Breaking News: High School Is Not Supposed to be Boring

       Too many parents have this idea that says, "If it was good enough when I was in high school, than it's good enough for my kids."  Of course, they hated it when they were in high school.  But for some reason, they are "OK" with the same boring classes and senseless assignments for their own children.

       I'm talking about high school classes with:

• students sitting in rows
• teacher always standing in the front of the room
• worksheets, worksheets, worksheets
• very little (or none) students discussing, asking questions, or working together
• homework on stuff they already know how to do
• no use of educational technology

       I've seen high school classrooms with multiple students who have their heads on their desks and the teacher seems to be "OK" with this.  Too many classes in which the teacher asks the class something like, "Do you understand?" and one student says "Yes" and the teacher assumes that everyone in the class understands.  And the students know that this is going to happen and they don't want to say out loud that they don't get it.  I've actually heard parents say to their children, "School is supposed to be boring.  That's just the way it is."  They believe this and (now) their children believe this.

       I've got breaking news for all of the parents and students who believe that school is supposed to be boring.

It does not have to be this way.

       Think about your favorite teacher in high school.  Or think about your child's favorite teacher in high school.  What makes this teacher so special?  Why does this teacher stand out among all of the high school teachers you've ever had?  Was he or she boring?  Do they appear to not care if you passed or failed?  Of course not.  We've got lots of high school teachers who work hard every day to engage their students in the learning.  They believe that it is their responsibility to ensure that all students are learning; and they understand that students cannot learn solely by sitting and listening.  

       Learning requires doing, talking, listening, questioning, arguing (at times), trying and failing and trying again.  Students need to get out of their seats during class from time to time (or everyday)--especially in high school classes that last 80 or 90 minutes.  High school students should work in small groups without the teacher for part of the class.  They do it in elementary school and middle school; so they can do it in high school too.  We have teachers who understand this very well and they establish a true learning environment in their classrooms.  Students know that these teachers really care about their learning and they make an effort to encourage the learning everyday.

       High school isn't supposed to be boring.  Learning rarely happens in the context of "boring".  Compliance may happen; memorization may happen; even decent grades may happen.  But learning won't happen.  And if learning isn't happening, then what's the point of school?

The Case Against Worksheets

The Case Against Worksheets

       The "worksheet" has been a staple of the P-12 educational experience for students for the past 30 to 40 years--maybe longer.  The advent of the mimeograph machine and then the photocopier made the duplicating of massive amount of worksheets easy, cheap, and increasing common.  Today there are multiple websites with pre-made worksheets for math, reading, geography, science, and just about any other school subject.  Some teachers love using worksheets.  Some use a worksheet everyday or nearly everyday.  In middle and high school math classes, students sitting in rows in the classroom and independently completing 20 or more math problems on a worksheet is an iconic image that many parents remember as a child and still expect to happen to their children today.

       The problem with the massive use of worksheets in today's classrooms is that they represent the opposite of everything we now know about how students learn best and what we hope to accomplish in our schools.  Math worksheets in particular go against many of the tenets of good learning and good teaching.  Here is my short list of why worksheets are a poor choice for today's classrooms:

1. Worksheets are boring.
2. Worksheets discourage students from working and learning together.
3. Worksheets are often very low on the rigor scale.

Boring

       I often say to my teachers that it isn't our job to entertain students, but it is part of our responsibility to motivate students to do their best.  The old days of the teachers who basically use the "Because I say so" theory of teaching is over.  Students may do what they are told, but they won't like it.  So the next question is, "Why do we care if the students 'like it' or not."  And the answer is student engagement.  The Glossary of Education Reform says the following about students engagement:

...the concept of "students engagement" is predicated on the belief that learning improves when students are inquisitive, interested, or inspired, and that learning tends to suffer when students are bored, dispassionate, disaffected, or otherwise "disengaged."

