I don't know if I have written about worksheets yet, but I feel the need to get some feelings down on them.

Worksheets are awful. Today in Phonics my class began our mini lessons, where each class member prepares a phonics lesson on a word family. Today four of my class members gave their lessons. Three of them used worksheet packets.

I cannot explain the sinking feeling in my chest when I received a packet of papers to fill out. I cannot explain the way my brain drifted away as the classmate explained how to do them. I also cannot explain adequately enough how extremely thrilled I was to have a project to do.

Now I ask you, my readers, if I as a college student had these feeling coursing through me, how much more so does a first grader or kindergartener have these feelings? I understand completely that worksheets are an abominable and almost inescapable way of learning in America. I just don't know why.

As a teacher, it is time consuming and hard work to prepare a lesson that involves activities and supplies. When I am a teacher, however, I will put every ounce of my energy in planning lessons that have minimal teacher-orientated instruction and maximum student-orientated instruction. This means that my students will only have to endure 5-7 minutes out of a 20 minute phonics lesson listening to a lecture about a word family and watching me write words on a board.

They will spend the last 15 minutes writing their own words on a board, in a story together as a group. They will cut and paste together pictures that have to do with the family to make illustrations for their story. Students will have 5-7 minutes where they can use stickers, markers, and various textures such as cotton balls and beans to decorate the pictures in any way they want, with no "educational" motive. They will be able to walk around the room and use resources like a word wall, posters, cards, blocks, and books to find words and things that end with the word family, like a scavenger hunt. They will handle items that end in the word family. They might read books that include the words, or they might complete a life-size word scramble to create words with the word family. They might play a sorting game with two word families that are similar, with real life items. There are a multitude of activities and ideas for students to learn phonics, or math, or science, or writing, and can do it all with minimal instruction from the teacher.

These types of explorative, hands on activities are hard to plan, hard to implement, and hard to control. Yet I think it is a bit more educational, and entirely more motivational, than handing them a paper and telling them to do it.

Worksheets are for home. School is for learning.