Textbooks — love them or hate them, there’s no denying that they’re often the clunkiest part of the modern classroom. As the world around us becomes more and more digital, analog textbooks feel like a relic of the past, especially when digital solutions offer so much more convenience for your math class.
Vimme Learning is a modern, online math curriculum that takes all the benefits of a traditional textbook and redefines them for the 2020s. Here’s how ditching the textbook can work for your math class.
Customize Your Curriculum
When it comes to textbooks, what you see is what you get… for better or worse. If the teaching method used in your textbook doesn’t mesh with your own way of doing things — or if it doesn’t work for the various learning styles present in your class — you’re out of luck until your school decides to shell out for a new edition. And even then, it’s fingers crossed that it works better for your needs.
Vimme leaves that rigid and ineffectual way of teaching behind, and puts you back in charge of your classroom. Take it from Joel R., a 5-8th grade teacher who had been using textbooks in his classroom for nearly three decades before his school adopted Vimme:
“Textbooks tell you ‘Here’s how you’re going to teach math, whether you like it or not.’ Vimme hands you the guidelines to teach math in a way that’s effective, but it gives you the flexibility to make your lessons your own.”
Vimme gives you pacing guides to set the structure for your week, but what you do within those guidelines is up to you. You can rely on tried and true assignments and exercises you’ve put together over the years, or you can lean on Vimme’s Assignment Builder and vast bank of resources to power your lesson plan.
Consider the Textbook Forgetter
It doesn’t matter if they’re a C student or a math whiz — every student forgets their textbook from time to time. Whether they’re in class or at home sans textbook, not having it on hand can throw a real wrench in a student’s ability to get classwork or homework done.
In the modern day, that doesn’t have to be the case. Vimme Learning’s online curriculum isn’t tied to physical media — it’s available to students on any device, at any time. Your students have 24/7 access to the lesson plan, notes, tools and resources that help them understand each week’s lesson and work through them from a variety of angles.
“We’re 100% Vimme in my classroom, plus pen and paper to practice fact fluency,” says 3rd grade teacher Amanda T. “My students really like not having a book, but I can rest assured that they always have the resources they need on their school tablet or on a parent’s device at home.”
That’s great news for parents who want to help their students with homework, but who find that their student’s textbook is usually back at their desk at school. Videos, notes and examples are all available online, so the engaged parent has all the context they need to lend a helping hand.
Build Your Own Interactive Notebook
For those who like to flip through physical notes and examples, Vimme has you covered. While the majority of Vimme’s resources are digital, our interactive notebooks are a flexible tool that can be used virtually or printed up as a stand-in for a physical textbook to supplement your digital lesson plan.
Interactive notebooks introduce vocabulary, concepts and strategies for working through each week’s lesson. While some teachers copy their interactive notebooks into a slide deck to present to their class, others choose to print them out and have their students cut and paste them into a physical notebook. Others still print and bind each lesson, creating a “textbook” as they progress through the school year.
“The freedom of Vimme definitely scared me at first, because I used to rely on a textbook to give me direction,” says 5th grade teacher Kristi B. “But Vimme’s interactive notebook is what ultimately helped me leave the textbook behind. Each week I use 4-5 pages of the interactive notebook to guide my class, and they follow along with their own physical copy or on their devices.”
Even though Kristi prefers having a physical “textbook” on hand, she and her students still benefit from all of Vimme’s digital conveniences like automatic grading, the resource library and MathBots, a fact fluency game. It’s one more way Vimme adds flexibility to your lesson plan to make it truly yours.
Try Out The Textbook-Free World
“Before Vimme I’d used a textbook in my classroom for 27 years,” says teacher Joel R. “Losing the textbook was this ‘WOO!’ moment of freedom. Honestly, you’d have a hard time getting me to go back.”
If you want to try living in a textbook-free classroom, take Vimme’s free trial for a spin. You’ll get access to all of Vimme’s online resources for your grade for six weeks, so you can feel the freedom of leaving your textbook behind.