Beware the worksheet trap.

Worksheets are useful tools in any teachers arsenal.  During the Covid 19 pandemic many schools were forced to send out worksheets to their learners as a means to continue teaching. It works well as it is easy to send out via Whatsapp or can be downloaded from the internet. Unfortunately we have seen an overuse of worksheets in recent years, especially in the foundation phase. This can be attributed to large classrooms and overworked teachers. Worksheets in the foundation phase are easy to mark as they often only requires writing a word or a number for an answer. This saves time and more work can be done. But why is this a problem? 

Many children struggle with creative writing and mathematics when they reach the intermediate phase. 

The problem in creative writing is they never learned how to write proper full sentences. The more you practice writing sentences, the better your vocabulary and sentence construction will be. For creative writing I often explain to children the use of adverbs and adjectives by using a simple sentence and then re-writing it with adverbs and adjectives. For example: The man walks down the street. The old man slowly walks down the dirty street. Next I will just give adverbs and adjectives and they must write their own sentence. For example: pretty, loudly, funny. The pretty girl laughs loudly at the funny clown.  Many children struggle with this reverse exercise. They are unable to write their own sentences because they are used to just filling in the adverbs or adjectives.

In Mathematics they never learn how to show all the steps they took to reach the answer. In the foundation phase many worksheets include lines drawn and plus or minus signs already added. Children just write in the answer. See example below. It is from the following website   https://mathematics-at-school.com/

 

In the intermediate phase children are expected to show the method they used to calculate the answer. Even if their answer is wrong, they can still receive marks for the method used, if it is shown. See example below.

If you want to help your child, let him or her write out sentences when doing work at home. Make them do the calculations on a separate piece of paper and then only fill in the answer on their worksheet. Remember practice makes perfect!