Synthesis Post #3

 As a student, I dreaded the times that my teacher would assign textbook reading as homework. I used to think, "why do I have to read this material if I am just going to learn about it in class?". Well, what I did not know is that my teacher was probably trying to cram content into our curricula that we would not have time to get to in class. Educators are forced to cram whole textbooks into one semester because that is basically what they have been told to do by their schools. There should be a choice in the textbooks we reference and a choice in what textbook we actually give to our students. Just because the textbook may have "State Standards" written across the front, does not mean that it explains the content in the best way possible. For a student to fully grasp a concept, I think that they need to interact with these concepts instead of just skimming them. Harvey Daniels and Steven Zemelman state, "No matter what learning theory you subscribe to, all agree on one thing: to remember ideas, learners must act upon them" (Subject Matters, 178). To help with this idea, before assigning a reading out of the textbook to the students, the instructor should select the parts in which hold the most importance to their content and really keen in on what big ideas they want their students to understand. Guiding the students to recognize the important subject matter content will help them apply what they already know to what they are reading. To answer the question of "How should I use my textbook in class?"; To prevent teaching the textbook, I would recommend using it as a reference book, not your main source of content coverage.
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