The Fog of Worksheets

Ok, serious-time now.

I’m under the sneaking suspicion that my students need worksheets. I’ve been giving them worksheets for classwork/ homework and it has gone over well-relevant questions, library silence, heads down working, wheels turning, soon to build a better democracy. It almost seems that over the years students are conditioned to this type of work. I feel that students see worksheets as a primary way of learning. Does this mean that they devalue our think, pair, share discussions? The worksheet wasn’t a fill in the blank-thing it asked some difficult critical questions. Has anyone else had this experience with worksheets-the uncanny level of silence that sweeps over a rowdy sixth-period class when they are given a worksheet task?

Oh, also did anyone discuss the VTech shootings with their students? I did and got some really mixed reviews. We used this to lead into Keats with the ‘life-cut-short theme.’ After the initial discussion on Tuesday, my students got really pretty pissy about having to read an article related to the shooting, write a response and then discuss. It seemed that every other teacher in the school had been using the tragedy as a teachable moment, thus burning out my students. Just wanted to see what reactions others got.