Daniel's and Zemelman Chapters 1 & 2

Reading chapter 1 of "Subjects Matter" brought back a lot of memories of high-school classes when the fictional "Mr. C" felt as though he was "pulling teeth"when teaching directly from the textbook.  Students really don't retain information they read in textbooks because of a variety of reasons.  For one thing, students can rarely apply the information in the textbooks to their own lives and experiences.  This makes it difficult for students to be able to apply the information in different ways and different perspectives, which can inhibit comprehension.  Textbook reading in this sense is more likened to memorization of the text rather than comprehension.  It is no wonder, then, that students test poorly on content found only in their assigned textbook.  Another problem with the use of textbooks in schools is that the content in the texts oftentimes do not correspond with students' other courses and texts.  Once the bell rings, biology class is over and forgotten about and a new subject starts.
In light of the obvious problems associated with the ways that textbooks are used now,  the author makes a few suggestions as to how to better engage students with course readings.  Some examples include giving students a little freedom by allowing them to choose a book to read.  Another is to assign books that are actually read by adults today and are relevant with the student's lives and or current events.  One more strategy to enhance student engagement and comprehension of course material is to coordinate course readings and units with other disciplines.  For example, the "Fast Food" project cited in the text used a course book relevant to current events and students' lives (Fast Food Nation), allowed students some personal freedom (by supplementing course readings with findings on the PETA website, science magazines, etc.), and took an interdisciplinary approach (with the students learning about diseases and nutrition in science class, and critical reading and writing in English). My high school in Worcester, MA, had a similar approach one year when we had to build model bridges for our engineering class by using different formulas about angles and tension in math, learning about different building materials and their composition in science, learning about the history of different bridge construction projects in history, and writing a formal report in English.  It really allowed students to make broader connections with subjects and texts by seeing where subjects overlap and how they are relevant to one another.
The problem exists in curriculum, where many times teachers are limited to what they can teach and what texts to use.  The author suggests holistic approaches as mentioned above to be supplementary to the classic textbook style teaching. Additionally, try to connect textbook readings to things students may find more interesting.
Chapter two outlined the cognitive elements to reading and decoding text using examples.  To help students understand a text, a teacher must first recognize that text is not a message, but rather building blocks that need to be decoded and built upon a student's prior knowledge.  A student must have a schema on which to build new knowledge found in texts, otherwise they will not understand what they are reading.  One way to help students is to have pre-reading activities that include defining key terms and building up a little bit of background information before having students read a text. Additionally, by helping students develop some reading skills of their own, such as visualizing, hypothesizing, and evaluating text, students will be able to better digest and comprehend the information within a text.