Reading Textbooks

Reading a textbook is different from reading a novel. Reading a story is pretty easy for most people. We live stories and we have been told stories and read stories since we were very young. Stories have a beginning, middle and end; they have a plot, setting and characters; and they usually have some kind of problem/solution.

Textbooks have an underlying structure also but it is different from the novel. Textbooks are arranged in a hierarchy of big ideas. The biggest idea is the chapter or unit heading. The big ideas that are under that are usually highlighted in a separate but consistent color. When you see headings in the same font and /or color, it means that the topic or the idea of that heading is as important as the other ideas with the same heading color and font. That way you know which are the related ideas that go under the larger idea of the chapter heading.

The one thing you need to keep in mind here is that all learning is based on prior learning. In other words, you can't learn something new if you can't tack it on to something you already knew.

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