D&Z Ch. 3 and 4

While I appreciate the writing in D&Z, I have to admit chapters 3 and 4 were a little "much" for me.  I feel like it could have been consolidated into one chapter.  I got the point rather quickly that textbooks are not enough to be the sole basis of class instruction and the only supplemental material in the classroom.  Maybe it is because this is nothing to me, a frustration I have always had a student, so the emphasis placed on numerous pages became boring to me.  With that being said, I enjoyed the portion where they talk about how to balance reading from a text with other sources....

When I used other sources such as primary and secondary sources, documentaries and novels in high school I became more interested in history.  We had always used a text book (some years more than others) but the years when the book was a source of terms to know and and overview were the years I learned the most.  The supplemental sources allowed me to bring the text to life, to make it "real" and to make it "matter."  Reading about the March on Washington in a text book is much more dull then watching footage of Martin Luther King Jr.'s  "I Have a Dream" speech. Allowing students to actually witness what they are learning through media or other outlets of text brings a sense of reality that a text book cannot.  Students may become more engaged or motivated when they get this sense of reality.  When teaching history there is also the opportunity for students to relate content to current events and link the events of the past to the present.

I particularly appreciated the content areas D&Z provided.  I agree that there are key concepts that should be linked to teaching all year.  This made me think about our class discussions of backward design when trying to design desired results.  The "Big Ideas" that we want students to learn may not come out of one single unit.  I can definitely see myself placing little emphasis on textbooks in my classroom.  Last semester I had a geography class where no textbook was required.  The first day of class Professor Dixon placed 4 huge textbooks on his desk and I was immediately frightened I was going to need them all! He had a little speech on how each book had something better than the other and how each book was over 100 dollars and about 20 pounds. Instead, he showed a website he created with materials, links and articles that would take place of a textbook.  At a high school level this may be a little more difficult to align with curriculum but it could be used as a supplement in addition to the text.  Geography is an easier content area to do this with as well because students could chose any article about a certain region to read and review.  I learned so much more from these articles than I would have from a textbook.  There were length requirements and other specifications, but reading something from a newspaper or watching something from the BBC was much more interesting and enjoyable than scanning a textbook.

Overall I think textbooks are not entirely awful if they are used appropriately and sparingly.  Having a classroom set rather than one for every student is a much more efficient idea budget wise.  Students can use the text during group work, copy an pertinent info or terms to know and then use the other materials for more direct instruction and cooperative learning.



Here is the website I used for my geography class! Super informative, user friendly and FREE!
Geography Education