Blog6- Beyond Traditional Textbooks

Richardson, J. S., Morgan, R. F., & Fleener, C. 2012. Reading to learn in the content areas. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co.

Beyond Traditional Textbooks

Who likes reading out of a textbook? From experience, not students at my school! It's amazing how much the students shut down once they hear we will be reading out of the textbook. As a special education teacher, it is more beneficial to me if I find other alternatives to using a textbook as the sole resource in my classroom. As a result, I have found that using additional resources to aid in student learning is not only benefiting my students, but it also benefits me, as a teacher, because I am able to reach my students on a newer higher level.

A way to support, augment, and move beyond textbooks is through the use of Read-Alongs and Read-Alouds. Read Alongs, is when a teacher shares an excerpt with the students, who read the piece individually, in small groups, or with the teacher. Using Read-Alouds, the teacher generally reads the excepts, story, or article, to the entire class. However, Read-Alouds is a more effective approach because it captures student's attention and allows the teachers to gauge the interests of the students. It also engages student learning and allows the teacher to decide what the student is interested in.

In my opinion, the most effective way to move beyond the traditional textbooks is to set the environment of your room in a way that allows the students to access additional resources such as: books, internet, magazines, newspapers, and a quiet place to read. There are many ways to locate materials and resources to use in your classrooms: parent organizations and raising money for purchases, libraries lending books for extended classroom use, local business donating materials or offering small grants, teachers using bonus points form book club orders to get additional materials, and schools purchasing mobile labs or common labs. This is important to know because teachers do not make a lot of money- free resources is always good!:)

Tradebooks are generally used books that can be an alternative/addition to use in the classroom to support the textbook and are both interesting and relevant to the context material. WARNING! Make sure you consider your sections carefully. Not all literature is current. I enjoy adding literature as an aid to the textbook because I have noticed that the students enjoy non-fiction and the change from the day to day textbook. They are able to comprehend the context because they are able to relate it to a story.

If you use a textbook in your class make sure it appeals to the reader. Simply stated, readability is the match between the reader and text. If the textbook is clear, well-expressed, and suited to the reader, the reader will have a better chance of comprehended what they are reading. If you can, try to choose your own textbooks- find one that has readability. This will not only help your students, but also create less work on your end. Without readability, barriers to comprehension and learning are established. However, be sure not to find textbooks that "dumb down" the reading by oversimplifying it. When important points and intricacies are missing, the reader loses both content and clues. No good. An effective way to determine the readily of a text is to use a checklist (Seems easy enough). Look for: linguistic factors, readability, writing style, conceptual factors, organizational factors, learning aids.

I enjoyed reading about the rule of thumb to determine readability. I will definite use this! I also liked how the authors touched on the Lexile framework as an adaptation of readability measures. This approach matches the reader with an appropriate text. This is wonderful because not all readers read on the same level. This works well with independent reading. Again, be caution about readability formulas.

I love love love the cloze procedure. I use it all the time! :) It is often written in my student's IEP because I believe it is so effective in so many ways. I also use interactive reading. -"and they must believe that their new learning has relevance to their lives" <<< :) great stuff. page 162.  Because I thoroughly enjoy cooperative learning, some strategies teachers could use are: the jigsaw (hey! we did that!) and the three-step interview.