From Worksheet to Art Project

Wanna hear one of my new teacher confessions?

I hate worksheets. Despise them actually. I remember completing all of those worksheets as a kid or the mountain of papers my kids bring home and I wonder why. Why in this day and age are we still asking students to complete copious amounts of worksheets?

Sure they are easy to make copies, use them, and grade them but do they have a high engagement value, is there a high value of information conveyed, and if we send them home do they ever come back and/or get looked at?

Here's a picture of one of my littles working on a math worksheet. If you notice the red at the top of the page you will see my notes. This is suppose to be a review activity but a majority of my kiddos don't get it.

(If you read my previous post you saw their grades! YIKES! Yes, this post is backwards as this came before the test but I hope you will forgive me.)

I spent the entire class period running around the room offering 1:1 help on how to complete this. My cooperating teacher is a genius at turning things into art projects/anchor charts. So after we checked to make sure everyone got it right...

We had them cut the chart into pieces. Yep... it became a giant puzzle!

The students had to match all of their answers up again. For an additional challenge and skill... we had them but the decimals in order from greatest to least, glue those ones down first and then recreate it the rest of the chart.

Brilliant! Now this... this type of worksheet project I can handle! We hung them up for a few days in the hall to show off our latest student-made anchor charts.

Oh and before I forget to tell you, BEFORE we cut it out the students had to complete the backside of the worksheet and get it approved prior to starting the project.