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Selecting
Texts for the Adult ESL Classroom: Part 4 Looking at Support (page
2 of 2)
Oliva Fernandez, Marketing
Director, Adult and Higher
Education
Professional development
opportunities are always at a premium for teachers
and staff in terms of time, availability, and cost. When
a publisher can provide initial and follow-up training
that focuses on the specific materials that teachers
are using in their classes, it doubles the relevance
and usefulness of the time spent. Teachers have an
opportunity to speak from concrete questions and
examples that have emerged as they have used the
text in their classes, and the trainers can then direct
their training to them.
Also, with continued follow
up from the publisher, new teachers have the same
opportunity to create a solid foundation with the text
as their more-experienced colleagues did, giving them
a grounding that may help them feel successful and
comfortable in the classroom sooner and perhaps
improve their retention.
How
well does the teacher's edition support
instruction?
Teachers will sometimes say that they never find any
use for the teacher’s edition. This can be a valid point,
especially if teachers find no more than hackneyed,
obvious, or vague directions for activity delivery, such
as "Ask the learners to brainstorm ideas about the
picture." But a thorough, well-developed teacher’s
edition can provide enormous support to both new
and experienced teachers in a variety of ways: lesson
pacing and flow, recycling and spiraling of material, and
dealing with the multilevel classroom. At the same
time that you are reviewing textbooks, it is important to
devote some time to looking for the following in a good
teacher's edition:
- A clear and articulate
introduction that establishes
the guiding philosophies and main strengths of the
textbook
- Step-by-step lesson plans
- Strategies for the multilevel
classroom
- Assessment tools and ideas for
ongoing teacher
assessment of the learners and learner self-assessment
- Additional worksheets and
reproducibles
- Strategies for addressing
learner persistence
- Expansion activities that
assist the teacher in helping
learners take their learning out of the classroom and
into the real world
Bringing it all together
Textbook selection should be a positive experience,
not a punishment. If you take the time necessary to
clarify goals; review, collect, and record data on books;
and have discussions, selecting a textbook can become
a learning and reflecting opportunity that can benefit
everyone.
We hope these articles have offered some
suggestions and tools to make the process clear, consistent, and
accessible, and to provide opportunities
for people to feel included in the process. With this
kind of purposeful, open effort, the result can be
a multidimensional investment in instruction that
produces benefits beyond simply a new book.
< < Previous
Previous articles on this topic:
Part 1: Overview
Part
2: Checklist of Textbook Selection
Part
3: Questions to Consider
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