While reading “How to Use a Textbook”, I found a really
interesting strategy for making textbooks more effective that clicked with me. The
activity titled, “Guide-o-Rama Study Guides” creates an awesome way to support student’s
textbook readings. This specific textbook activity allows students to have a
reading guide as they move through their chapters. When I was going through school,
my science teachers would have us read the textbook and make outlines of every
chapter. Outlining never helped me to better understand the text. I honestly
was just writing down every vocabulary word. Guide-o-Rama’s are a great way to
move past outlining and give students a guide for each chapter. “With this kind
of reading guide, we can have a conversation with kids while they read, be a
little bug in their ear, coaching, modeling, and mentoring them right at the
moment of need” (Daniels and Zemelman, 190). This is a great way to support
students as they read through their dense textbooks especially science
textbooks. Guide-o-Rama’s would have definitely helped me when reading through
my biology textbooks in ninth grade, because I would know which parts to pay
close attention to and which parts to skim over. Guide-o-Rama’s is also kind of
like a think aloud on paper. Guide-o-Rama’s will allow students to be able to
move through their textbooks with ease, and be able to know what their teacher
thinks are the take away points for the chapters.
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I also liked the idea of using a Guide-O-Rama in my future middle grades classroom, especially with science content. I can remember outlining chapters in my physics class in high school and it was not helpful for me at all. Making the outlines were too time consuming because like you, I wasn't sure what was important or not, so I included pretty much everything in fear that I would miss something. Although I see the concept of outlining helpful, it didn't play out well. This is why I love Guide-O-Ramas! They provide what is important for students to pay attention to instead of having them guess what's important, and will make understanding the concepts easier. (115)
ReplyDeleteHey Taylor! I went through the same thing with outlining where I would write out all the bolded words and vocabulary terms. I never thought it was an effective way of learning for me and I didn’t understand what I really needed to know from the chapter. The Guide-o-Rama is a cool way for students to navigate through the textbook and pick up on the important ideas as intended by the teacher. This could be used not only for the textbook, but also for science magazines and even interactive websites. I wish some of my teachers would have used this strategy especially in science.
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