Thinking about Worksheets

Franki from A Year of Reading has been posting about 21st Century literacies and today I found her link to Wesley Fryer's post about worksheets. After reading this and Wesley's article about Back to School Night, I began to wonder yet again about how I teach and learn with my students. Later I found this link from Katie at Creative Literacy.

I have already spent some time (but not nearly enough) thinking about how to encourage my students to "think more deeply". The plethora of worksheets and the impending death of overworked copy machines seems to correlate well with these thoughts. I guess that I really need to spend time planning how to integrate more collaborative problem-solving activities into our daily learning time.

My most recent try: integrating Daily Slice of Life writing. Pros: more writing, more child engagement, more sharing Cons: not enough teacher feedback, no home connection

Next idea: Poem in your Pocket Day. Pros: fluency practice, student engagement, sharing, possible integration of technology with DVD of students reading poems