Chapter 6

Chapter Six

Why Textbooks Cannot Stand Alone

Textbooks cannot be the only type of material that students read in their class.  Students should look at all different types of material such as: primary and secondary sources.  I agree with the chapter that textbooks should be used as a guide for curriculum instead of it being the curriculum.  So many schools have out dated textbooks that teachers cannot depend on them as their only teaching material.

Using Multiple Resources in Addition to Textbooks

Read- Alongs and Read-Alouds would be great to use when reading historical fiction, sections of the textbook, primary, and and secondary sources.  Sometimes historical texts are to read and I want my students to not feel overwhelmed by the material.  This way the students will have heard how to pronounce words when it is read aloud, so when they go to read the material again they will understand it better. 

When choosing to use electronic materials in class it is very important that teachers make sure that all students have easy access to the materials.  As a future teacher, I do not want some of my students to be unable to access materials that are important to class.

Critical Literacy Applications for Multimodal Texts

Interactive reading is a great way to engage high school students who have no interest in learning.  I remember when I was in high school that it was the cool thing for students to now pay attention or doing well in school.  I want to engage my students and show them that learning is important and it can be fun at the same time. I would like to do this with all types of reading materials and different ways of reading them.

Soares and Wood’s suggestions of what to question to use when examining a text critically would be great as a teacher to use when deciding to use a text in the classroom.  These would also be great to teach students so when they are researching or choosing reading material they would be able to examine reading materials critically on their own.