The dreaded worksheet! Just the word seems to have become a sort of taboo among educators. There is the ever standing question of whether or not they actually "work". The key to finding the solution to this question is understanding WHEN to use a worksheet. The post "No More Worksheets?" from Madly Learning outlines precisely when worksheets are a good idea, and precisely when they are not. Something important I took away from this post was that it does not entirely trash the notion of using worksheets. The post seeks to push worksheet use towards more higher order thinking and less simple regurgitation onto a page, which is something I believe most educators would seek to achieve.
The important thing to keep in mind about worksheets, is their usefulness for struggling students as well as teacher workload. The blog post "In Defense of The Worksheet" outlines this aspect of worksheets well. In this post Tanya Pierre discusses a worksheet's ability to alleviate the workload for teachers. This is an important thing to discuss, especially with the current state in the field of education.
When you look at a well done worksheet, it is clear that supporting a student's learning by using higher order Bloom's is the most important thing. So how do you rank the other aspects of a worksheet? Surely clarity, function, aesthetics and space are all important? What is it that makes some aspects more essential than others? I have ranked these aspects from most important to least, and given my reasoning for each.
1. Clarity: a worksheet is simply unusable if the instructions for an activity are unclear. This makes clarity the most important feature of worksheets.
2. Space: giving students a suitable amount of space is also imperative for good worksheet creation. Crowded worksheets can make it difficult for students to demonstrate their understanding and thus more difficult for a teacher to mark.
3. Function: a worksheet that functions properly is important so students are able to use it, but also important so that teachers may share resources.
4. Aesthetics: while the appearance of a worksheet can make it more pleasing to look at and more engaging, it ultimately is the least important aspect, as it has little effect on a students learning experience.