Parents, when your kids come home from school and unload their backpacks, what do you find? Creative, thoughtful, individualized projects? Or a stack of completed worksheets?
I want to be a little careful and gracious here lest it sound like I've never given worksheets to my own students. Because I have. There was a time in my teaching career that I assigned quite a few worksheets.
Pages of math problems.
Science lab sheets.
Whole packets of Bible worksheets.
The longer I taught, however, the fewer worksheets I assigned. I decided I would rather have students do more authentic tasks, more realistic work than just filling in blanks to answer questions, or completing another set of exercises.
I understand where teachers are coming from, assigning worksheets. They are busy people, with many different tasks to juggle simultaneously. And with a worksheet, there is a sense of accomplishment: the students complete a discrete task, a unit of work, something to enter into the ol' gradebook.
But I also wonder if it's a problem of a mindset? "Give 'em something to do, so I can justify to the parents that they are working--learning even--in my class."
When I'm honest, I know there are times that this idea has cropped up in my own teaching practice. I'm working on this.
I understand where teachers are coming from, assigning worksheets. They are busy people, with many different tasks to juggle simultaneously. And with a worksheet, there is a sense of accomplishment: the students complete a discrete task, a unit of work, something to enter into the ol' gradebook.
But I also wonder if it's a problem of a mindset? "Give 'em something to do, so I can justify to the parents that they are working--learning even--in my class."
When I'm honest, I know there are times that this idea has cropped up in my own teaching practice. I'm working on this.
But because I've been that teacher--the one assigning relatively low-level intellectual work--I feel it would be the pot calling the kettle black if I were to suggest that teachers shouldn't hand out worksheets anymore.
So I'll let my Twitterfriend, Sean Junkins, do it for me to help hold us all accountable:
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| Image courtesy Sean Junkins (You should follow him on Twitter. Seriously.) |
EXACTLY! Yet it is still happening at our elementary school DAILY by the MINUTE! So my 6th grade students are having a hard time THINKING and CREATING. They asked me after 2 weeks of school- Are we ever going to have multiple choice and fill in the blank tests? I just cackled.... :)
ReplyDeleteShannon
http://www.irunreadteach.wordpress.com
Thanks much for the feedback, Shannon! You are not alone. It's sad to me that worksheets seem to be the primary work tasks in so many elementary classrooms (and middle schools, and even high schools...) As I said above, I'm pointing the finger at myself here too. We can do better. Students deserve better.
DeleteLOL... homework for homework's sake?! ah, i knew one teacher who created her own english worksheets without overkill...simply to reinforce the lesson. kudos to her...and those who think about what they are assigning and why! :)
ReplyDeleteGrace, you are so right! I think that's my real issue with worksheets too--teachers assigning them indiscriminately and without thought as to *why* the sheet is being assigned. Else it just becomes jumping through hoops...for both the students and the teacher!
DeleteAs a new teacher, I can totally feel the pull towards assigning "homework for homework's sake". My thoughts: I need something to assess! Where are my marks going to come from? How will I prove to the parents what mark the student deserves?!
ReplyDeleteI've been trying to avoid giving out standard worksheets, but it's a process, that's for sure!
Thanks for commenting, Emma! Yes, I've been there too. And I talk about this with the pre-service teachers I have the privilege of teaching too. I liken it to using a textbook: of *course* beginning teachers should use a textbook! But I hope that they won't *only* use a textbook; this sometimes takes teachers a year or two, so they feel more confident in their teaching practice. Perhaps worksheets can fill that role too?
DeleteI'm glad to hear that you're being so thoughtful about your teaching! Hang in there; it gets better as you gain more experience. :-)
Homework for homework sake is a problem but is a worksheet for learning sake a problem? I have swung to the creative side, perhaps a little to far and am finding out that creative thinking is great but now I am seeing evidence of weaker fact knowledge. For example - I teach a Science 9 class about reproduction and assigned a worksheet today about the differences of Meiosis and Mitosis. To fosture critical, creative thought about this subject, am I okay with assigning a worksheet to get those facts in place. I have found that without getting the facts in place in areas like science, having discovery learning, or creative learning activities that inspire learning can be difficult. With a balance of facts and creativity the learning grows in each student. Being engaged in the learning culture of each class so that you, as teacher, can justify your method of growing the learning in the room is more important than trumping one method over another. That said, I do think that worksheets have been and perhaps continued to be overused as excuses for creating learning culture:)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the pushback on this, Bill. I should say, I am not opposed to all worksheets in all circumstances; they *can* have some limited value...*if* the teacher is using them such as you describe. Often, sadly, I think teachers assign worksheets as a way of keeping students busy, or out of some sense that simply doing the worksheet will result in learning. I am not sure this is the case.
DeleteDave
Yes, those are big asterisks by the *if* and the *can*. Most often worksheets are used as you describe. Thanks for the blog!
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