Five Ways to Make Language Worksheets More Engaging
I am not against using worksheets in the World Language classroom; in fact, I think worksheets have a purpose when used in a pedagogically intentional way, and I don’t think worksheets should be seen as lazy or uninspired teaching. In my own teaching practice, worksheets serve as a critical component to my instructional sequence, as they allow my students to practice vocabulary or grammar concepts, receive feedback, self-correct, and make improvements to their work—which, ultimately, leads to increased learning gains.
With that being said, I do think that worksheets can be dull and uninteresting for students, especially if implemented in the same way time after time. In this blog post, I’m going to share five ways that you can make your French, Spanish, or Italian worksheets more engaging for your students.
Gamify the Worksheet
Students respond well to games and challenges. Turn your worksheet into a high-stakes game or challenge, and watch the engagement level of your students rise exponentially! You can do this in a few ways:
Put students in teams and add a timer - first team to finish the worksheet or to demonstrate the highest accuracy once the timer rings will be declared the winning team!
Have students work in pairs to complete a worksheet. Then, have each pair trade worksheets with an adjacent pair in order to correct their worksheet. Post the answers, and whichever pair has the highest accuracy will be declared the winning pair!
Attach some sort of prize to the worksheet completion: any student who completes the worksheet is entitled to the prize! It could be a sticker, a homework pass, or any other incentive you have available.
Feel free to add stipulations. For example, I do an activity where students must do the following: 1) Complete the worksheet. 2) Come up to the side table in my classroom that has the answer key and check their work. 3) Make corrections. 4) Fill out a self-evaluation form (linked below) 5) Grab a prize!
Turn the Worksheet into a Task Cards Activity
If your worksheet has 25 questions, you can turn the worksheet into a 25-question task card activity. Cut out each question—you may need to type up the questions in a Google Doc, increase the font size, and skip a few lines between each question—and tape them around your classroom. Give students an Answer Sheet, or have them take out a sheet of paper and number from 1 to 25. Have students walk around your classroom with their Answer Sheet (and a clipboard, if you have them!). They will write down each question and then answer it before moving on to the next question. At the end, post the answer key so students can self-correct their work.
Deconstructing a worksheet in this way provides students with the same amount of practice, but they don’t “feel” like they are practicing in quite the same way as when they are stationary at their desk filling out a worksheet.
You could also turn this into a scavenger hunt, where students have to find the questions located around your room (or in your corner of the hallway, if appropriate!).
Personalize the Content
Students respond well to personalized content: they love seeing themselves reflected in class activities. I have a super easy and efficient way of doing this. I distribute a Google Form to my students, which contains one question that I want them to answer. For example, during my Sports/Hobbies Unit, I ask my students to respond to the question: “What do you like to do in your free time?” Students respond to the question, and I look at the responses. When formulating my worksheet, I copy and paste their responses into a Google Doc, clean them up, and change around the subject pronouns. I will then delete portions of the text and replace them with _______’s. For example, here’s what a few of my questions would look like (in the target language, of course):
Sophia _________________ to play basketball. (likes)
Jasmine and Colin like to _______ the trumpet.
“I like to send text ___________,” said Stephen.
Target Proficiency
True/False, Multiple Choice, and Fill-In-The-Blank activities have their purpose, for sure, but they do not move the needle forward all that much in terms of increasing student proficiency. To combat this, I like to keep a 1:1 ratio between worksheets that I consider to be “language practice” (i.e. vocabulary matching, grammar drills, conjugation practice, etc.) and “proficiency boosters” (i.e. writing prompts, reading tasks, speaking activities, etc.).
Think about how you can target students’ language proficiency while also getting them to practice the skill you would like them to work on. For example, if you’re having students practice definite articles, perhaps they are responsible for writing brief sentences using articles. “The dog is cute. The girl goes to school. The boys like to swim” etc.
Have students create the class worksheets!
Who says that we as teachers need to do all of the resource creation in our classes? Have your students submit different types of questions, compile them into a worksheet (be sure to clean them up for accuracy, though!), and have students complete the worksheet! I’ll usually make these worksheets digital because it’s much easier for students to submit questions to me via a Google Form, and then all I have to do is copy and paste them into a Google Doc, fix the formatting, and voilà — all set! I’ll push out the Google Doc via Google Classroom, and the students can work on the assignment for classwork or for homework.
I hope that these ideas have been helpful to you. We don’t need to completely reinvent the way in which we teach. Worksheets have been used for decades, and for good reason! We just need to adapt their utility to the changing times, changing student interests, changing attention spans, etc. Do you have any other creative ideas for making your language worksheets more interesting for your students? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below!
Happy language teaching,
~ Michael
