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Childhood EducationPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uced20

Teaching Strategies: Worksheets, Worksheets, WorksheetsMarilee Ransom a & Maryann Manning ba Independent Consultant , Austin , Texasb Distinguished Professor Emerita, UABPublished online: 28 Apr 2013.

To cite this article: Marilee Ransom & Maryann Manning (2013) Teaching Strategies: Worksheets, Worksheets, Worksheets, ChildhoodEducation, 89:3, 188-190, DOI: 10.1080/00094056.2013.792707

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188 \ Childhood Education

Worksheets hold a special place among the many well-intentioned—yet ineffective—items in the early child-hood and elementary toolkit. They are nearly ubiquitous in some elementary classrooms and are even popular in pre-schools. Parents are encouraged when they see worksheets in their children’s backpacks; they see such papers as indi-cators that their children are learning, particularly when the paper is endorsed by an official checkmark or adorable sticker. We can easily find grade-level sheets in our workrooms or through a simple Internet search. They seem to be everywhere in a teacher’s universe of resources, and appear to be used by nearly everyone. Given the wealth of worksheets and their seemingly universal acceptance, some of us never pause to question whether they are actually effective. Many still use them as part of the daily classroom experience, especially when working with individual students or small groups. Others use them very sparingly, usually when they have a substitute and lack adequate time to prepare a meaningful activity. Maryann recalls a stack of worksheets in her own classroom cupboard, saved for truly necessary occasions. Worksheets can provide a necessary reprieve in an emergency, but they should be reserved for the rare occasion when a teacher desperately needs them. Of course, not all “sheets” fall into the “worksheet” category, and not all “worksheets” are pieces of paper. Some papers passed out to the class can be useful tools for learning, such as diagrams, maps, or other materials. A “worksheet” is a piece of paper, a computer screen, or a projection that

contains problems. These problems have right and wrong answers, and there is generally only one way to com-plete a problem. The answers fit neatly on the page—conforming to bubbles, blanks, or circling. Attractive software can easily be masking what is essentially worksheet material. When you examine many software programs more closely, they are simply electronic worksheets. Maryann recently visited a classroom where the 1st-grade teacher proudly showed her a new projection board. She considered it and found it to be just a very large worksheet. Further, the workbook is usually just a collection of worksheets with glue on the spine. Educators have sought to remove re-producibles and worksheets from class-rooms for many decades. In 1964, Dora V. Smith addressed the practice of “busy work,” saying that worksheets or filling in blanks could not help students think about their world. In 1998, Daniels and Bizar, in their book Methods That Matter, recommended “less classroom time devoted to fill-in-the-blank work-sheets, dittos, workbooks, and other seatwork” (p. 3). For more than 40 years, Constance Kamii has documented the superior effectiveness of games and word problems for math instruction; her writing instructs teachers on how and why they should move away from math worksheets in favor of more meaningful learning activities. We believe that consistent use of worksheets is counterproductive for student learning and is fundamentally inconsistent with constructivist phi-losophy. We encourage understanding and implementation of developmen-tally appropriate practice (Copple & Bredekamp, 2009). Teachers should

strive to meet children at their devel-opmental levels, working with them to achieve new educational goals. This often means designing different activi-ties within and between classrooms, varying from year to year. Classroom teachers will be both liberated and chal-lenged as they abandon pre-packaged workbooks or purchased curricula in favor of creative activities. The “experts” who design worksheets are not the true experts of each class: the “expert” of each classroom is the individual teacher charged with educating the students in her or his care. The following are some of our beliefs about children’s learning, all of which are incompatible with the regular use of worksheets. We suggest a few alterna-tives to worksheets in each area, but they are intended to serve as a spring-board for discussion and deliberation. Classroom teachers are daily presented with ideas for projects that emerge from their own students’ minds; these can be transformed into learning opportuni-ties. Educators also have wonderful resources at their disposal that contain concrete ideas for learning, such as the recent book Ramps and Pathways by DeVries and Sales (2011), among many others.

