How To Make School Textbooks More Interesting – Best Tips to Make Education Engaging
The experience of school textbooks has mostly been boring for all of us and there is a reason for that. School textbooks are outdated.
We have been following the same style of school textbooks for at least the last 100 years and it is high time to change this.
We need to formulate a completely new style of educating students so that they feel connected with the books and the education.
That is exactly what we are above to do here today because we are going to talk about how you can make school textbooks more interesting and engaging for children.
This can be in the form of physical books or digital books and speaking of digital books, they are quite an innovative medium for making school textbooks interesting.
However, we have to understand that the key issue with school textbooks is not that they are physical or digital or the fact that they have current or outdated information.
The problem is much deeper than that.
Let us look at the problem so that we can also find out the solution to this problem that can affect future generations.
The Problem with Current School Textbooks
Outdated Knowledge
One of the biggest problems with the current education system and especially school textbooks is that due to the burden of standardization and educational bureaucracy in school boards, school textbooks largely have outdated knowledge and information.
This is because it takes a lot of time for new and upcoming information in the form of new advancements in different fields to make it to the school textbook.
Things get worse if you go down the grade of the students because it becomes even more difficult to simplify a concept for someone in grade 1 compared to someone in grade 10.
One of the other reasons for this kind of problem is simply because there is always a scarcity of textbook writers and school textbooks are usually written by higher education writers with much persuasion from publishers.
High Costs
If you remember your school days then you can also remember the fact that school textbooks are very expensive and while it is difficult enough to produce high-quality textbooks, the trade-off for the quality of books is usually cost.
There are multiple factors to blame for this situation and one of the primary factors is simply because the school textbook publishers spend money on the areas that it should not be spending money on.
For example, you do not need a school textbook to be of the highest quality GSM and you do not even need hard bound cover for a school textbook.
But things like this are usually done to showcase the quality of the textbook and make it more attractive to school boards.
Limited Engagement
One of the most important reasons why school textbooks have a problem in the present situation is simply the fact that the content in the textbooks is barely engaging.
If you pick up any average school textbook from a nearby school then you are going to find that the content in the textbook is just not capable of grabbing the attention and interest of any child.
You cannot write a school textbook the same way you write an instruction manual but that is unfortunately what happens.
We must also talk about the point of the books not maintaining a good ratio between text and illustrations.
The simplest way to make a textbook engaging is with a lot of diagrams and illustrations but current textbooks simply have a very bad ratio of illustrations to text.
Speaking of text, you must also understand that there are different ways of presenting text and long paragraphs are not the answer that can generate engagement.
No Personalization
The current education system as well as the current situation of school textbooks have no space for any kind of personalization or any form of custom education.
This is largely due to the fact that high-quality school textbooks are always in crisis and shortage because nobody wants to get into school textbooks.
It is nearly impossible to find any forms of personalized challenges in the text books such as quizzes or puzzles that students can choose from in order to showcase their aptitude for a concept.
One of the other reasons for this is simply because it is complicated to do something like this and especially for curriculums that have very little space for innovation.
If you combine all the factors together then the concept like customisable learning plans are just not a possibility and every student has to read the same thing.
Limited Fun Aspect
School textbooks are written in a format that is not entertaining and while we understand that entertainment should not be the primary concern for education but this is something different.
If you have to teach concepts to children then you would have to adopt a different approach only based on the fact that children cannot sit in lectures and children cannot be made to understand concepts if they are not having fun.
While there are multiple ways to introduce fun into the syllabus but the simplest way to do it is with the help of informal language that children can associate with and relate to.
This is the simplest and the most harmless method of completely transforming a concept into one of the most entertaining moments in class that the children will remember forever.
However, this is simply not present in the current situation.
Tips To Make School Textbooks Fun and Engaging
Element of Surprise
The lessons and concepts that we learn at school stay with us throughout our entire lives and the hard part is getting these concepts into the minds of children.
Children do not like boring lectures and they do not like pages and pages of the same concept without a ‘wow’ factor.
That is why if you want to make school textbooks interesting then you should introduce the element of surprise and randomness into the chapters.
This can be done by introducing different fun and quirky facts. It can even be references to interesting and educational YouTube videos right in the footnotes of the pages.
