A return to maths text books!

[rollonthesummer]

bbc

My last head burnt all the maths text books a few years back (I'm in primary) as they weren't Ofsted-friendly!!

I used to love text books when I was at school...!

I used to like textbooks as a child too, especially the Maths ones. I think mainly because working through it made me feel like I was achieving something, rather than random worksheets just being plucked out of the air...continuity was the key!

Much less photocopying needed as well!

If we can just get the government to stop changing what's on the curriculum and what's the best way to teach it every ten minutes, then the textbooks won't have to be replaced with an updated version yearly --at great financial gain to companies like Pearson and OUP!!

Even with changes, the core/bulk of textbooks won't change, so remain usable for many years. Just use worksheets for the few bits not in the text book and ignore the bits that are no longer needed.

Yes, perfect world would mean new text books specifically tailored to the current curriculum, but in the real world, there are fairly easy workarounds.

I wish they would bring out a decent set of SPaG textbooks with graded practise and loads of examples.

This year has been a nightmare finding enough resources.

Maybe I will write them

'SPag-a-Day' anyone??

The textbooks could be online and then children (and teachers) don't hurt their backs carrying them around, there's no excuses for "forgetting" to bring them to school or take them home, and changes or updates can be made instantly without the cost, time and hassle of re-printing.

(I know many textbooks do already exist in online versions).

We still have textbooks. I've always thought that they are more interesting than the old black and white worksheets. But we've only ever used them as one more resource to use alongside games, teacher-led activities, investigations and more.

At our school we have to have some form of textbooks as they're used for the cover work if a teacher is sick.

My school uses this but we don't write in the textbook - use them but write in their jotter

The online textbooks I've seen are awful. They're just online versions of the paper books so are in portrait whereas most computers are landscape screens. You have to faff about re-sizing and then you can't see a whole page on a screen, so you're moving up and down the page. Even worse, they don't allow printing out, so you're absolutely stuffed. Very, very hard to use.

In theory, a proper online text book would be ideal, but it needs to be made sideways to fit a modern landscape screen better and you do need a print facility .

I'm sure there will eventually be decent online versions, maybe specially written apps, etc., but a simple and lazy transfer of a book to a screen just doesn't work.

Screen shot and print that.

Also you can use a PDF app to write on PDF on line

I don't see the point in a black text book with work sheets photocopied stuck in - complete waste of paper