According to Subjects Matter, there are multiple ways to help your students figure out the textbook they will be using for that class. One of the options is actually something my teachers this semester are using in their classes. Most of my teachers have substituted textbooks with other materials that they have decided will be more valuable for us. Our math textbook was written by our Math teacher just like the teacher in the Subjects Matter book, and our other two professors both picked out specific articles and books for us to read throughout the semester. Obviously they had to research and read these materials to determine if they were going to be the best option for class. Honestly, this opened my eyes to how willing we need to be as teachers to search for the bestsellers resources for our students. The materials given to us are not always the options we should choose.
One of my favorite activities to use with a textbook was the textbook circles, however I was not exactly sure what this would like in a math class when I was reading about the activity. After I was thinking about it, I was coming up with ideas and ways that it would work in a math class. I think that one of the best ways is to have them read through a section that has been tough for them to understand. I would create guiding questions for them to ask each other and determine what the key words were for them to understand. Then I would have a problem for them to solve together to help them walk through the concepts they read and see if they were able to comprehend the section.
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Thanks for this, Hannah. For me, how to best use textbooks in a math class remains an open question. As we may have already discussed, having students read a textbook to learn new content doesn't seem to me like a great idea, but I'm no math teacher! Maybe the best thing a math textbook can do is provide lots of practice problems. I'd be interested in hearing what all our math teachers think about this. -BR
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