Struggling with textbooks

[swainsonshawk]

My son (12, 6th grade) has never read a text book. I thought it was time, so I got Science Explorer and Human Odyssey for this year to base his history and science study around. He is seriously rebelling against the textbooks and I am left wondering what to do!

 

His father says that reading a textbook is a skill that he just needs to buckle down and learn. I'm not sure that he needs to learn it this year? He reads pretty much on grade level, but I think it's the reading that is challenging him. He reads too fast (he's used to fiction) and he doesn't take the time to understand the details of what he read. He says the info comes at him too fast, it's too dense and he doesn't understand. Well, dense info is the definition of a textbook, right?

 

What to do?

[regentrude]

He needs to understand that you can't read a textbook as you would read a fiction book. Assign him shorter sections first (not whole chapters), have him sit down with pencil and paper, and make him take notes. This will slow down his reading, and writing key information helps understand and retain.

I do not make my kids outline, I just have them take notes in some structured format - non-complete sentences, bullets, with underlining or headings.

[Stacy in NJ]

Learning from a textbook is an aquired skill that needs to be guided. Assign only a few pages per day to read, have him outline or take notes from that section, and then you need to engage with the materials with him.

 

This means you need to hold him accountable for the content he's just read. To be able to do this you need to have read it yourself, or you need to have a teacher's guide that provides relevant questions and answers.

 

If you can't find the time to read it yourself, consider reading it together aloud and discussing the material as you go.

[Corraleno]

His father says that reading a textbook is a skill that he just needs to buckle down and learn. I'm not sure that he needs to learn it this year?

If you're planning to homeschool high school, then you have another 6 years before he really needs to be proficient at using a textbook — there's no reason that has to happen in 6th grade!

 

I went through exactly the same thing last year with DS12 (then 11). I switched to textbooks for science and history, and it was a mess — he was miserable, he started hating science & history (previously his favorite subjects), and he retained nothing. Now we're back to living books, lots of experiments and field trips, documentaries, and Teaching Co lectures. Yes, I'll teach him to use a textbook before he starts college courses, but he really doesn't need to do that in middle school.

 

I think using textbooks is a skill in itself and when you try to make a child learn new content in a totally new format, you're asking them to learn two difficult things simultaneously — kind of like asking a student who hasn't studied physics before and has only a rudimentary knowledge of Spanish to use a Spanish physics text. My plan with DS is to use textbooks as supplements in areas where he has both great interest and a reasonable amount of background knowledge (which for him would be paleontology). He can use the texts as supplements, read and take notes on short sections where he already knows much of the information, so that learning the skill of using a textbook is separate from learning content.

 

Also, this is just a personal pet peeve, but I really hate most middle and high school textbooks. The information is so pre-processed, pre-digested, pre-highlighted, etc., that I really don't think learning to use high school textbooks prepares kids very well for college textbooks anyway! I know college professors who complain that the format of HS texts leads kids to expect that college texts will also have all those vocabulary lists and pre-highlighted "key points" and "word banks" for the review questions, and all the other "standards-based" hand-holding that they're used to in HS texts. So I wouldn't put too much emphasis on the importance of learning to use a HS textbook, unless your kids will attend PS for high school. As long as they know how to use a college text by the time they're ready for college courses, they'll be fine.

 

Jackie

[PeterPan]

Well just to contradict Jackie a bit, hehe, I spent several hours this past week chatting with a PhD'ed in education friend of mine who was explaining to me WHY middle school textbooks are written the way they are. Indeed they're meant to be outlined, which I didn't know. And they're written with the hints for the outline made obvious precisely because the student is LEARNING. They expect the student to advance in skill, so they start with the 7th gr textbooks being easy to outline and make them progressively harder. The ps's I went to didn't even have textbooks for some subjects (many actually) and certainly never bothered to have us outline. I don't know Jackie's friend or their students. My friend also works at a university and says the hs'ed students who do the best are the ones who learned how to outline textbooks and how to study independently using them.

 

So based on the advice of my friend, I have to agree with the op's husband. I was pretty challenged and plan to make some changes myself. I think it's what WTM was telling us to do and I didn't see why. Now I see where it's going. There's no contradiction. A textbook just makes it easier, especially when the textbook author INTENDED for you to learn outlining using it.

