Random Thoughts

Last spring I wrote a number of posts about worksheets and my efforts to eliminate them from my adult ed classes at the time. I was moderately successful in doing that in an environment that consisted of worksheets. Now, however, I am in a totally different situation. And I find that I have no trouble avoiding worksheets — even though I have no textbooks.

The main way that I do this is by using a whiteboard and having students use a composition book. Instead of filling in a chart on a worksheet, they copy the framework of the chart I have put on the board into their composition books. Instead of answering questions on a worksheet, they copy the questions from the board into their composition books and then answer them. It has worked really well. But, on some levels, this isn’t that much different from having them fill in a worksheet, is it? All I am saving is the paper.

As a language teacher, I think there is value in the practice of keeping these composition books above eliminating worksheets. I think that every time students write it themselves, they have invested a little more in the activity. If I hand them a worksheet, they can complete it almost without any personal investment. And that means they probably learn less from the experience.

For the most part I am content that I am not just giving students busy work, but it is something that I still need to reflect on more. It isn’t enough just to eliminate the worksheets; I have to make the learning more meaningful all the time.

In my efforts to eliminate worksheets and as a result of some of the awesome ideas I got from the teacher’s institute I went to last weekend, I am struck by a simple truth:

If a student can miss class and get the worksheets later on, there is little incentive to come to class.
If a student comes class and misses an experience that can’t be duplicated, then there is a lot more reason to make an effort to show up.

Of course, this awareness isn’t going to be automatic. Students don’t have any way of knowing now that there are a lot more experiences to be had in class. But I think that they will figure it out pretty quickly.

I know you’ve seen it: Will’s post about tests and cheating. Probably his shortest post, but one of the most important, I think.

If kids cheat on tests today, it is largely our fault. If we use fill-in-the-blank tests, we obviously don’t really want students to think too deeply, so what does it matter if they cheat? The same is true of “essays” copied from the encyclopedia or whatever. We need to craft assignments and assessment tools that require students to create something, to synthesize information, to express opinions and back them up with “facts”. I wrote about this last year a couple times.

This is tied, of course, to my current struggle with worksheets. I am happy with how this term is going so far without worksheets in two classes. We are having more quality discussion. Students are writing more and better. It has been hard to get this all organized, but it is worth the effort. At the end of the term, I will know that my students have learned something. Also, I feel like a tremendous weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I am enjoying my classes a lot more. Even more important, my students seem to be enjoying them more, too.

But back to tests… In one class, we are eliminating the end-of-term test and replacing it with portfolios of the students’ writing. We are allowing students to select 5 from among 12 pieces of writing, some of it more complicated than others. This is something new for our students, so it will be interesting to see how they respond to it. In the other class, I think I will give them a test but ask them to respond to “essay” questions. They will be similar to questions we have answered in class in writing and orally, so I don’t think it will be too hard. At least I hope it won’t. The writing will be personal and pertinent. I am not sure exactly what this will look like yet, but I know it will be better than the usual tests they have to take. And they won’t really be able to cheat. Not substantially, anyway.

I am excitied to see what happens. These next 6 weeks are going to be fun!

Both Angie and Gabriela responded to my last post about eliminating worksheets. And I owe them a response, so here it is.

Gabriela, I really appreciate your comments. I have changed a little what I want them to do, so there will be lots of sharing before the end. And as soon as I read your comments about the grammar, that all came together for me, too. I still have some work to do, but it is nearly finished. Thanks for your encouragement.

As to why we use worksheets in the program I teach in… I am not sure. But it is easy for the people who buy into it. I know that there was no money in the beginning, and I think they were doing the best they could, but it is not at all in keeping with any kind of current thought about ESL teaching that I am aware of. We had a meeting about the curriculum last week, and there was a lot of discontent when the director said we were going to choose a textbook series and use it next year. Change is difficult for a lot of us.

Angie, you raise some great points. There is so little time and so much to do that worksheets are a big help. But most workshets don’t require students to think or to really make much effort at all. They don’t promote skills that extend beyond the worksheet. They don’t, really, promote learning.

This is where I struggle with the concept of worksheets, though. Students need practice. Worksheets have traditionally provided that practice. If I want students to practice using a particular verb tense, for example, it would be easy to have them complete worksheets where they fill in the correct form of the verb. If I don’t do that, are they getting enough practice? I am not sure. But I know that no matter how many worksheets I give them to complete, they aren’t going to be able to use the correct verb in free speech or writing. So the practice doesn’t guarantee they will be able to produce the form in real life.

I try to give my students a lot of practice with whatever we are learning. We talk a lot in class and they have to write fairly regularly. It isn’t as much practice as they could get from a worksheet, but I think it is higher quality practice. It has more carryover to real life, I think. I hope.

One thing I need to make clear is that I am not trying to judge anyone here. We all do what seems best to us at a particular time. Have I used worksheets? Sure! Will I use them again? Probably.

What this is about for me is reflective practice. The worksheets I was using weren’t ones I had invested in at all; they were given to me to use. In an attempt to make these classes my own, I have moved away from those worksheets. In an attempt to make the class more meaningful for my students and more cohesive, I have moved away from them. But if there comes a time when I think my students need a quick review of something or if there seems to be some other reason to use worksheets, I will most likely use them on a limited basis. But they will be reintroduced to my classes after reflection. That makes all the difference, I think.