       Simply put, there is no educational reason for a student to complete 20 (basically) identical math problems.  If they know how to do solve the problem, then completing about three should provide sufficient evidence that they can do it.  If they don't know how to solve the problem, then they won't be able to solve 20 problems.  Or, they will make the same mistake 20 times and be very upset to discover this mistake the next day when the class goes over the answers.

Students Working Together

       When there are 30 students sitting in class and learning something new, most won't fully understand everything there is to know about the new learning right away.  Some will try to link the new learning to past learning; some will try to memorize the steps or the procedures; some will just take notes and not really understand anything right away.  When the teacher assigns classwork that is meant to be done independently, students have a lot of questions.  Some will ask their questions, but most won't because they don't want the teacher to think that they don't get it; or they don't want their classroom peers to think that they are stupid.  Some students won't even know what questions to ask.

       However, when students are encouraged to work in groups of (say) two to four students AND when they are encouraged to ask each other questions, they are much more likely to ask their question(s) and to help each other.  Each person in the group may understand a different piece of the new learning and together they can help each other.  Additionally, we know that when students can explain what they are doing, they understand the concepts much better than when they merely answer questions or solve problems independently.

Rigor

       Although not always the case, worksheets tend to emphasize low-level, procedural skills such as following steps to solve a problem, or defining a word, or finding a fact from a reading passage.  While we want students to have these skills, I question the need to constantly repeat this (worksheet) activity for the purpose of helping students to gain these skills.  In today's classrooms, we want to emphasize thinking and reasoning and problem solving.  We want students to recognize particular situations that require particular skills or procedures.

• What formula do I need for this problem?
• What further information do I need to determine before I move forward?
• I'm not sure what to do, but I'll try this first and see what happens and progress based on this "first try" experience.

       In the math world, we now use activities called Math Tasks.  (For some great examples, see youcubed, nrich, (also here), and MARS.)  Math tasks cover the same content as worksheets, but they require more than merely asking students to repeat what they heard a few minutes ago when the initial lesson was taught.  Good math tasks begin with some basic information and slowly increase the level of rigor as the tasks goes on.  Students spend the same amount of time in class on a math task as they would on a worksheet, but instead of doing the same thing over and over (20 or more times), they are pushed to think about the new learning in new ways.

       This sort of rigor is better suited for students to work in groups than to work individually.  Group work is more amenable to higher-level problem solving that requires input and ideas from multiple people.  The group members can discuss and debate the different solution methods and (hence) they can gain a stronger understanding of concept or standard being discussed.


        I could go on...

       Worksheets, at their worst, are used to keep students busy during precious class time.  In fact, many students refer to worksheets as "busy work".  Even the students know that (sometimes) teachers are just using worksheets to fill time in the class.  And this is time that could be better spent with student-to-student discourse or whole-class discourse at much higher levels than the simple worksheet could ever achieve.  Worksheets do not promote learning beyond simple recall and following procedures.

       Worksheets are "old school".  Worksheets do not prepare our students for their future.  Worksheets should be (very) infrequently used in today's classrooms if we truly intend to prepare our students for life after high school.

Make Math Meaningful: Math Tasks

       The days of the boring worksheets in math class and the word problems about the train leaving New York are over.

       Well...actually, they're not over.  But they should be over.

       We already know that most students (and adults) do not learn new things very well just by listening to someone explaining it; after which the teacher often says something like, "Does anyone have any questions?"  This is when the students want to say, "How can we have any questions about this?  You just taught it to us one minute ago.  (And then they get a worksheet.)

       This is passive learning.  This learning promotes adherence to procedures and getting-the-right-answer over true learning and understanding.  Some students do fine and some students do not; and it is simply not acceptable to engage in teaching strategies that don't help all of our students.

       Math classes should be places where students are actively engaged in their learning.  Students are presented with a problem or a task and they work in groups to brainstorm ideas based on the objectives that they have been recently learning.  The final answer can be reached via multiple solution methods and (most importantly) the students are using and learning mathematics simultaneously.  Finally, students are able to explain what they are doing (teaching others) which is a way for students to demonstrate their understanding.

