Synthesis Blog 3: How to Best Use a Textbook

Textbooks are a crucial part of academics in all content areas. However, students and teachers can get bogged down by textbooks. Previously and from my personal experiences, teachers would base their lessons only on the textbook each day, insisting that everything must be taught. But, it is important to see that we can be successful teachers and have successful students without strictly following the textbook. From a teacher's perspective, it can be difficult to sort through the textbook and try to gather the right information without forgetting something or spending too much time on one topic. Meanwhile, students can be overwhelmed by a textbook and neglect learning from the textbook. Therefore, teachers must learn how to best use a textbook.

This chapter gives teachers tools to help sort, read, and learn from a textbook. As a future math teacher, I feel challenged by textbooks, simply because I want to know how to best use them within my classroom. But, I really enjoyed reading about the importance of math textbooks, but also relating to the struggles found within the textbooks. It was helpful to see how some textbooks include interactive programs online that assist the textbook. I think this feature could be extremely beneficial within math, but also used in other content areas through additional online information. I think we must remember to encourage our students to use their textbooks for additional resources, but also to remind them that they do not need to have the entire book read or mastered.

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