After doing my research on worksheets, I have come to the conclusion that they can be beneficial, but under certain circumstances. To be more specific, I believe that worksheets should be used as lesson reinforcement or practice, but not the lesson itself. Many of the articles I read talked about the fact that when a child does a worksheet, they are showing that they can complete that worksheet, but not that they understand it. Lets look at it this way, just because a child can trace the word cat perfectly, does not mean that they learned the word. The child still may not be able to point out that word in a book or even sound the word out. In this situation for a kindergarten class, instead of a worksheet, I would put a picture of a cat on the board with the letters underneath it. As a class, we would sound it out and then we would read a story together with the words on the projector giving the students an opportunity to recognize the word. At the end of the lesson, as practice, I could give the students a worksheet to now practice tracing the word after focusing on it all day, but again, I believe the students will better benefit from the activities before the worksheet.

The worksheet that I created would be used for either a fourth or fifth grade class during a lesson about holidays. I would teach the children about the different holidays throughout the day, and at the end of the lesson I would give them this worksheet as practice on how to spell the holidays to reinforce what they learned throughout the day.