Moving Away from Textbooks

This year, BCSC will be moving away from adopting the new social studies textbooks in Indiana. Several reasons exist for this: 1. teaching students in a collaborative and digital age, 2. rising costs and limited revenues, and 3. uninspiring textbooks.

What are other schools doing to support their teachers in this transition? How are educators getting the support they need to teach without a textbook? What are schools using successfully as resources?

Tags: adoption, resources, social, studies, textbook

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Permalink Reply by Nina Kuhn on July 23, 2011 at 2:52pm

I agree with removing textbooks from the classroom. Especially those that are basically out of date by the time they are printed, such as Social Studies textbooks. As a math teacher I have never used a textbook with my students. I think that textbooks are not very engaging for students and thus students lack interest and motivation to complete work within a textbook setting. I use an internet program called Penda Learnng which has yielded great results with my math students. In my case it supported my teaching and helped to provide differentiated practice. The result... 100% of my students made at least 1 years growth (as measured by our state test); the average growth with my stduents was 3.4 years. Try penda and see if it helps your students at www.pendalearning.com