Good evening! Hope everyone had an awesome day in the heat. It was extremely hot and humid outside. Overall I love this time of year because I can relax and enjoy freedom of my time from work. Im also anxious to travel. This evening I would like to focus on why textbooks are or not important in the learning process of our students.
Being a teacher in today's public school system, we are accustomed to use paper back text books to highlight specific information that we are teaching. Most teachers depend on texts books to help form the curriculum of the specified content area. However, now days, students are technology savvy and their interest in using technology is greater than their desire to read a boring text book. I believe that teachers should still use the text book as a reference source, while implementing the affective domain approach by using the media projector, supporting educational websites to help enforce the content being taught. This in itself will engage students enough to listen, absorb, and part take in the learning process. It has been proven that students are apt to respond to something that they are familiar with or their prior knowledge. In my opinion, affective domain is always essential to the learning process of the students.
The next topic I would like to discuss is the readability formula. The readability formula determines the readability of materials. It allows teachers to search material and identifying reading materials at a level that students will be able to comprehend. I believe that teachers should make sure that the selected reading material includes something that will influence the reading desired of the student. Some students, even after receiving a text book that they can understand still may not have a desire to want to read. The should contain something of their interest to engage them into the text and eventually elevate them to more complex readings on an advanced level.
The next topic that I would like to discuss is writing across the content area. How can teachers include writing in content their specific content area? I believe that because technology is so advanced and our students are gravitating to it, students are loosing the need and desire to write. In my opinion, writing is very essential to learning because it helps with reading comprehension skills. Students must learn how to write and be grammatically correct in any content area. I feel teachers in their specified content areas can allow students to keep a journal of things that they learn and things that they don't necessarily understand about the information in the content area.
In conclusion, I feel that the ability to write is kind of going out of style because of technology enabling students to do anything just at the touch of a button. As teachers, what are some ways that we can strengthen the writing skills of students and motivate them that writing is important?
Spencer, I also feel that writing is very important for many reasons. Although kids are comfortable with technology and usually prefer it in most cases, it is our job as teachers to show them that writing can be enjoyable as well. I loved writing as a child, especially creative writing and writing about personal experiences. It was a way to express myself and share with my peers. I remember my 3rd grade teacher really making our writing meaningful by binding our books. She recruited parents to sew pages and covers with cardboard and contact paper. We were then able to write our final draft in them which allowed us to practice writing and penmanship. We were then able to keep our book on the shelf in the classroom and peers were able to check them out like a library book. This is one of my most memorable moments in elementary school and definitely turned me on to writing.
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