 

BTW, when I asked her what in the world I do with my uber-hands-on learner who needs help to visualize the material, she said this is the age to help them learn their coping techniques. If she needs to do it on the computer and add in google images or make tree diagrams or whatever, so be it. The point is not just the outline. The point is learning how to beat the beast. And I *think* I ought to be able to help us find a way to merge these two needs, her hands-on and the need to learn book skills. I don't think it has to be one or the other. But I'm also planning to put an hour a day for it into our 2nd semester schedule. It's not something I expect to happen automatically, overnight, or independently.

[Corraleno]

Well just to contradict Jackie a bit, hehe, I spent several hours this past week chatting with a PhD'ed in education friend of mine who was explaining to me WHY middle school textbooks are written the way they are. Indeed they're meant to be outlined, which I didn't know. And they're written with the hints for the outline made obvious precisely because the student is LEARNING. They expect the student to advance in skill, so they start with the 7th gr textbooks being easy to outline and make them progressively harder. The ps's I went to didn't even have textbooks for some subjects (many actually) and certainly never bothered to have us outline. I don't know Jackie's friend or their students. My friend also works at a university and says the hs'ed students who do the best are the ones who learned how to outline textbooks and how to study independently using them.

The fact that these textbooks are basically "pre-outlined" for the student was sort of my point. Having kids copy the pre-highlighted "key points" and vocabulary words, etc., doesn't (IMO) teach kids to outline — it teaches them to copy the sentences that are pre-highlighted or have a little key-shaped icon next to them. Most HS textbooks are the same way; all the important information is already flagged, so kids often don't learn how to analyze the text and figure out what the key points are themselves. Educators want to make sure kids know exactly what "key concepts" are going to be on the test; they don't want to risk having kids figure it out themselves and miss the important points, and therefore bring their standardized test scores down.

 

Then these kids get to college and have no clue how to outline or study from a textbook that doesn't have vocabulary lists and pre-highlights and little key symbols. I have no doubt that homeschooled kids who know how to outline a college textbook (or at least take notes and study from it, whether they outline or mind-map or whatever) are more successful in college — I'm sure that's equally true of private and public schooled students. But I don't think that having used public school textbooks is necessarily the only way, or even the best way, for kids to learn how to outline college books.

 

I especially don't think a parent needs to foist textbooks designed for public schools onto a homeschooled 6th grader in order to effectively prepare them for using college textbooks many years in the future. A child can learn to outline using lots of different types of books, and (IMHO) that may actually serve them better in the long run because they'll learn to find the key points themselves, rather than having it all pre-selected for them. Plus I think using textbooks at a young age runs the risk of sucking all the joy and interest out of subjects like science and history that are better taught (again, IMO) using "living" resources.

 

Jackie

[Hunter]

text mapping

[thowell]

text mapping

 

This is really interesting. We will be using a few textbooks next year for 6th grade and this just may take the boredom out of it. Thanks for the link!

[Capt_Uhura]

[quote name=Corraleno;2303415}

 

I especially don't think a parent needs to foist textbooks designed for public schools onto a homeschooled 6th grader in order to effectively prepare them for using college textbooks many years in the future. A child can learn to outline using lots of different types of books' date=' and (IMHO) that may actually serve them better in the long run because they'll learn to find the key points themselves, rather than having it all pre-selected for them. Plus I think using textbooks at a young age runs the risk of sucking all the joy and interest out of subjects like science and history that are better taught (again, IMO) using "living" resources.

 

Jackie[/quote]

 

I've been thinking about this lately. We are using CPO Life Science Middle School and I have mixed feelings about it. I wanted something pick up and go this year so we could focus on history and writing. Also, the original plan was for DS to go back to school for Middle School (next year) so I wanted to make sure he could learn from a textbook. We will finish it b/c I want to give it a good try....I like the experiments in it. BUt we'll be incorporating BFSU vol.2 and eagerly awaiting Vol. 3 to keep the living aspect I enjoy. I've also ordered the books recommended in CPO Life Science as well to spice things up. So far we're enjoying the experiments. We do outlining per SWB in history as well as WWE4 which seems to be increasing non-fiction passages, so he's getting that skill, learning how to get the main point and leave the details. Perhaps we'll try outlining from one of the living books recommended in CPO.

