Reading Textbooks Every Semester

[Aster]

I follow this formula with required lecture-class textbooks.
New Book:
1. Comprehensive read-through with highlighting and annotating.
2. Build PowerPoint instructional materials from that
3. Use notes section of PowerPoint to identify key areas in textbook
4. Review all of the PowerPoint materials every semester
5. Only refer back to physical textbook when students have specific questions from it

Newer Edition of Existing Book:
1. Place older (marked up) textbook side-by-side with newer edition
2. Compare the marked up/highlighted (important) stuff from the old book
3. Mark up the newer edition textbook where needed
4. Adjust PowerPoint materials where needed
5. Only refer back to physical textbook when students have specific questions from it

So basically, I turn PowerPoint into the digital equivalent of "professor's yellowed notes", where I've already pulled everything I need out of the textbook.

[downer]

It depends on the book and the course. Generally I like textbooks that also include important recent articles in them, and then I mostly read them carefully. But sometimes I choose a book because it has a lot of good features, and the text explanations of the main ideas look fine. Then I browse and check the important bits.

Generally I do what is necessary for adequate-to-good teaching, and not much more, except when I feel like it. But I also aim to teach courses and students I feel enthusiastic about, and sometimes I have that.

[HigherEd7]

Well it looks like I have been wasting time! Thanks for the responses everyone :( some of these books are so boring I have a hard time trying to stay focused. I can imagine how my students feel. I need to get better in this area...

[Aster]

some of these books are so boring I have a hard time trying to stay focused. I can imagine how my students feel. I need to get better in this area...

Boring?? Did I just read that a professional academic stated that a textbook within his/her academic discipline is boring?

The Academy just died a little bit. This is The End.

[Wahoo Redux]

some of these books are so boring I have a hard time trying to stay focused. I can imagine how my students feel. I need to get better in this area...

Boring?? Did I just read that a professional academic stated that a textbook within his/her academic discipline is boring?

The Academy just died a little bit. This is The End.

Understand that for those of us who eschew the textbook it is often because the portrayal of the knowledge and discipline we love so dearly is indeed rendered as boring.

I much love my subject matter.

I much hate the boring manner in which many textbooks relate it.

[kiana]

some of these books are so boring I have a hard time trying to stay focused. I can imagine how my students feel. I need to get better in this area...

Boring?? Did I just read that a professional academic stated that a textbook within his/her academic discipline is boring?

The Academy just died a little bit. This is The End.

Seriously? I mean reading through a college algebra textbook that I'd already read once would be pretty boring and I even like reading algebra texts.

[jerseyjay]

It depends. Is this a class I have taught before? That I have taught recently? That I taught last semester? Is it an upper-level class? An intro class for freshmen? Is it the same textbook I've used before? Is it a textbook? A bunch of articles? Am I lecturing? Asking student to break into groups and discuss it? Am I assigning the text to talk about the text itself or to talk about the material in the text?

If I am generally familiar with the material (i.e., I have recently taught it), I will go through my notes and probably skim some of the material sometime in the few days leading up to the class (optimally right before class). If it is detailed material, I will spend more time on it.

The more I have taught a class, the less I tend to prep. There is one class I have taught every semester for the past six years. I tend not to reread the textbook each class.

I am a historian. 

[mamselle]

I need to look at the page numbers in the assigned French text anew each term to set up the homework, quiz, and exam dates in that team's new syllabus.

So I go through the book with a 'third eye,' as I do so, just checking to see if it all says and does what I recall it saying and doing, etc.

Then I have to match up the dances, songs, poetry and art works that I put with each unit, and I shuffle those a bit just to keep them fresh...new Brton branle I want to teach, but they need to know the steps from the older one first, so it gets bumped up, etc.

By the time the syllabus is ready, I've seen everything, so...a two-fer.

M.