Last week I wrote about my decision to eliminate worksheets from 2 of the courses I teach. One of them, my Intermediate class, will be pretty easy. The other instructor of that level and I have been modifying the stated curriculum to make it more meaningful for our students, and I don’t use many worksheets with them anyway. The other class, though, is proving to be a little harder.

I am the only teacher of the Beginning II class. As a result, I have a lot of autonomy, but I miss having someone to discuss the changes with. I need to stick pretty much to the curriculum, I think, until we make changes this summer. I teach two classes of this level, and each will have 24 hours of instruction before the term ends. I am supposed to cover workplace safety, finding a job, future tenses with “going to” and “will” and prepositions. The worksheets that have been prepared for this term are a hodge podge of things, with no apparent attempt to connect the topical content and the grammar content. We have no textbook for the course; those worksheets are all I have to build the course on.

That is, of course, a blessing. It opens the door for me to do basically whatever I want — as long as it touches on those topics. I have decided that I am going to modify the test I give students at the end of the term to reflect the more communicative nature of my class, so I am not strictly bound to the test. I do, however, feel I need to cover those topics.

I think what I want to do is have students work in groups of three. They will choose a job that interests them. I want that to be the basis of the work they do all six weeks. I want the culminating project to be a sharing of what they have learned about that job. If I had access to technology, I would have students do this on a wiki. Since I don’t, they will have to work on paper and then make an oral presentation, too.

I have to include grammar instruction in here somewhere and somehow. I think that the topics we have to cover are going to be familiar enough to them that it won’t require instruction as much as reminding them of what they already know.

Anyway, I am working on this. Today is Tuesday. I have to be pretty much ready to go with it on Monday evening. Fortunately, I love this kind of work. I am looking forward to seeing what I can do with it.

I have been frustrated with my job for a while now. I wrote about it earlier, when I commented on Woody’s decision not to use worksheets anymore. But yesterday in class things really seemed to come to a head for me. I have students who come to class and do their homework as class is starting. The better students are very quick to respond with the answers when we go over the worksheets, and I feel like others are being left behind. I could try to blame it on our “curriculum”, which is nothing more than a series of worksheets, but I really have to accept more responsibility myself.

So, I want to take a stand here and now. I will eliminate worksheets from two of the three levels I teach. I have a week of spring break to figure out how I can adapt the “curriculum” to something other than a series of worksheets. It is way past time.

I’ve been reading Woody’s blog, edumorphing, for a little while now. A little more than a month ago I wrote about his decision to eliminate worksheets from his classroom, and I have been reading him ever since.

He had a post the other day about change and our role in creating it. He said:

We love to make everything look like it’s alright, even though it’s not. I think its time that we start calling a spade a spade. Do something about it.

I commented there about my situation at work. And it got me thinking.

That same day I was talking with my husband about work, and he told me that I had to speak up more directly and more forcefully than I had. So I did. I don’t know how it went over. It isn’t always easy to tell. But at least I said what I felt.

We are having a meeting next week where all this will come up in front of everyone. It will be a real pivotal meeting for me. I don’t know how it will end up, but I cannot sit quietly, hating the way things are but unwilling to take a public stand.

I have to try to create positive change on an institutional level, not just a personal one. This is what Will was talking about a couple weeks ago and what I wrote about after reading his post. I am not sure, of course, how this will turn out, but I am ready to try.

I started reading edumorphing only a couple weeks ago when Jo wrote about him eliminating worksheets from his teaching. Woody commented on my post that he had, indeed, done that and that he was excited by the prospect. Now he is sharing with us some of what he does instead of worksheets.

He writes:

These students are not used to sharing their voice. It takes many months of explaining to them that their voice counts when it comes to school.

and he closes the post by saying:

Expect creativity and you will get it. Expect the minimum and you will get it.

The same could be said of teachers, couldn’t it?

Thanks to Jo, I came across Woody and his post about eliminating worksheets. He says, among other things, that using worksheets:

1. Uses an unspeakable amount of paper. …
2. Creates teachers that begin to rely on a 1-dimensional teaching method. Introduce… teach… have them fill in the blanks.
3. Creates dependent learners. …
4. Creates a sense of monotony and boredom amongst most students….
5. Dilutes creativity. …
6. Creates a stack of graded worksheets that is taken home and thrown away. …

I am fighting a worksheet-driven curriculum at work. We use worksheets and test according to what is on the worksheets. I use worksheets — but not fill-in-the-blank ones if I can help it. My students write sentences and paragraphs. They read stories. But they aren’t always able to transfer that knowledge to the tests. I wonder if they wouldn’t do better on the tests if I gave them more fill-in-the-blank worksheets.

That isn’t to say that I am thinking of changing the way I teach to include more worksheets. But it does mean that I have to find a way to prepare students for the kind of testing that they will be forced to undergo. I have no say about the testing that is done; I am expected to use the same test everyone else does. So somehow I have to find a way for it to work for my students while not watering down the way I want to teach. I have been spending a lot of time thinking about this, and I don’t know if I have reached a conclusion or not.