You can even add QR codes for teachers to scan and play YouTube videos or open up links for blogging pages you have created that you update every day.
Yes, it will take a lot of content but this can be done easily with paperback textbooks and the level of engagement you can expect from this effort is second to none.
Metaphors And Linkages
The best way to explain a concept to children is to link it up with other concepts and this can be linking up geography with history and linking up history with chemistry.
Boundaries are there for our convenience but if we start creating artificial boundaries of concepts in the minds of children then they will simply lose their creative capabilities.
That is why you must link multiple concepts together while keeping the main concept in focus and it will not only help them understand your concept better but it will also make them interested in the other concepts.
You can pair that up with anecdotes of current events and you can also include challenges for the students to find out such anecdotes and concepts that are similar to the one mentioned in the chapter they are reading.
Children are at a very crucial stage of learning where they are simply trying to find out what they like and what they do not like. Having artificial boundaries is simply going to restrict their viewpoint of the world.
But if you can manage to bring concepts together and find correlations between them then that will encourage the students to simply not think about boundaries and just explore what they like.
Collaborative Exercises
If you want children to be interested in a concept and to enjoy school textbooks in a way that manages to grab their attention for long periods of time then you need to mix study and play together.
This is where we come to the point of collaborative exercises, collaboration simply because everything is fun with friends and exercises because drawing a right angle with white powder on a football field is much more fun than doing it on a piece of paper.
You can introduce multiple forms of collaborative exercises which can be in the form of challenges and puzzles and also in the form of exercises that teach different concepts.
For example, you can create a simple guide to explain how a force multiplier works with a seesaw that nearly every school has in their playground.
You can teach them the concept of buoyancy by inserting fun exercises such as building a boat with ice cream sticks.
The only challenge you have is to include all these concepts in your book which is definitely possible.
One Step at A Time Approach
One of the key problems of current school textbooks is the jump between concepts and while we understand teachers have very limited time to teach children before exams are around the corner but this makes it difficult for young minds to dive into something new even without understanding something that came before it.
And this can be solved by simply referencing earlier lessons whenever you are writing and explaining a new concept.
This will always help the students calibrate their minds to the most basic concept and then gradually go from there to something a little bit more complex.
You must always keep in mind that you simply cannot try out fast-paced learning with children because they might get lost in the speed.
This is one of the most common occurrences that happen in classes all over the world is that students simply stop keeping track of concepts when they start to become complicated.
You will have a very difficult time finding any book out there that will continuously reference older lessons and simpler lessons in order to help children understand new concepts.
If you want to revolutionise school textbooks and make them more engaging and interesting then you need to do that.
Multiple Mediums of Access
We are already on our way to adopting AI into every occupation we can think of so having multiple mediums of access to education is not something impossible.
You must make sure that your efforts of revolutionising school textbooks should not be limited to books because you can work with multiple mediums.
That can include creating videos with elaborate educational scripts that are not very different from school textbook writing but in a more entertaining and interesting package.
You can convert your school textbook content into audio and create audiobooks for children to listen to when they are at home.
You can even create websites with real-time updates related to different concepts such as AI or the latest updates on space exploration which will further interest in subjects in physics and much more.
Or you can release regular ebooks of different concepts weekly for children to stay updated on the most current level of educational advancements.
This solves the issue of outdated education and this helps you with the groundwork to include information from the latest ebook releases into your next edition of print books.
This will make your books the most sought-after and updated source of knowledge for kids.
We hope this blog has been helpful for you to understand how you can truly leave a permanent mark in the minds of young children who simply do not find school textbooks interesting.
If you would like to contribute your valuable ideas and concepts as well as understanding and efforts into a noble cause like this but you simply cannot find the right publisher to understand your mission regarding school textbooks, do not worry because we are here for you.
We are Orange Publishers and we have extensive experience in working with educators and pioneers like yourself who are not only creating their legacy but are always aiming to revolutionize and bring positive change into the world.
We will help you publish all your school textbooks in every possible format from print books to eBooks and audiobooks and along with that we will help you every step of the way right from the book cover design to the editing as well as printing and publishing and even the promotion of these new generation study books.
We welcome you to visit our website and we would love to work hand in hand with you to bring positive change in the world of educational content.