Synthesis Blog #3

In this chapter we got to see and be reminded of how textbooks have been used in the classroom in the past and how we can better utilize them in our classrooms in the future. Growing up in a classroom environment where textbooks were heavily used to assign homework and to teach from, I understand all too well the feeling that students have when they are assigned to read from a textbook. There’s always a sense of dread because the number of pages assigned, the lofty language, and the swirling ideas that never seem to fully connect. Knowing these things, it’s very temping to want to toss the textbooks out the window and determine not to use them at all, but then I remember hearing my parents complain about my siblings’ lack of a textbook in their math classes the last few years. They wanted to be able to understand the math concepts too in order to help my siblings. Because my content area is math, these comments have really stuck with me, and after reading the chapter for this week, I really do believe that their can be an effective way to use textbooks in the math classroom. I believe, regarding instruction and teaching within the classroom, that notes from my teacher have always been the most helpful, and these have always proven to be useful when doing my homework. I think that the textbook is effectively used when I am assigned homework from the text out of a specific section. I think the difficult part for the teacher comes in when deciding which problems to assign and which topics to focus on out of a large and daunting piece of text. I think this is the tricky part once you look at the standards and the amount of information given to cover in the textbook, which often closely relates to standardized tests. (word count: 314)