Personally I would avoid it like the plague. Saying you are 'work-sheet free' is a huge generalisation and can lead to very poor teaching standards in my opinion. By all means, ban 'photocopied out of a book, 1 sheet does all' type things but a worksheet made by the teacher specifically for a child or a group of children can be a great teaching tool.

 I am a huge fan of practical, hands on teaching and would say that the majority of my teaching is this way - however, there are times when worksheets are appropriate. No one teaching method should ever be banned completley imo - everything in moderation.

 Sounds like a head with a bee in their bonnet. Any explanation as to why? Is there an educational rationale behind this?

 Or is is simply to save on photocopying costs..?.

I find it very worrying that there is an apparent rising anti-worksheet culture.

Like anything else in education, teachers should be able to evaluate any medium through which we teach pupils and through which pupils learn.

Thus, a 'worksheet' needs to be evaluated for its role - and into this consideration is whether any other medium is more fit for purpose, more value for money - or whatever.

I think a 'worksheet' which is a simple piece of paper (and can be readily photocopied or printed) can be an ideal medium to give individual children (including the same sheet for the whole class where this is appropriate) when it includes information and/or includes appropriate activities to support teaching and learning.

Further, the pupil can keep ownership of it, can take it home, can build up his or her own work, and can refer to it for revision - or even pride if it tracks/monitors progress or supports a programme of work.

I could go on - but certainly with not much thought, suddenly the advantages can start to become clear.

The trouble is, how much thought do teachers give to the 'worksheet' approach over and above just dismissing because it seems to be the current trend for some teachers/schools.

I totally agree that some work needs to be written and that a sense of pride in one's work is definitely a good thing, but this does not make a worksheet necessary.

I think it's fair enough to avoid worksheets as much as possible, but for some maths topics they are useful. Reading different scales and times, fractions of shapes or reflection/symmetry questions are good examples of where worksheets of differentiated examples are very useful. I think most teachers will adapt resources (like those found on this website) to suit their class.

When all said and done, we assess children by using what essentially are worksheets stapled together in the form of a test.