Strategy 4- Math, middle grades

Title your post: Strategy 4- Math, middle grades

Your Name: Mandy Jennings 

Name of Strategy: “Reading” the textbook 

Source (Where did this come from?): Math-Ese Workshop: Reading Strategies Applied to Mathematics 

Link to the Strategy: http://www.ltl.appstate.edu/carol/unit3/Reading%20Strategies%20Applied%20to%20Math%20Presentation.pdf

Give a thorough description of the strategy and how it will be implemented. This should be a summary of the strategy according to the original source: This is a strategy that I never really thought about before because I did not think of this “idea” as being a problem. Students need to be able to read their textbooks. They need to understand how important ideas are presented. Are important terms italicized, bold faced, and underlined or are they just presented along with the text with no special emphasis placed on them? Is the text coherent and does it flow in a natural sequence? Does it rely heavily on pre-requisite knowledge or does it help scaffold knowledge? Students need to be able to understand how to read their textbook if they are expected to use it to gain knowledge. This particular “strategy” suggests going through the textbook at the beginning of the year with the students so that they are prepared to deal with it. They can be taught how to pull important terms out of the text and how to classify which ideas are more important than others based on their placement in the text. Once the student understands how to read the text, other strategies can be implemented, such as pre-reading, during-reading, and after-reading strategies.

Explain what part of the standard course of study is addressed by this activity. As with many general strategies, this strategy is not aimed at any one particular part of the standard course of study- it is aimed at all of it. Many teachers/schools today use textbooks that have been specifically designed to follow the standard course of study. It is assumed that students will gain a great deal of knowledge from the text that is presented to them and that the textbooks they are using will help them grow in their knowledge as expected. However, if the student does not understand how the textbook is presenting an idea, will they really gain any knowledge from it?

Explain why you think this strategy will work. How does the strategy help your students learn? This strategy will work because it will prepare the student to deal with the knowledge that is being presented to them. As a student, teacher candidate, and as an observer, we have all seen some textbooks that we thought were better than others. While we may have commented on that fact, we would not necessarily have thought about how it would affect the students. However, what if you were on the textbook selection committee for your grade level? How would you determine which textbook is better than others? How would you deal with a textbook that another person chose that you may not think was the best choice? In essence, if you want to use the textbook, you are going to have to teach the students how to use it effectively. Very rarely have I seen a class in which the teacher never used the textbook. I think this strategy is not only a good idea, but is necessary. I have never thought about the textbook being a possible hindrance to learning, but I can understand how it would be to a student who did not understand it. While this may not be a typical strategy that you would think of, I think it is a very important one that should not be overlooked.