Okay, I'm a dinosaur--I love printable math worksheets! Let me tell you why.
I get depressed every time I read something in the newspaper about American schooling.
We're always behind!
We lag most developed nations in mathematics proficiency. In a recent study, the U. S. ranked 24 out of 29 developed nations. We were behind Poland, Hungary, and Spain!
What's worse, is we're falling farther and farther behind. Another study done only a few years before ranked us in the middle of the pack, not at the end.
What's the cause?
One researcher, Tom Loveless at the Brookings Institution in Washington, says that our standardized tests are too easy. Which is why when we only look at what's happening in our country, it looks like we're gaining ground, but when compared internationally, we're actually falling behind.
Loveless places the blame on the fact that we've "downplayed arithmetic." He says American students don't understand how to work with fractions, as well as decimals.
I would have to say as a professional teacher, I've found that to be the case.
My fifteen and sixteen year old students come to me incapable of adding one third and one half without a calculator. Even with a calculator, they can't do it eighty percent of the time.
If we believe Loveless, what's needed is focused attention on a very narrow, but oh so important, area of elementary math, arithmetic.
One of my favorite strategies for helping students with these problems is to find something specific they have a problem with (not hard), then teach them how to do it, and have them do a lot of practice with printable math worksheets.
Printable math worksheets are great in that they are naturally focused, and also a student's progress is easily measurable.
Here's the article in the Washington Post where I read about our international rankings in test scores.
There are a number of sites on the Net where you can download math worksheets.
Also, here's a subscription based website that gives you access to not only more worksheets than you could ever use, but a lot of other teaching tools.
Just click here to access it.
I'd love to know about your experiences with math worksheets. Just let me know.
