How to Make a Worksheet

Most worksheets are set by someone who already knows the answers, which is why so many of them leave three lines for a question that needs eight. Here is what changes when you design for the child holding the pen.

Answer space is the whole design

The single most common fault is too little room. For written answers, leave about twice the height of the question. For maths, leave a full line per step you expect - a child who has nowhere to put the working will write the answer alone, and you lose the only thing that would have told you where they went wrong.

How many questions

Six to ten for a forty minute lesson, including one that is harder than the rest. A page of twenty questions is not more practice - it is a page most of the class will not finish, which teaches them that finishing is not expected.

Put the instruction where it is read

At the top, in one sentence, in the same size as the questions. Instructions set small are not read; instructions set in a box at the bottom are read after the child has already done it their own way.

One layout, every week

Keep the header, the instruction position and the numbering identical from week to week. The first two minutes of every worksheet are spent working out what the page wants, and a familiar layout gives those two minutes back. The same argument applies upstream to the lesson plan the worksheet belongs to - one shape, reused, is faster to write as well as to read.

Print in black and white

Assume it. If colour carries meaning - a key, a highlighted row - the worksheet fails the moment it goes through a mono printer, which in most schools it will. These worksheet templates use colour for decoration only, so nothing is lost.

Leave a name line

Obvious, and still the most common omission. Name and date on one line at the top, with enough room for a child's handwriting rather than an adult's.