Calandre Hannah February 26, 2021 worksheets
If you have read my article ”Helping Your Child With Basic Arithmetic? Stay Away From Worksheets” then you know that I am not a fan of traditional worksheets. After writing that article, I found another credible teacher who has written many ezine articles expounding on the benefits of worksheets. I decided some clarification of position is in order. The primary problem with most math worksheets is that the problems are already written out and the child need only write the answers. For learning and practicing the basic skills of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, it is much more beneficial for the child to write out the entire fact and say the entire fact out loud. A child will learn a multiplication fact much faster if they are writing out 6 x 8 = 48 at the same time they are saying ”six times eight is forty-eight” than if they just see 6 x 8 = ___ and only have to supply the 48.
The writing of the worksheets can also be categorized based on the focus of the study of a student. The worksheet writing activity helps the students to come up with better and polished sentences. It also helps them to organize the sentence and used much better words in their sentences. It also helps them to increase their vocabulary and it automatically makes them to use better words in their sentences while writing a document. A student can begin his worksheet writing exercises anytime in his student life but first he has to learn how to pronounce the consonants and vowels properly. The initial writing exercises in the worksheet include writing short and simple sentences which can be easily understood by the student himself and also the reader who reads them. These writing exercises help the student a lot with the understanding the meaning of sentences and also help him to improve his reading skills so that he can read more number of sentences in the less required time. Writing activities help them to create sentences with new words each time and hence the repetition of words in their sentences can be eradicated permanently.
Kindergarten ABC worksheets should have different activities to help children identify the various letters of the alphabet. The activities may involve very simple things like colouring, ticking, drawing a line to match items etc. Using attractive illustrations and cartoon characters would make it more fun for children. The activities should be graded, i.e initial activities should be very simple and easy (but should be fun with good pictures etc, so as to interest the child); later worksheets may involve a little bit more work. Care should be taken to give children worksheets that they are capable of doing. This involves understanding and monitoring the child continually, since the level of attainment of different children would often be quite different. The worksheet should challenge the child but not overwhelm her. If the worksheet is too easy or too repetitive, it may bore the child and she would not be happy. If the activity is too difficult it would frustrate her and she would not like to take up more sheets.
Rather than using worksheets, a better method is to use individual size white boards and have the child writing entire facts many times. Having a child writing 9 x 7 = 7 x 9 = 63 while saying ”nine times seven is the same as seven times nine and is equal to sixty-three” is many times more successful than a worksheet with 9 x 7 = ___ and the student just thinks the answer once and then writes that answer on the duplicate problems. I will admit that there is one type of worksheet that I used in the past and found relatively beneficial, although it had a different kind of flaw. For my Basic Math, Pre-Algebra, and Algebra classes, I had several books of ”self-checking” worksheets. These worksheets had puns or puzzle questions at the top, and as the students worked the problems they were given some kind of code for choosing a letter to match that answer. If they worked the problems correctly, the letters eventually answered the pun or riddle. Students enjoyed these worksheets, but there are a couple problem areas even with these worksheets. Some students would get the answer to the riddle early and then work backward from letter to problem answer, so they weren’t learning or practicing anything.
No matter what materials you choose, it is most important that you supervise your child constantly so that mistakes get caught rather than practiced. I learned this particular lesson the hard way. When my daughter was young, she did something that needed ”attention.” I no longer remember what it was that she did, but I told her to write the sentence ”I will not disobey my parents again” 50 times. I should have known better, but I didn’t check on her at the beginning and then I got busy. So, sometime later, she brought me 50 sentences of ”I will not disobey my parents agen.” She had just practiced misspelling ”again” as ”agen” — 50 times! I’m not certain that we ever really got that fixed. This issue of NOT practicing mistakes is extremely important. Parents shouldn’t give worksheets as busy work and teachers should only use them if you are going to have a non-math teacher substitute. White boards with supervision are always a better way to practice skills. If you need some time to do chores, your child will get much more benefit by helping you with the chores. And maybe you can work in a little discussion of numbers or counting while you do chores together.
2. Math worksheets don’t promote critical thinking. Math worksheets rarely ask students to think critically or creatively. They usually present multiple examples of the same problem type with the hope of reinforcing a skill or procedure. They do not challenge students to use higher order thinking skills such as comparing, analyzing, deducing, and synthesizing. These skills are built through activities in which students discover concepts, explore ideas, test a hypothesis, solve a problem, and discuss their thinking with their peers. Exploring concepts and problems in many different ways builds interest and promotes critical thinking. 3. Math worksheets don’t promote communication and collaboration. Math worksheets are often assigned as an independent activity, however research indicates that communication and discourse are needed to build a deep understanding of math topics. Students need opportunities to explore mathematical ideas in different ways and to build their own connections. This involves communicating their ideas, listening to the ideas of others, arguing a viewpoint, describing, and explaining. Math worksheets are rarely used as a catalyst for conversation. Instead of assigning worksheets, find activities that encourage discourse, such as ”number talks,” or collaborative group work. During the session, be sure to require students to explain their thinking and listen to the strategies and thinking of their peers. If you are fortunate enough to have an interactive whiteboard in your classroom, using it with interactive math software creates many opportunities for group discussion and student participation. Teachers can can begin by posing problems and modeling approaches, and then ask students to work together to find solutions. Then have them come to the board to demonstrate their solutions in front of the class. These days, many examples of how to teach math concepts on an interactive whiteboard can be found online in the various whiteboard community sites, educational sites, YouTube, etc.
Recent Post
Categories
Archive
Most Popular
Tag Cloud
thinking puzzles with answers 5th grade social studies worksheets math worksheets addition and subtraction with regrouping math fact sheets 2nd grade basic math practice partitioning decimal numbers worksheet graph paper design tool pre primary worksheets grade 2 math topics addition word problems year 3 tutoring club integer symbol adding and subtracting fractions and mixed numbers worksheet 7th grade math integers printable worksheets math quiz for grade 6 multiplication table quiz printableLatest Review
Latest News
Recent Post
Terms of UsePrivacy PolicyCookie PolicyContactCopyrightAbout
© 2021 Onedayinsandiego. All rights reserved.