Because I've never been on a textbook adoption committee (I'm not sure how many of my readers have been), and because I likely never will be, I will leap over the first half of Chapter Five, which focuses on evaluating texts for classroom use. Many teachers have little say over which textbook is used in their classrooms and a whole lot of say over how the textbook is used. So, let's skip to that!
The authors provide two suggesting for introducing a text to a student, including a text preview (a collaborative approach where students answer questions about the text using guiding questions about the text's author, table of contents, glossary, index, bibliography, appendix, organization, graphic images, and overall functionality) and a treasure hunt (a specific list of ten to twenty-five questions that can be found using the text and to introduce students to some of the ideas that will be covered over the course of the semester). Both of these approaches sound like excellent activities for the first week of school.
Often, a school's textbook does not necessarily cover all that a teacher would like to cover (or, more likely, covers too much at the expense of depth of information) and most of the time, textbooks do not reflect the needs, interests, abilities, and voices of diverse learners. Teachers are encouraged to add additional reading materials beyond the core text in order to add focus and depth, fulfill personal interests, provide for individual reading and learning abilities, add a multicultural dimension, stimulate independent thinking, and promote the sheer love of a subject. Texts can include fiction, poetry, nonfiction, biographies and autobiographies, works by and about women or people of color, newspapers and magazines, reference materials and encyclopedias, art and music, or videos and films. These texts can be incorporated easily into almost any content area class using oral reading; assigned reading; independent reading combined with a performance, presentation, or report; collaborative or independent projects; and reading workshops.
Struggling to incorporate supplemental texts into your curriculum? In addition to keeping an organized folder for articles or resources for different genres or course topics (including torn out pages, catalogues, newspaper clippings, bibliography lists, or printed website resources), consider the following resources for your school subject area:
- Art and Music--School Arts, Music Educators Journal, Art Education
- Business--Balance Sheet, Journal of Education for Business, Journal of Business Education, Business Education Forum
- English--English Journal, Journal of Reading, The Reading Teacher, Language Arts
- Foreign Language--Foreign Language Annals
- Mathematics--Arithmetic Teacher, School Science and Mathematics, Mathematics Teacher
- Physical Education--Journal of Physical Education, Recreation and Dance
- Science--The Science Teacher, American Biology Teacher, Journal of Chemical Education, Science Education, Journal of Biological Education
- Social Studies--Social Education, The Social Studies
- Vocational Education--VocEd
Other texts that should be considered are online technologies, including word processing programs and professional publication software, online instructional technologies, and websites. I am particularly fond of Discovery Education, PBS, and Scholastic for media resources, lesson plan ideas, and primary documents.
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