Extending worksheets into meaningful lessons

Have you ever encountered a parent or teacher who thought thast worksheets were just a teachers lazy way of keeping children busy? I have had my share of people refer to worksheets as "busy work" or "time wasters." I wish they knew how valuable worksheets can be for learning and assessment; especially when they are used in conjunction with a full lesson. Often times worksheets are given after a lesson is taught to help solidify learning and assess understanding. This week I had the opportunity to start with my worksheet and bring it to a lesson. We completed this shape worksheet together at the table, copyright goes to Teachers Helper.

This is my copy, trust me my 4 year olds don't color this well yet but they are working on it! Anyway, after completing this worksheet we all brought our own copy to the carpet and proceeded in making a graph to compare the number of shapes there were on the page. I also took the opportunity to reinforce shapes and colors during this activity, you can see our graph is very simple, hand drawn but gets the point across. We discussed more/less, same/different and equal. This 20 minute lesson turned into a 40 minute fully engaged discussion on math concepts. It had a mind of its own!

These types of engaged learning lessons can come few and far between especially on a Friday afternoon so I took advantage of every minute of it, moving my next lesson to Monday to accomodate the time schedule. I believe lessons like these are essential for every childs education. Not only do our typical learners get a challenge from lessons like these but our right brained thinkers get the visuals they need, our kinesthetic learners get the movement they need (making shapes with their bodies and hands), and our auditory learners get the reinforcement from the teacher. In my book this is a win win situation for everyone. Whenever we as teahcers can take a piece of something and turn it into a lesson that connects different subjects and boundaries we are getting higher order thinking in the children and answers that come from critical thinking skills that need to be developed early in life. This lesson crossed math, reading, language and listening skills to make a well rounded lesson that every student could learn from. These teachable moments are why I do what I do and are the highlight of my precious time spent with my class. Feel free to copy my graph but please remember that the actual worksheet is copyrighted but you could probably get a copy from www.teachershelper.com archives. Till next time, Christine