Worksheets

From a students stand point, worksheets are tedious and looked upon as “busy work” in most cases unless the teacher makes the students feel otherwise. On the other hand, depending on the teacher, worksheets are in fact “busy work” that allows them time to get things done around the classroom, progress assessments, or used for evidence in group work situations to make sure they students got work done. Whatever the use of worksheets may be across every grade and every teacher, worksheets need to be used in the most beneficial ways possible. For instance, worksheets are best used at the beginning and end of new lessons to show the students progress. For example if the teacher gives them a worksheet on a new topic, the students must fill it out to the best of their ability, then the teacher will grade them, hand them back, and when she starts to go over and give the right answers she will also begin to explain each question turning it into the beginning of the lesson. From there after they showed prior knowledge and began learning the basics from the same worksheet, hands on activities and such must take place to full digest and learn the material and after that is when a worksheet is appropriate to use again to show what they have learned. This is a great strategy for the use of worksheets because it allows a variety of mediums within the learning process and the worksheets are simply a source of their knowledge rather than a “chore” in their eyes.

The disadvantage to worksheets are as stated above, they can unfortunately be used as “busy work” where students are individually given a piece of paper to work on by themselves where they lose focus very easily because the worksheets become boring to them, they get frustrated that they do not understand, or other things become a distraction within the classroom that is much more entertaining than the paper is.

Yet overall, I am still a fan of worksheets despite the advantages many websites list because without tangible evidence of work and knowledge, there is no way to track students progress other than tests which are much less accurate than worksheets are.

Below is a worksheet that serves purpose and is fun for students because it allows them to draw and be creative, yet measures their knowledge on telling time as well.

I created this worksheet by searching “worksheet generator” and finding templates of worksheets organized by categories and subjects. Since I am an elementary education major focusing on math I picked a worksheet that would best suit what I will most likely be teaching one day. Telling time in this day and age has become a thing from the past because even little kids have cell phones and watches everywhere showing digital time instead of analog time. This exercise gives a familiar starting point, the digitally written time, and asks the students to draw the analog time on the physically drawn clock for guidance. This particular worksheet provides the students with the numbers already placed on the clock because it is an introductory worksheet, but as the lesson advances they would no longer be provided the numbers on the clock, and then the next level would to switch drawing the analog clock using the digital time and distinguishing the digital time by reading the time on the analog clock.