Jovan D. Miles's Blog – December 2009 Archive (2)

Getting the most from your textbooks

http://jovanmiles.net/2009/12/05/making-the-most-out-of-your-textbooks

I was a bit harsh on textbooks in my last post. In a perfect world all teachers would be creators of the content that they use in their classrooms. This isn’t a perfect world. Modern classroom teachers are often responsible for so many other things these days that writing the content to be used in your class is impossible. Time… Continue

Added by Jovan D. Miles on December 5, 2009 at 5:02am — No Comments

teachers > textbooks

The structure of the typical middle grades math textbook follows this basic outline:

1. Vocabulary review

2. Brief explanation of concept.

3. 2-5 very specific examples of the concept in isolation.

4. 1-2 very specific examples of the concept in a problem solving situation.

5. 20-50 problems that mirror the examples.

The problem with this structure is that if teachers simply "taught the text(test)" students would have almost no… Continue

Added by Jovan D. Miles on December 3, 2009 at 10:00am — No Comments