Children Are Active LearnersYoung people have incredibly active, engaged minds. They are constantly ready to incorporate new experiences, adding to their understanding of their worlds. Kamii and Rummelsburg (2008) wrote, “Children who are men-tally active develop faster than those who are passive” (p. 393). Worksheets present the young mind with static tasks—nothing that allows them to

Teaching Strategies

Worksheets, Worksheets, Worksheetsby Marilee Ransom, Independent Consultant, Austin, Texas and

Maryann Manning, Distinguished Professor Emerita, UAB

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think creatively or use their natural problem-solving abilities (Kohn, 2011). While not all tasks can be developmen-tally perfect, teachers should strive to at least make assignments interesting for young people. This is true even when teachers can only be minimally involved. For instance, Kamii (2000; Kamii & DeVries, 1980; Kamii & Livingston, 1994) suggests numerous math games that enrich and develop a child’s understanding of math concepts; many of these can be done with little teacher oversight. We suggest that a blank sheet of paper is better than most worksheets. A teacher can give students relatively minimal directions that relate to a topic being investigated in class. Recently, Marilee was in a 1st-grade classroom reading Miss Mary Mack (Hoberman, 1998), a simple big book based on the classic rhyme. Immediately after finish-ing several enthusiastic renditions of the book, the students automatically began brainstorming about how they might launch an elephant. Their ideas were spontaneous, unprompted, and truly wonderful. Instead of their daily worksheet time, the teacher could sim-ply have given them paper and asked them to draw or write about their idea for an elephant launcher. The children in that classroom naturally developed their own project; a great teacher knows how to follow students to developmen-tally meaningful activities.

Children Know When They Are Doing Mindless WorkChildren are often far more percep-tive, critical, and intelligent than adults believe. Marilee’s primary-age daughter frequently presents her with a stack of worksheets sent home as evidence of her learning. She usually follows up the display with some statement of belief relating to the pages, like “I have no idea why I did this” or “This was silly.” (Often, she adds how she turned the page into a project of her own by re-writing the instructions or creating imagined animals in the margins.) You will likely be amused and surprised if you ask a group of students why they

must do the worksheets distributed to them. Most will say, “Because my teacher told me to.” If you ask further questions like, “Why did your teacher tell you to do them?,” many children will say they have no idea or that the work doesn’t make sense. Those an-swers should prompt us to question why we give them such mindless work. Worksheet time can be easily replaced with silent reading time, journaling, or other solitary activities that require little teacher supervision. The best antidote to “busy work” is to encourage tasks that have mean-ing—and to discuss that meaning with students. Children always should understand the “why” of their work in addition to the “how” and the “when.” We should strive to give children tasks that respect them as learners. Wakefield (2001) says that teachers should “en-courage children to think, encourage children to think about thinking, and encourage representations of thinking” (pp. 27-28). Worksheets and other “busy work” tasks do not promote thinking, and can undermine a teach-er’s goal of promoting true thinking. If math is reduced to “math facts,” it becomes relatively easy for children to tune out a whole world of engaging, real-world math. Reading is captivating when done in the context of children’s literature; it is dull when set forth on a photocopied worksheet.

Children BenefitFrom CollaborationWe know that students benefit from collaborative activities. They learn valu-able lessons about cooperation and communication, while gaining a bet-ter understanding of the material on which they are working. Worksheets shut down communication between students, forcing them to “do their own work.” Children do need to learn about honesty and eventually are asked to do tests and other things that require solitary work. However, the early child-hood setting is not the time for that. If we stress the need for keeping their eyes on their own papers in that set-ting, how can we set tests apart as more

important and different? Opportunities abound for teachers to give children collaborative activities that can be done without direct oversight, particularly with children beyond kindergarten. For instance, students can be divided up into groups of two or three and given an interesting task or problem to solve. They can do simple math games, puzzle activities, or work with geometric shapes.

