Teacher Resources
Worksheets
A good worksheet teaches. A bad one keeps a class quiet for twenty minutes and changes nothing.
What separates a worksheet that teaches
- The first item is done for them. A worked example at the top removes the ambiguity about what is wanted, and it is the single cheapest improvement you can make to any worksheet.
- The items get harder. A sheet of twenty items at identical difficulty helps nobody. Start easy so that the weakest students begin; end hard so that the strongest are still working.
- One skill per sheet. A sheet mixing tenses, articles and prepositions tests; it does not teach. Teach one thing at a time.
- Answers where they can be found. For homework, an answer key — on the back, or on the board next lesson. A student who cannot check has to wait a week to find out they were wrong, by which time the wrong version is learnt.
- Room to write. Cramped worksheets produce cramped, unreadable answers, and they discourage the students who most need encouraging.
- A short instruction in plain English. Write the correct form of the verb in brackets. Not a paragraph.
Designing your own
Do
- Put a worked example at the top
- Number every item
- Grade the difficulty from item 1 to the last
- Use contexts your students recognise — their town, their school, their work
- Leave two extension questions at the bottom for early finishers
- Keep it to one side of paper
Avoid
- Twenty items of identical difficulty
- Mixing three grammar points on one sheet
- Instructions longer than the exercise
- Decorative borders that use up the writing space
- Sentences copied from a book with no relevance to the students
- A sheet with no way for the student to check their work
Downloadable worksheets
No resources have been published here yet
Approved resources will appear on this page as they are added. You can search the whole site or ask for a particular resource.
If you have no photocopier
Most English exercises can be written on the board and copied into exercise books, and the copying is not wasted time — students who write out a sentence engage with it more than students who fill a gap in a printed one.
For a graded sheet, write items 1–10 on the board and add and now write three more of your own at the end. The extension costs nothing to prepare and occupies the fastest students usefully.