Worksheets. Dittos. Activity sheets. Whatever you call them, if you’ve been a student or teacher ever, you’ve done them or you’ve assigned them. My own worksheet evolution as a student started with handwritten sheets of problems that teachers ran through the intoxicating ditto machine. Then, textbooks came out with the fancier blackline master versions, some of which were copied onto an overhead transparency for us to “go over” in class. Though I never experienced them as a student, graphic organizers were all the rage when I was in college, except that they were always supposed to be student-generated…well, that’s a story for another day. And finally, what would the world be without the cuted-up versions we now pay three to five bucks a pop for on Teachers Pay Teachers.
But has the structure of these worksheets fundamentally changed just because they’ve gotten cuter? It’s the same as with any other assessment–changing the look without the function does nothing to improve teaching and learning. There may indeed be times when a worksheet is the best tool for using the hand-brain connection to help students retain information, but do they have to be so dang boring?
In the video below, which is embedded from the Facebook Live session I do every Tuesday at 8PM EST, I share three of my favorite ways for making worksheets more interactive. Click PLAY to have a listen, and I hope you’ll follow this blog and like my Facebook page so you don’t miss any more great ideas!
What was your favorite idea from the video OR what ideas would you share for making worksheets more engaging? Please leave a comment below.
Resources mentioned in the video:
With Tech and Twang,