The chapter that discussed why textbooks are not enough reminded me of our discussion in last week's class. In my college math classes, I often used my textbook as a resource, but I also looked online and other books to help me. More often than not, the other resources helped me more than the textbook. Textbooks are really not written for students, and I would like to provide other sources for my class that show different perspectives of math. Like Lisa mentioned last week in class, teachers often create better resources for their students than the textbooks.
The next chapter shows the importance of giving students a wide variety of readings. I really enjoyed reading about the different lengths, difficulties, and genres to which students should be exposed. I know from previous experience that it helps to break up challenging readings with easier passages that still gives the chance to learn important material. Building a classroom library can be intimidating at first, but I feel like it just takes time to build a library with articles and books that are relevant to students' lives.
I really liked how the book listed several resources listed by subject and difficulty that can be used to form a useful library for all students. I want to start looking at McKay's for some cheap books that can relate math to other subjects or to real-life topics. Hopefully having a library like this will help students see math as more of a tool that can help solve problems instead of a subject to be feared.
The way in which you presented this summary of the chapters has made it much easier for me to connect them. Like you, I used many other resources on top of the textbook and, oftentimes, they were much more helpful. I was able to (also like you) use video explanations to supplement the book, as it was much easier to listen to a real teacher than read it myself. The connection in this is that teachers need to provide the different resources for different learners. Different resources should not only be used for enrichment, but for a different perspective also.
ReplyDeleteAnd to your last paragraph, I only hope that we are able to do so. THere is no reason to fear math and we need to ensure students don't fear it.
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