Can I use interactive worksheets to beat busywork?

Worksheets get a bad rap in today’s classroom. They often immediately get labeled as busywork and students shut down as soon as teachers hand out worksheets. But, it doesn’t have to be like that. Worksheets are essential formative assessment tools in any classroom. We will do a deep dive on what makes a worksheet effective and how you can start making more interactive worksheets and activities for your students with TeacherMade. 

Assessment isn’t grading. Exams, worksheets, and tests are simply a vessel for assessment. Assessment can be anything, and according to the Center for Teaching Innovation at Cornell University, it  just needs to answer two questions:

1. Did my students learn what I set out to teach them?

2. What should I change so they can learn it better?

That’s it. But it’s easier said than done. We often get stuck in routines: all tests need x amount of questions, there’s always a worksheet each week for spelling, and the district wants me to give an assessment every grading quarter. It’s a lot! When you’re trying to check many boxes with your assessments, you may be missing the core purpose of checking in with your students' learning.

It’s important to measure student learning. That’s what informs our decisions as educators. 

A helpful way to look at assessment is through the lens of formative and summative assessment.

Formative assessments are informal ways we check in with students to see if they are learning as they go. Formative assessment is the more informal of the two and is frequently happening inside a classroom. It can be an exit slip, verbal questions to students, a thumbs up to quickly poll the class if they understand. Teachers can adjust their instruction and differentiate it for certain students as they go.

There is some disagreement in the education community about whether or not formative assessment, like worksheets, should be graded. But that’s your call. You know your students and their level of discipline and work ethic. If you do assign them a grade, make sure it’s a lower-stakes grade. This way, your students will feel more confident taking risks.

Summative assessment sums up learning. So it typically comes at an endpoint of a chapter, unit, or even a period of time. The goal of summative assessment is to measure student learning more formally, assign a grade, and use the ensuing data to adjust teaching based on the outcomes. 

Worksheets can function as both formative and summative assessments. 

Worksheets can live in the realm of formative assessment. There are times our students need to practice a skill or just need a quick way to test themselves. Bell work is a great example of this kind of activity. 

Worksheets can also measure all the learning that students have done in a period. They just need to represent all of your learning outcomes so you can adequately measure student learning. (And honestly, what’s the difference between a worksheet and an open-note or open-book test.)

Often worksheets get a terrible reputation as being labeled as busywork. There are few reasons for this. The first is that worksheets are often too long and repetitive. Ask yourself, can my students gain skills and perform more meaningful work from doing a smaller set of questions? Try shortening some of your worksheets to see the effect they have on student engagement. 

Another gripe is that worksheets involve practicing skills that are disconnected and separate from real-world skills. An example of this is the classic grammar worksheet that aims to isolate a single grammatical principle and has students repeat this skill. The student can likely benefit more from writing authentically and demonstrating the skill in action. 

At the core, worksheets can become more meaningful when educators tie them to a goal and purpose that students and teachers both understand. Connecting worksheets to the idea of practicing a skill can help. Instead of copying a worksheet from a resource or another teacher, stop and consider the goals that you are trying to accomplish for your students in your classroom. 

It can be time-consuming to create or edit new worksheets. That’s what makes TeacherMade such a great online assignment maker. TeacherMade converts your traditional worksheets into online interactive activities. It’s actually quite simple to do:

How to make a worksheet interactive using TeacherMade

Step 1: Upload a PDF (or .docx, .jpg, .png, .gif)

Step 2: Add fields for student responses using the tools provided. Currently there are 15 different question types supported. 

Step 3: Add the answers for auto-grading (available for 13 of 15 types).

Step 4: Send the assignment to your students via Google Classroom, Canvas, or Schoology.

Step 5: Get instant feedback and results.

When you are uploading your worksheets to TeacherMade, it allows you to adapt activities you already have to the needs of your students. You no longer need to try to force a paper or PDF worksheet to fit your instructional objectives just because it’s already made. In TeacherMade, you can change the printed page! There are tools to white out sections, to type new questions or activities, and even to add in video, audio, and links to external sites on the web.

TeacherMade allows you to adapt your resources to fit your students’ learning right at the moment. The best part is that TeacherMade integrates perfectly into distance learning platforms like Google Classroom. 

There are very few educational apps that let you convert your paper resources into digital interactivities. I’ve tried them all: Kami, Liveworksheets, Wizer, and even TpT’s Easel. None of them have the power and easy workflow that you find in TeacherMade. 

If you want to transform busywork into tightly aligned learning activities that students get excited about, try TeacherMade. It’s free, full-featured, and your students will ask you for more. (Not kidding. :)

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Jessica Crosby was an award-winning HS Teacher in Nashville, TN until 2020. Now she’s doing the hardest job of all-- being a full-time mom. Jessica is also a part-time education writer with Crosby Digital Marketing.