       Math Tasks are written to be activities that students can do in small groups in their math classrooms under the direction and supervision of their math teacher.  Math Tasks are meant to take the place of the old 20-problem-worksheets during class time.  Instead of students working quietly and independently, they are working together with other students: learning from each other and sharing their ideas.

       There are many online resources that have wonderful math tasks.  Some of my favorites are:

• Illustrative Mathematics
• Go to Content Standards, then chose a Grade, then chose a Domain, then chose a cluster, then chose a standard and you'll see a list of Math Tasks.
• Mathematics Assessment Project (MAP)
• Click on Tasks and see a list of middle school and high school Math Tasks.
• Inside Mathematics
• Click on Performance Assessment Tasks and chose a grade or course to see a list of Math Tasks

      Math Tasks model the way math is done in the real world.  That's where you are presented with a problem and you have to decide which resources to use to find a path to the answer.  There is more than one way to get the answer and sometimes there is more than one possible answer.  Math Tasks help our students to understand mathematics.

No More Worksheets!

       Here is a very simple test to determine the effectiveness of your child's mathematics teacher...

Question 1: Does you your child's mathematics teacher assign a lot of worksheets for homework and classwork?

If the answer is YES - Not a very effective teacher.
If the answer is NO - Likely to be a more effective teachers.



       This idea is a major shift in thinking for a lot of people--both for teachers and for non-teacher-parents alike.  Some would say, "How can you say worksheets are bad?"  Or, "I used worksheets when I was in school and I turned out fine."  And the internet is certainly full of sites with pre-made worksheets that are frequently downloaded and used by teachers.  So (I guess) the next argument is, "If so many teachers are still using worksheets, then why are they so bad?"  Here's why:

#1: We want students to understand the mathematics that they are learning.  Worksheets tend to encourage students to blindly follow procedures without knowing why they are doing what they are doing.  Students might get the answers correct, but if the problems were changed slightly they wouldn't know what to do because they never learned the "Why" of the procedures that they were using.

#2: If students know how to do something, then why do they have to do it 20 times?  It seems to me that if they can do it two or three times, that would be a sufficient amount of proof that they have learned the skill.  If a students does not know how to do something, then why are we forcing them to do something 20 times that they cannot do?  Have you ever completed a worksheet only to find that you made the same mistake on all 20 problems--and got everything wrong?

#3:  Worksheets are not engaging.  In Robert Marzano's book The Highly Engaged Classroom, we learn that students are more able to learn new concepts when they are engaged in the lesson.  He offers many strategies for increasing student engagement.  Worksheets tend to be boring and repetitive and very discouraging in terms of engaging students.

#4: We want students to communicate and collaborate with their peers during the learning process.  As students struggle with a new topic, it is valuable for them to know to ask questions and to try different approaches to solving a problem.  We call this Productive Struggle (also see here and here and here).  When students do worksheets, they are often working in isolation.  They are discouraged from talking at all with other students.  This creates a classroom in which students are expected to listen to the teacher lecturing and only to the teacher and then to learn the new content based on what they heard.  We know that this is not an effective method for learning (see The Learning Pyramid graphic).

       One reason that teachers like worksheets is that they are used to help control student discipline in the classroom.  Some teachers are not comfortable with students talking to each other and asking each other questions because they are concerned about losing control of their classes.  But we know that when students are engaged in an activity, they are focused on the activity and not distracted by anything else.  There is a benefit to allowing students to talk with each other.  And there are many strategies that can be used to do this in a productive and organized manner in the classroom.

     
       One of these strategies is the use of Math Tasks.  Math Tasks encourage critical thinking, student discussion, and questioning from students that lead to better understanding of mathematics concepts.  Many sources offer great Math Tasks for teachers to use.  Here are just a couple of them: Inside Mathematics and Mathematics Assessment Project.

       The goal of our public schools is learning.  We must use the best thinking we have to encourage thinking and learning among our students.  We don't want students to merely "complete" courses, we want them to learn, to understand, to retain knowledge, and to build upon their learned knowledge.