Worksheet free zone!

 My son recently completed a math 'test' ...it was easy he said, but with forty questions to be completed in an hour, not achievable.  The results of this test will hardly be evidence of his understanding and perhaps evidence of his understanding would have better been gleaned by talking to him.  That is how I feel about worksheets!

I frequently hear of people that struggle to teach maths and are after the next great worksheet to guide their teaching.  Or the next manual, or workbook...put very simply and in my humble opinion, this is not teaching maths.

If I was to get rid of one thing from classrooms it would be worksheets.  They are used far too often, without real purpose and have limited cognitive impact.  In fact just navigating a worksheet for some children is more of an issue than the maths itself.

I yes I hear the wail from the corner...

"My children love worksheets, they are great for reinforcement."

 In some cases yes this may be true, for some children, worksheets may provide some practice that backs up the repeated teaching they have been having, but only if that repeated teaching has involved the quality use of materials, before it is hurriedly rushed to the abstract. 

 It is also a very real factor that some children love worksheets, but it is not likely to be those children we are aiming to help, it is likely to be the children already proficient in the skill, that don't need the reinforcement anyway.  It is also likely to include the safe-sitters that love to sit within the safe boundaries of a worksheets, rather than extending or challenging themselves.  They think of maths as a comfortable set of facts, and this is not the message we want to be sending.

So what is it we should be doing instead?

Well put pretty simply, we should be allowing children to experience a wide range of materials that they can manipulate and 'see' visually to allow them to deeply understand what they are doing.  Children deserve the right to use materials and explore maths visually before it is ever taken to the abstract.  They deserve the right to solve problems and form their own understandings based on the use of these materials, to make connections and establish patterns.  In my opinion we take children far too quickly to the abstract and should be using quality materials long past primary school.

Maths is a creative area of learning that is all around us and effects everything we do.  It should never be constrained to a list of facts on a worksheet.  In fact just like in other areas of learning children deserve to hypothesise together about maths and the patterns around them, investigate and make connections together, not on their own.  They deserve the right to use equipment to solve difficult problems and the time to do so, in fact problems can stretch over a week or two, or even more, being constantly built on with connections shared and debated.  

Children deserve the right to revisit concepts in various ways, to see maths as an open area of learning, rather than an area where the fastest to complete the worksheet with a set of answers that can be found in the back of the book is the 'winner.'  They deserve the right to understand that those answers can be expressed in various ways, lastly and probably most importantly they deserve the right to talk about maths and what they notice, to share their understandings and listen to the understandings of others.

Children deserve the right to develop a deep sense of number and they can not do that through a worksheet.  

If teachers are wanting follow up activities, why not have children set the problems for each other to complete, now that shows a real depth of understanding.

Maths is beautiful, I was never given that gift at school.  I was afraid of maths, scared of being wrong, always cheated with the answers in the back of the book and never understood how any of the equipment linked because I was taken to the abstract too fast and could not see the link.  In fact the very ironic thing is I was top in my multiplication tables...I however had no idea how to use them, or what they meant.

As a teacher I now understand what a creative, exciting area of learning maths is and I want to continually give this gift to the children I teach.

(NB - Please note, I am not saying that after lots and lots of rich teaching and learning a follow up paper task may not be useful it if it is a quality one, and strongly linked to what is being done, but I encourage you to always think about the usefulness of the activities you are presenting to children.  If are using them as a time filler or a busy activity...just don't!)