Forgive the destructive imagery, but it’s necessary. Tens of thousands of precious learning hours are spent doing well-intentioned but worthless activities with students every day in the name of literacy when, in fact, these activities are glowingly toxic.
I’ve been on all sides of this issue. I’ve used traditional worksheets; I’ve used student writing as personalized writing wallets. The latter works a gazillion times better. As a young teacher myself in the 1970s, I handed out my share of worksheets. In hindsight, I realize that during this decade students may have eagerly grabbed worksheets not because they were a good learning tool but because of that mimeograph chemical high. Do you remember? Worksheets were run on a mimeograph machine and smelled so good that we’d cluster in the copy room and probably get a little happy on the fumes. Teachers who inhaled mimeograph fluid and students who didn’t complain about a test as long as their papers are just a little damp with that same chemical…well, we should have known that wasn’t good.
Writing skill development comes with the teacher’s observation of what’s working for students and what they struggle with as they write. The teacher develops targeted lessons to help students take the next step forward, we don’t simply turn to the Internet for something to download. By the way, I just Googled “writing worksheets” and got 46,900,000 results. Astonishing. Horrifying, too. It’s as though the teaching world has taken a big detour from best practices to easy practices.
Don’t take my word for it. Let your students help you decide the fate of worksheets in your classroom. Look at their work and your teaching for the answers to these four questions so you can form your own opinion:
- Do your students write well?
- Do they eagerly dive into their writing?
- Do you see measurable improvement day after day?
- Do you look forward to teaching writing and modeling writing with your students?
If the answer is “yes” to all of these questions, then congratulations. You have escaped the allure of worksheets. But if two or three of your answers are “no,” then we need to talk seriously about how to take back your writing classroom so it is a more joyous, productive, and—yes, complicated (but interesting) place.
Step 1: Ditch the worksheets. Do it. The world will not end; the sun will come up in the morning. I promise.
Step 2: Replace those dull-as-a-board worksheets with the students’ own writing that is worked on over and over again as you teach lessons and students apply new skills.
Step 3: Use mentor texts as the models so students learn from and are inspired by writers (not worksheets) about writing. Reading and writing feed on each other. Stephen King reminds us, “You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.”
And please don’t get me started on packets sent home as homework or conveniently assembled to cover a week or two of skills practice all in one place. Or for test prep. I know of one state that gave students “fun packets” at Spring Break that were nothing more than test items to practice before the state assessment scheduled shortly after the holiday. The “fun” part turned out to be coloring the cover. Wow.
Without worksheets and packets, think of the budget monies you’ll save buying black line masters and running them off on ream after ream of paper. Here’s what I discovered: The average school of 100 teachers uses 250,000 sheets of paper annually. This school would spend approximately $7,500 per year on printing, and paper itself costs $25,000. That’s a lot of wasted money. How about asking the building administrator to instead earmark those funds for books? (I think I see you smiling…)
Here’s another benefit of killing the worksheets: No more worksheets to correct. And if your students are writing authentically—choosing their own topics, trying new trait-specific techniques they’ve read in real books, revising with partners to make the writing sharper—you’ll have much more interesting papers to read! As a bonus, you’ll have more time to talk with students about their writing and help them improve each piece, one little nudge at a time. That has to make you happy, too. After all, isn’t the whole purpose of teaching writing to help students become strong, capable, and independent thinkers? Yes, I think it is.
Ruth Culham is a recognized expert in the writing assessment field and is known for conducting lively teacher workshops. Her current book, The Writing Thief, gives insight on how to use reading to practice writing skills.