Confession: I Like Worksheets

2/15/2017

Confession: I like worksheets.

Carefully designed, intentionally crafted, and thought-provoking... still, they're worksheets. I like 'em. pic.twitter.com/S6U9kCDayV
— John Stevens (@Jstevens009) February 15, 2017

This week, I was talking with someone who was going on a rant about how much they despised worksheets. "After all," they said, "we have chromebooks now. We should be moving beyond worksheets anyways."

Yes. But no.

If all you're doing is skipping the process of pressing print and distributing work via Classroom, Remind, or a seemingly countless number of ways, you might as well join the party that admonishes the 8.5"x11" black-and-white handouts. You could even be using Desmos, although I've seen lessons built in Activity Builder that are better off left on a sheet of paper.

Me? I like worksheets.

I don't like many of them that are in the wild right now, and think very poorly of ones I've created for my own students, yet I like worksheets. They carry the potential of conversation starters, head scratchers, and reflection gatherers. The worksheet isn't the problem. The problem is that what we think a worksheet is is the problem. The ones I really like are:

Carefully Designed

Put some time into what you want the kids to do.

Did you hop onto Kuta Math and pull a free thirty problems?
Did you slide into the Pinterest boards and pick something up that another teacher crafted?
Did you hastily write down a dozen problems related to yesterday's content?

Me, too! Plenty of times; It doesn't make the decision right. At the same time, it doesn't make the decision wrong.

If I'm going to put something in front of a group of students, I want it to be a true reflection of what I want them to show me. In order to create that experience for my students, I need to be careful of what I am asking and what I am not asking students to do.

To me, carefully designed has as much to do with the space around the problems as it does with the problem set itself. How much room am I providing the student to explain her reasoning? Does she have enough space to show her work? Get messy?

There's a good probability that if you're putting more than six problems on a page, it's too much... no matter what grade level you're teaching. Make sure the problems are not only spaced out but also have a clear separation from one problem to the next.

Even if this work of art never gets printed, and is instead assigned digitally, the careful design implies the need for a careful response from anyone completing it.

Intentionally Crafted

Let's get back to the amount of work on each page. I've seen some outstanding work done on a handout with four problems and some terrible work done on a handout with twenty problems (and vice versa). More problems do not elicit more knowledge; they elicit more compliance. When I was in school, I loved doing problem sets of 20, 30, and more, just because they were easy. It was mindless work, changing the values from question to question, applying the same methods, over and over again. When I was given a homework assignment of 4 problems, I knew it was going to be a challenge.

It wasn't until my sixth year of teaching that I realized the increased volume wasn't getting me increased results. The kids who could do it were doing it and the kids who couldn't... weren't. It was creating a larger divide between the "haves" and "have nots" of math knowledge. Quickly, I changed course and started being more intentional about the questions on worksheets as often as possible.

No more than six questions
No extensions beyond what we have learned in class
Aligned directly with the standard and/or learning goal for the day
Problems that would give me good data on student progress

I recently saw an assessment that a department was giving and it was shocking at how basic the problems were. The idea is that they wanted a 90% pass rate, but they had set the bar so low that the kids could roll over it and pass.

One of the hardest parts of teaching is finding the best way to assess multiple students who are at multiple places in their learning journey. Doing it in six questions is even harder, but it's necessary work. Otherwise, why are we assigning anything at all?

Thought-Provoking

Even if I'm doing six problems that are on point with my learning objective, there is something missing: higher level thinking. I want my students to be as curious as possible, as often as possible. I don't need every worksheet to have a word problem. In fact, there are plenty of straightforward math problems that induce curiosity on their own. On your next worksheet, try asking any of these questions to follow up:

How are question 1 and question 4 related? Other than the values, how are they different?
What do you think a common mistake would be in problem 3?
What would happen to the solution if I changed problem 2 to a (fill in with something relevant here)?

Yes, my work as a student was mind-numbing. If I would've seen any of these questions, that was sure to force the brakes on me and cause me to think about the meaning of the algorithm I was aimlessly using. Oftentimes, students look at a series of math problems as disjointed and rarely take the time to relate a page of solutions to one another. How are they the same? How are they different? Are they reasonable? How do I know?

Of course, there are some worksheets that stand out among the others, the ones with no numbers whatsoever. Brian Bushart talks about the "Numberless Word Problems" and I love them. They hit all elements I speak of, especially the idea of being thought-provoking.

Reflective

Any good worksheet must have an opportunity for the student to reflect on what he has learned. Taking the time to chew on the concepts, turn them into something he can process, and then use them in conversation is when the real learning takes shape. When carefully designing a worksheet, I find it helpful to begin with the reflection in mind:

What do I want students to walk away with? How can I have them express that?

