesting to us. However, in high school a lot of classes are mandatory. I also found that when I highlighted information in my own textbooks I was able to connect to the information better. Because students don't own the textbooks, they do not have this information available to them.

This has made me think a lot about using textbooks in the classroom. Because I have mostly been in English classrooms, we haven't necessarily used a textbook in the usual sense. We have used plays and novels, however. It's easier for English teachers to use these "textbooks" in their classroom because they are often used to talk about a specific theme and discussions about students understanding of the novel is usually done in class.

I can definitely see how textbook use in classes such as math or science would be more difficult. It was definitely an interesting conversation, and one that I will think about when I go to use textbooks in the future. I will also be sure to try to recognize my students understanding of the vocabulary, which can definitely be confusing.