For secondary, senior secondary, and higher learning, textbooks play a significant role for both teachers and students. Textbooks are the type of study material that are designed systematically, and effectively for all academic subjects like mathematics, English, Hindi, social science, science, and many more. Textbooks are one of the most commonly used teaching resources in the classroom that help students in many ways. Let us discuss its benefits in detail. We will also be discussing a few tips by which teachers can make students make the most of the textbooks and improve their academic performance.
Benefits of Textbooks
- Help teachers provide a proper understanding of the syllabus
For every class or course, we have a fixed set of lessons that need to be covered. This fixed knowledge that is compulsory to cover is known as a curriculum. Textbooks are very helpful in this regard. They are designed and written by expert writers effectively. The lessons have all the information from basics to advanced.
Other than this, the textbooks are updated yearly and have all the up-to-date and well-researched information. The channelized and well-organized lessons help teachers to provide students with a proper academic understanding. It’s the primary duty of every teacher to make sure that students understand the syllabus. Using textbooks, and subject expertise, this can be achieved properly.
- Improve reading skills
To become academically successful, students need to possess and practice the right learning skills. Reading plays a significant role in this regard. Textbooks boost the reading skills of students. Reading in the class as well during self-study time, the textbook lessons make students more attentive, and effective readers. The detailed content pages provide students with a proper understanding and boost their learning skills.
- An effective learning material
Textbooks are one of the most effective types of study material for students. All the lessons are well structured and designed in such a way that students can quickly find all their doubts and questions. All the lessons have a logical and systematic flow, built upon the student’s previously acquired knowledge. The graphs, maps, and diagrams given help students to understand better, as our mind captures the visualized information better and quicker. Other than this, along with textbooks students also get supplementary material like DVDs, sample papers, and more.
How to make the most of the textbooks?
- Make students read in class
Only teachers reading out the textbook material and students simply sitting as mere listeners is not an effective teaching practice. To make out most of the textbooks, ask students to read them out in the classroom. Only giving reading homework may not work, as some students will do it and some will avoid it. Teachers should try to make students read out in class as much as possible. One by one ask them to read one paragraph each and simultaneously give them the explanation too. Using a learning management system, you can keep digital records of the student’s class performance, and reading skills and share constructive feedback accordingly.
- Highlighting the important terms and definitions
The next step that teachers should do is to make students highlight or underline the important terms and definitions. In the textbook lesson, there are many details and information given. Make sure that you ask your students to mark the important ones. For example in a history lesson, the important dates, years, and names of the rulers, civilizations, and more must be marked. Similarly for a biology lesson, ask students to underline the important biological terms, names, biologists, classifications, and more. This will make students more attentive in class. Also, ask your students to learn this highlighted information for scoring well in exams.
- Making notes
Note-making is very important for students. It not only improves the academic understanding of students but also boosts their memorization and comprehension skills. Ask students to prepare class notes by dictating the important terms and answers given in the textbooks. Using school ERP, keep a track of students’ class performance and also their subject notebooks. See whether they are making notes or not, check them, do the necessary corrections and guide students to improve and learn better.
- Doing the given exercises
An ideal textbook not only has written information to understand the lesson but also has a lot of practice exercises. These exercises help students to check how much they have understood and what topics they must re-read and learn. Along with this, practice exercises such as fill-ups, short and long question answers, one-word, numerical, simplifications, and true and false statements improve the theoretical and applicative skills of the students. They get to know the important type of questions that come in the exams and hold a better command over the lessons.
Conclusion
Textbooks are very helpful for giving and receiving a quality education for teachers and students respectively. By reading the above-mentioned information we can make out the benefits of textbooks. We also discussed a few tips like proper reading, note taking, practicing questions, and more by which students can make the most of the textbooks.