It may be a two sentence synopsis of what they learned. It may be a picture that represents their results. Whatever it is, it needs to exist and time needs to be given so that students are not rushed through this step. When students are rush through a task, it sends the message that it carries less meaning than the rest of the day. I've done it, and plenty of times. "Hurry up, class, just put the exit ticket on the desk and I'll look at it later!" They know darn well that I'm not valuing those slips because I didn't give them time to finish.

By starting with that end in mind, it gives me the chance to value what I care about most: the students' thought processes.

With all of that, here are some worksheets:

Yes, this is for one of my favorite lessons of all time, Barbie Zipline, but that's not why I like it. There are only two problems to solve on the page and there isn't a single number. The students are using information discussed during class to determine a safe--yet fun--zipline for Barbie and her friends to travel down and the handout is merely a vehicle to get the information from the students to me.

There is a place for reflection.

There is space.

There aren't many problems.

I like it.

Let's get real: Barbie Zipline isn't happening every day. For every day of ziplining, there are ten that are straight math, like the handout above. This is from my fifth year of teaching and, while it's markedly better than what I was doing in year one, it isn't what I would consider a good worksheet.

There are too many problems
All I'm doing is changing values
There is no deeper thought
There is no reflection

So how about if I switch it up? Here's a possible alternative:

No, I don't think it's perfect, but it's a whole lot better than what I was asking students to do initially. In this case, they get a little bit of practice with two types of slope problems, they are asked to think about something changing, and they close it all off with an interpretation of how to find slope.

So now it's your turn. How would YOU define a good worksheet? Drop me a comment or write up a blog post. I'm interested!

***Update***

Here are some tweets in reply to my original comment:

@Jstevens009 what would you include in a "design parameters for good worksheets"? For me, I'd start with:
1) Lots of open space
2) <=4 probs
— □ Geoff Krall (@geoffkrall) February 15, 2017

@Jstevens009 Maybe 3) Make sure there's intentionality with each assigned problem (this is pretty squishy, but important)
— □ Geoff Krall (@geoffkrall) February 15, 2017

@Jstevens009 And most of them are 6-7x too long. More reps, but space them apart. I found a lot of math Ts give 25 problems when 4 would do.
— Andrew Thomasson (@thomasson_engl) February 15, 2017

@geoffkrall @Jstevens009 4) (If I may...) Feedback or reflection tool built in.
— John Scammell (@thescamdog) February 15, 2017

@thescamdog @geoffkrall @Jstevens009 I agree w/1-4. Also include 5) find the error and 6) make up your own and solve. #MTBoS
— Karen Campe (@KarenCampe) February 16, 2017

@MathEdnet @Jstevens009 what has me moving away from some worksheets is the idea of students working on whiteboard or blank paper.
— Golden □ (@mathhombre) February 16, 2017

@Jstevens009 I teach Math 8 & 9 in BC. My Ss groaned today when they got 5 sheets of paper w unit end Qs...but were ok bc it was only 6 Qs
— Wish Upon a Star (@Newpreet) February 16, 2017

@mathhombre @Jstevens009 I liked re-writing problems on my own paper when I solved them. It was probably an ownership thing.
— Raymond Johnson (@MathEdnet) February 16, 2017

@Jstevens009 For your google doc of lines can I suggest you switch to a box with edges removed, kids can type on it :)
— Alice Keeler (@alicekeeler) February 16, 2017

@Jstevens009 I really don't care what medium teachers are using if it's about students thinking and being engaged and T relationships.
— Alice Keeler (@alicekeeler) February 16, 2017

Happy "Better Worksheet" Fishing

1 Comment

Daniel Rocha

2/15/2017 09:50:11 pm

Ha, mathematical ideas are like the flowers in the spring, they occur in different places of the world at the same time. I too enjoy a good worksheet. I didn't reinvent the wheel I just adjusted the direction that it rolled. I often used BF Skinners theory of making my lessons active, collaborative, and creative. My students were active Lee engaged, they often had to collaborate and ask others for ideas. They were also given the freedom to be creative in answering their solution so long as it was mathematically sound. Andrew said the Dalles recent Siri on making lessons student centered, conceptual or procedural, and visual has shifted my thinking. I tell my teachers that if they don't want to reinvent the wheel they should use the word sheets that come in their curriculum, with a slightly different approach. One. Am I building conceptual knowledge or procedural fluency? Two is there a visual that my students can use to help make sense of the math as dad would say, if math discussion is a headache then where is the visual (aspirin) that we can use to help it makes sense. And last I ask my teachers to make the lesson student centered so that the students are sharing their ideas and their approaches, whether right or wrong; every piece helps build our understanding. In this last piece I ask teachers to shift the workload off of their shoulders and place it on the shoulders of our students so that they develop the critical thinking skills they are going to need.

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