- the children have no ownership of the content of the worksheet
- they are also confined by layout; the child has to fit into the worksheet organisa-
tion and way of doing mathematics - most worksheets have closed questions and only one answer; this may make the
situation a testing one for young children - worksheets do not tell what a child knows about mathematics and the way they
are thinking - worksheets do not reveal what the child can do but often what they cannot do
- young children can often get bewildered in finding the sense in a worksheet
- the match of worksheet to child is difficult and children can work below their
actual ability - worksheets that claim to be ‘teaching’ mathematics have sometimes very little
mathematics in them to assess; for example, the typical worksheet with the
numeral two in dots for the children to go over, accompanied by two large bal-
loons to colour in. The child might respond to the teacher’s question, how many
balloons? This takes three seconds and the child traces around the numeral and
colours the balloons. The colouring-in takes 20 minutes or more. The exercise is
really colouring-in and not mathematics!
Importantly, both published and teacher-made worksheets prevent children from
making meaning through their own early marks and written methods. They also
deny them opportunities to translate from their early informal marks to later
abstract symbols. As we have argued in Chapter 5, developing their own early marks
and written methods is the way in which children become bi-numerate.An example of a worksheet
Figure 10.1 is an example of a worksheet done by Susie, a 4-year-old in a reception class
(Carruthers, 1997). This was Susie’s second week in school. What can we assess about
Susie’s knowledge of mathematics from this worksheet? This worksheet was given to a
group of children as a ‘holding task’ while the teacher worked with another small
group of children. The teacher shared his concern with us, over the child’s response to
this task. We might ask ourselves if the child understood the task? If we presume that
she did understand, then we could say she got it wrong. If you look, Susie coloured in
all the kites. She started colouring in neatly but by the end we could deduce she got
bored. The task’s main objective was counting to five but the child did more colouring
than counting. If we take Susie’s mathematics from the evidence of the worksheet,
then our assessment would be that she could not count quantities to five.
What did the child say about the mathematics she did in the worksheet? As she
rushed out of school, into the back seat of the car, her mother enquired about this work-
sheet that Susie clutched. Susie said with a frown on her face ‘I got it wrong’. Her first
taste of written school mathematics was negative. When Susie was at home, before she
started school, she travelled along the highway of curiosity where there were no right
or wrong answers: she was accepted into the mathematics world of home. She usedDeveloping children’s written methods 1958657part 2.qxd 04/07/2006 17:35 Page 195