Textbooks in MY classroom

Math textbooks are very difficult for students to read because they have the highest content load per sentence, and there are not that many sentences in a math textbook. My teachers in middle and high school did not really use the textbook very often except for maybe some homework problems or when we had a substitute teacher. Being an aspiring math teacher I do not plan on using a textbook often. I would like for my classroom to have a flipped classroom design because when they are coming to class already hearing the lesson and seeing some examples without having to worry about writing everything down; we have more class time for hands-on activities with the topic, more time for questions/discussions, and more one on one time with students. Textbooks and standardized testing do not always correspond. Standardized testing causes a huge amount of stress for teachers and their students because those tests are going to tell them if they pass or fail and am I a good teacher or not. Learning what is really going to be on the standardized test our students will be taking is a good place to start. The whole test will not be students recalling information and facts they have learned over the year. The majority of the test will be application, so us as teachers need to “focus on making sure our kids can read like a scientist, mathematician, historian, or writer” (p. 181). Our students need to be able to read a map like a historian, solve a word problem like a mathematician, read a lab report and draw conclusions like a scientist, and construct a complete sentence like a writer.  

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