Busy Sheets or Power Sheets

Worksheets

Jennifer Gonzales in her podcast Cult of Pedagogy, episode 92, talks about how worksheets have been used as busy sheets to keep students busy and waiting for the time to pass. While worksheets can be used to as a pacifier in class, it can, on the other hand be used to engage the learners better if designed critically. When teachers create worksheets with a goal to engage learners in thinking, collaborating and sharing, it is a great tool in class and thus termed as Power sheets. 

Jennifer moves on to talk about a variety of ways worksheets can be applied in the classroom with better learning. One of the ideas which has been discussed in vast is differentiation. 

Differentiated Worksheets
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Of course worksheets can be powerful tools to aid students learning in a multi-leveled classroom. I am guessing that for all the worksheets handed out, we teacher either discuss the worksheets as a class or individually give feedback to the students who are having problems. As a subject teacher with 150 students with whom we meet only 120 minutes per week, I am wondering whether there are ways to reach the students better with differentiated worksheets...

For those who are interested. Here is the original link to the website and podcast.