Children Need Opportunities to Grow as Learners and Develop Self-esteemWorksheets usually have correct—and incorrect—answers. They are implic-itly closed activities, at which some children will succeed and some will fail. Children who have mastered the worksheet skill usually complete the sheet with little trouble, and thus ben-efit little because they already knew the material anyway. Children who do not grasp the skill will not perform well, but the sheet does not provide them with any opportunity to better understand the skill. Thus, they emerge from the activity without any academic benefit and with an additional blow to their self-esteem because they proved their lack of mastery on paper. Peter Johnson (2004, 2012) bril-liantly describes how children can come to conceive of themselves as “good” or “bad” at a particular subject as a result of what many teachers would describe as subtle cues. Johnson’s research makes sense, and we believe it is entirely ap-plicable to a discussion of worksheets. Some children receive a positive remark on their worksheet, thus telling them that they are “good” at the topic and need not think further about the un-derlying learning. Others understand that they are not good at that skill or subject, likely reinforcing negative feel-ings about their work. Obviously, all students will eventually get evaluated by various metrics; we are not arguing about the merits of this eventuality. We do believe it is unnecessary to subject young children to this material, par-ticularly when it has little or no dem-onstrated learning value. Open-ended

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activities present all students with the opportunity to grow in their under-standing of materials. Journaling allows both advanced and emerging writers to grow and flourish, whereas writing worksheets bore some and frustrate others. Math worksheets similarly shut down active learning in favor of rote memorization; math games stimulate mathematical and logical thinking for students at a range of levels.

ConclusionEducators face extraordinary classroom balancing acts every day. We often must occupy a classroom of students while providing targeted attention to small groups or individuals. Worksheets seem like an easy answer to this dilemma; they correlate neatly with particular grade-level skills and seem to support instruction. It is so simple to copy multiple sheets and distribute them to the class. Before you make those copies, however, take the time to really study the sheets and ask yourself some hard questions. Do they truly support learn-ing? Are there alternatives I can use that better enrich the students’ experience? Worksheets are not meaningful just because they are available nearly every-where a teacher looks. Learning is messy, exciting, and often boisterous. A constructivist classroom, in particular, can sometimes seem like a chaotic place to an untrained observer. Children play math games, work out problems in groups, or huddle over

books in a corner nook. Teachers move between students and groups to guide their learning, but rarely to dictate rigid ways of doing things. If we believe Vygotsky’s (1978) assertion that “chil-dren grow into the intellectual life of those around them” (p. 88), we should encourage classrooms that are centers for growth. They should be places where math is electrifying—fueled by a teacher who truly believes that it is ex-citing. Classroom literature experiences should represent how truly rich books are. Writing should be fueled by writer’s workshop, with spelling taking a back-seat to developing a passion for words. Truly, we have the power to create the intellectual life in classrooms. It is up to us whether we infuse every activity with as much richness as possible—or whether we want to try to fit student learning into the rigid spaces provided on a worksheet.

ReferencesCopple, C., & Bredekamp, S. (Eds.).

(2009). Developmentally appropriate prac-tice in early childhood programs serving children from birth through age 8 (3rd ed.). Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children.

Daniels, H., & Bizar, M. (1998). Methods that matter: Six structures for best practice classrooms. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.

DeVries, R., & Sales, C. (2011). Ramps and pathways: A constructivist approach to phys-ics with young children. Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of

Young Children.Hoberman, M. (1998). Miss Mary Mack.

New York, NY: Scholastic.Johnson, P. (2004). Choice words: How

our language affects children’s learning. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.

Johnson, P. (2012). Opening minds: Using language to change lives. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.

Kamii, C. (2000). Young children continue to reinvent arithmetic: Implications of Piaget‘s theory. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Kamii, C., & DeVries, R. (1980). Group games in early education: Implications of Piaget’s theory. Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children.

Kamii, C., & Livingston, S. (1994). Young children continue to reinvent arithmetic–3rd grade: Implications of Piaget’s theory. New York, NY: Teacher’s College Press.

Kamii, C., & Rummelsburg, J. (2008). Arithmetic for first graders lacking number concepts. Teaching Children Mathematics, 14(7), 389-394.

Kohn, A. (2011, April 27). Poor teaching for poor children . . . in the name of reform. Education Week, 30(29), 32-33.

Smith, D. V. (1964). Dora V. Smith: Selected essays. New York, NY: Macmillan.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological process-es. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Wakefield, A. P. (2001). Teaching young children to think about math. Principal, 80(5), 26-29.

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ACEI encourages members to join together in informal communities called ACEI Network Groups. Network Groups allow members to engage with one another to promote professional camaraderie, exchange information, and discuss vital issues in education.

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