Chapter 6: Should we even read textbooks? And if so, how?

This chapter had some really great tips on how to help students read through a textbook, and possible strategies to have them do less or no reading in the textbook.  I was disappointed that so many of the strategies wouldn’t work well in the math classroom.  For example, they talked about book clubs and Jigsaw reading, which I really don’t see as effective strategies with a math textbook.  There is potential with the vocabulary word sorting strategy and I really did connect to the material asking us to get the students out of the textbook.  I recently posted a TED Talk where he took a problem from a textbook and created a real video of it happening! That is so much more effective than just assigning seven pages a night so they can get through it all.  I think students can learn a lot better in a classroom where a teacher is dedicated to teaching outside of the textbook, in words the students can understand. Yes, they should learn the math vocabulary, but that does not mean that it isn’t useful for them to hear something in normal words first and begin to understand how math vocabulary connects to it after.  I could see myself putting vocabulary words and textbook definitions up on the board, and having students help me break down the definition until everyone can understand it.  This strategy could help them throughout the unit as well as later in life when they come across words and definitions that they don’t understand.
(254)