[PeterPan]

Jackie-If I could say, it sounds like the ps textbooks you were looking at are a bit more predigested than the BJU Life Science I'm considering. I also read where you got burnt last year doing too many textbooks. I think it's helpful to have a standard, a frame of reference so the dc can self-check and know whether he got the salient points or not. That check can be parent interaction, a lecture they listen to afterward, a worksheet or test, a variety of things. I don't think it's helpful to hand a child a text and act like what they take from it is relative or measured by their own interest (not what you're doing), since that wouldn't serve them well in the long run. BJU is going to be a bit different from ps textbooks, because you have one publisher doing all the subjects for the student, meaning they can slowly raise the expectation, remove the helps.

 

Hunter, that textmapping site was quite interesting, thanks! I don't think we (as in my dd and I) particularly need to copy and put the actual TEXT onto a scroll like that, because the new BJU texts are meant to be marked in. However as a method of graphically organizing notes and outlines of the text it's very interesting!! I had been trying to think of ways to bridge the graphic organizers and lapbooks we're doing now for comprehension (very successful, she reads, discusses, then creates graphic organizers) to outlining where everything is just a blank set of lines on paper. If she had an accordion fold for each chapter, much like a timeline, and typed up her outlines, she could then insert them as well as pictures and all kinds of things to really make it pop! And she could restructure content that is spread over several pages onto one page that would allow her to see the structure and jist. In that sense I think their criticism is accurate, that it's easy to get into a textbook and swim in details without seeing the whole. So a more visual method of outlining the book might be just the thing, thanks! :)

[Capt_Uhura]

I'm still mulling over this topic...trying to get definitions in my head of what is a textbook. I know SWB said living books are those written by one author whom you can identify. Textbooks are generally written by textbook companies, have multiple authors, some or all of whom are not specialists in the field they are writing about. Prentice Hall comes to mind here. The text is terse, digested, cryptic. I know Prentice Hall has lots of stuff all over the page. CPO Life Science is cleaner in that regard but does have the vocabulary boxes and provides a word bank for fill in the blank exercises. :glare: I see even the high school CPO has the vocabulary banks and even has word banks for the fill in the blank at the high school level. :glare: I wish I had kept some of my early college textbooks. All I have is science texts from graduate school or late college.

[PeterPan]

Well that's stupid too. The BJU textbooks usually have a main author and reflect the writing style of that author. (Wow, that was too opinionated! I meant the def of living books is tricky. Not that Capt. U is stupid, lol.)

 

It never ceases to amaze me how the WTM tries to recreate, using ecclectic sources, what some curricula already do for us. That's no help if you need secular, but I just don't think using scattered books is the ONLY way to get there. And if you talk with SWB, she flexes the source she uses to work on the skill depending on the child.

Edited January 2, 2011 by OhElizabeth

[gingersmom]

Have you looked at Oak Meadow?

 

There is not any sidebars and other distracting things on the page.

 

Its a textbook but doesn't read like a textbook.

 

They have sample pages on their website.

[Capt_Uhura]

Well that's stupid too. The BJU textbooks usually have a main author and reflect the writing style of that author. (Wow, that was too opinionated! I meant the def of living books is tricky. Not that Capt. U is stupid, lol.)

 

It never ceases to amaze me how the WTM tries to recreate, using ecclectic sources, what some curricula already do for us. That's no help if you need secular, but I just don't think using scattered books is the ONLY way to get there. And if you talk with SWB, she flexes the source she uses to work on the skill depending on the child.

 

:lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:

 

Yes, I'm just trying to wrap my head around textbook. I think some "textbooks" are less like traditional public school text books than others. So it can be unfair to make broad generalizations about them.

 

Something like BFSUI and II is definitely not a textbook. I'm looking at CPO Life Science and I guess the main thing is that it doesn't read like a narrative like Exploring the Way Life Works or DAvid Macaulay's The Way We Work. WOW I forgot all about The Way We Work. THat looks fantastic!

 

I guess see textbooks as a road map, possible topics to cover, then I fill in w/ interesting living books.

Edited January 2, 2011 by Capt_Uhura

[saja1029]

Have you looked at Oak Meadow?

 

There is not any sidebars and other distracting things on the page.

 

Its a textbook but doesn't read like a textbook.

 

They have sample pages on their website.

 

:iagree:We use Oak Meadow for 6th grade. Their books are more like living books.