The thing with textbooks...

Textbooks have been a blessing and a curse for students for quite some time, at least in my own personal educational experience. There was nothing worse than seeing assignments on the chalkboard that included reading the textbook then answering questions. At the same time the thought would run through my head that all I had to do was look for bold headings and copy my answer for the question word for word from the section. Not terribly difficult at all because no real thought was involved, just annoying and time consuming. Unfortunately the class that that mostly occurred in was history. I don't want to be that teacher that makes students do that, and after reading chapter 11 in Content-Area Reading I now know for sure that there are other more effective alternatives to reading and answering questions from the textbook that may be much more beneficial especially in a history classroom.

I like the idea of using a textbook, but as the Content-Area Reading book pointed out, not all textbooks are written the same way. I think that it will be important to choose a book for my classroom that is written in a more enticing way than just jumbled facts that are poorly organized and way over all of my students' heads. I find that that is common in many history textbooks. I love history books and read many books that most people would consider boring, but even for me some textbooks are too dry, and can only imagine how bad it is for those students who aren't even interested in history in the first place. I like the idea of trade books because it gives a different, possibly more interesting, angle on a topic, and they could also be easier to read and relate to since authors seem to be more adept to kids' emotions. Another strategy I really agree with is the use of nonfiction and fiction books in the classroom. I always liked when teachers gave us a "book list" and we had to read two or three books either fiction or non fiction over the course of the year that pertained to a certain topic. I think that it is important to do reader response writing as well when using these kinds of supplementary readings.
I thought that the statistic introduced in the Content-Area Writing book was very interesting when it showed the percentage of people who remember things after they read, hear, see, hear and see, etc. I thought it was surprising that generally people only remember 10 percent of what they read, and that 70 percent of people remember what they say and write. After seeing those statistics, I think that it is important to require some kind of "doing" after reading. I also liked the comparison this book used to taking class notes and training a monkey to do that. I think writing assignments need to be more engaging allowing students to actually put thought into it instead of answering monotonous textbook questions or taking mindless class notes that students probably won't remember writing anyway.