A Trip Down Memory Lane (Synthesis Blog #3)

   The above picture is the perfect representation of the reaction me and many others students have had when the word “textbook” comes out the teacher’s mouth. Something about the word “textbook” just makes student’s skin crawl. Unofficial studies show that students mentally check out of class once the notion of reading multiple pages of a textbook is brought up. If I could I wish I could give the mastermind behind chapter 6 of Subjects Matter a big hug. In chapter 6 they touched on many things that I wished some of my grade school teachers would’ve grasped. For some strange reason, if there is a textbook that is 275 pages long some teachers feel the need to go over those 275 pages plus the glossary before end of the school year. The first thing chapter 6 touched on is to avoid assigning the whole textbook. Most teachers will divide the number of pages in the textbook by the number of days in the school year. How can a student effectively learn that way? Students may actually read the assigned pages, but how do you that they are actually learning? In today’s society where students are faced with many statewide standardized tests, reading those 275 pages in a textbook means nothing if none of it is covered on the text. That leads me to the next thing that chapter 6 covered which was to be selective about what you are going to cover out of the textbook. Instead of reading a whole textbook, teachers should just skim through the textbook and pick pages out that actually apply to the standards. Chapter 6 covered many other helpful strategies but, I figured once teachers apply those two things I discussed teaching will be a breeze.

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