I have a love-hate relationship with worksheets. As a student, I loved them--they were so easy! Now I see my eight-year-old son following in my footsteps. He does well on worksheets, and he finishes them quickly, so he's rewarded with free-time. And while he loves his free-time, how much do worksheets really benefit his learning? Some teachers rely too heavily on worksheets and they become the focus of lesson plans, or a way to keep students occupied. Sidebar: My son's teacher is NOT a teacher who relies heavily on worksheets. She is an amazing teacher who uses tons of project-based teaching to engage her students. We are VERY lucky to have such an amazing teacher!
So, are worksheets a problem? …They can be.
Some of the problems I have with worksheets are outlined in the article, "Top 10 Benefits of Using Worksheets for Kids" by Farisa Zaki. The first problem I have with this article is that it's written by someone who sells a Preschool - Grade 2 worksheet program that I found by clicking the author's webpage (which I did to look for the credentials of the author, and I did not find any). To me, a blog touting the benefits of worksheets, written by someone who sells worksheets, is not a credible source of information on the topic. Second, the article states that worksheets help "develop logical, lingual, analytical, and problem-solving capabilities," and while they may in fact do those things, even if they are built properly, are worksheets really the way we want our preschool aged children learning these skills? I, for one, am a proponent for children learning through play in the early years, and if I'm being honest, well into their education (heck, I'd take some learning through play right about now). Children should not be inundated with worksheets, and most of the benefits listed by Zaki are increased through play-based learning where children can more easily express themselves and their creativity.
This isn't where my opinion on the subject ends. Worksheets have their place. As Jennifer Gonzalez of Cult of Pedagogy states in her post "Frickin' Packets," "not all worksheets are created equally." Gonzalez's post includes a video of high school student, Jeff Bliss, who disrupts his class with a rant about worksheets or as he calls them, "frickin' packets." After his outburst, Bliss is asked to leave the room, but I have to say, the video brought me to tears. Here is a student, who is advocating for his needs, and yet, his voice is left unheard. Of course, there's no way to know what happened before or after the video, but during the video, the teacher is simply not having it, and she repeatedly asks him to leave the classroom. The problem with worksheets, according to Gonzalez, is that they are "discontinued from anything meaningful." In other words, worksheets put a students' brain on autopilot. Circle the correct answer, fill in the blank, label the diagram, blah blah blah… There is very little happening in most worksheets that encourages students to think past level one (memorization) of Bloom's Taxonomy, and our students can sense this, just like Jeff Bliss could. Worksheets rarely engage students in their learning, and that's why, if worksheets are made to support learning, they will encourage students to think past remembering and open them up to critical thinking, which is an important life skill to have.
Which brings us to "the other stuff." What makes a great worksheet? The five qualities of good worksheets, also known as "power" sheets, are that they support learning by using the higher learning methods of Bloom's to cover the curriculum, the directions are clear and concise, the appropriate space is provided for students' answers, they are aesthetically pleasing, and the function or how the worksheet is formatted has been carefully considered. Below, I have listed these attributes in the order in which I rate their importance and why.
To me, supporting learning is the most important aspect of a worksheet. If the work does not support students' ability to learn, why would we have students do it? Other then when we, as teachers, miscalculate the time it takes to complete a lesson plan (insert cringey face emoji), "weak" sheets or "busy" sheets are completely unnecessary, and they should only be used for fun, if students choose to work on them in their free-time. Equally important is clarity. If students don't understand the instructions of an assignment, how are they going to answer it effectively? Ensure you use concise language and offer a verbal explanation for further clarification. Next, is space and aesthetics. I struggled with putting aesthetics so low on the list because I think the way your worksheet looks is your hook. This is how we get students interested and engaged in the worksheet to begin with, but if there isn't enough space for students to write their answers, the worksheet doesn't serve it's purpose either. Alternatively, if too much space is provided, students can feel overwhelmed or self-conscious of their answers if they don't occupy the space provided. At the bottom of my list is function. I don't have a lot of concern about how a worksheet is constructed if it has the above qualities, but text boxes, tables, and font consideration can affect the aesthetics of a worksheet, so it's certainly a noteworthy aspect. Knowing that these qualities are all important aspects of worksheet construction made it difficult to rate them, but analyzing these factors will help me construct worksheets to my preferences in the future. Your ratings may differ from mine, and that's okay, as long as we're all creating the best worksheets we can.
So, what have we learned? Worksheets aren't all bad, but if you want to incorporate them into your classroom, construct "power" sheets, and leave the "weak" sheets behind with the weak coffee--we don't need that kind of toxicity in our lives.
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