Sometimes you just want to break up the monotony of class work and assessment like a demolition team breaks up an old high rise. Dynamiting your lesson plans is a drastic measure. You’ll need them tomorrow. But wouldn’t it be nice if, just for today, you could demolish a standard-issue, prewritten unit test and replace it with something fun, something lively, and something that would still assess your students’ learning?
So you find ten extra minutes in your afterschool-insanity-slash-unwinding-hour to write your own test, quiz, or worksheet. And—oh, yes!—you have cleverly created a cross-curricular work of pure genius. “I have to write a book for The Mailbox,” you tell yourself.
There are surer ways to success than the one you just embarked upon. With luck and the wind at your back, the quiz is well-received, students’ answers are thoughtful and complete, and you’re able to adequately assess learning without resorting to the same-old, same-old.
Unless you screw up. You think you have written a funny question, but it ends up being so confusing that your students come out of the quiz thinking Meriwether Lewis did officiate the marriage of Justin Bieber to Sacagawea on the banks of the upper Missouri River. Worse yet, a parent comes back to you wondering how you got your teacher certification when you think “d. 1970s sitcom ‘Love, American Style’” is an appropriate multiple choice answer for a math test. It happened recently in Georgia, where a firestorm of trouble descended upon the teacher, principal, and school district for what was certainly a far more incendiary teacher-created worksheet.
Back in the pre-Cambrian era when I was a teacher, I created a small library of worksheets and quizzes and, in a few instances, tests to assess my students. I think we all do it at one time or another. Maybe even often. Furthermore, The Mailbox only exists because teachers like you create your own lessons and generate your own ideas in order to make learning fun and bring a little extra creativity to a classroom.
We want to encourage you to keep it up! No matter the backlash that may sweep across the profession as a result of one teacher’s missteps, the best learning and the best assessment comes from caring, creative teachers. That’s you. We love your ideas and know you’ll keep coming to The Mailbox for classroom-tested resources that work.
Share your stories of teacher-created worksheets and assessments with us in the comments. We’d love to hear your stories.