Following the conference, Deidre, who teaches in the night program on the main campus, wasted no time in finding a good website for generating really nice worksheets for her class. Her group of students were so into unscrambling the sentences that they didn't even realize it was almost 9:25pm. "Unheard of!" Deidre reported. She had such good results using the worksheets she wanted to make sure everyone knew about this web tool:
In an email to me, Deidre wrote these instructions, "Click on the link [and scroll down a bit], name your worksheet and start typing sentences. Then click 'create worksheet.' It creates a PDF and you click on the top right hand corner [where the double chevron icon] for print [and download] options. I love that it offers a page with the unscrambled sentences side by side for easy correction. [My students] LOVE working on [the worksheets], and it creates a fun competitive vibe because, of course, the groups are very competitive with each other."
I've since used this wonderful web tool to create worksheets and thought I'd share my evaluation of it.
Pros
Excellent, user-friendly handling; free with no software to download; allows you to enter well-chosen, level-appropriate sentences on the fly; allows you to teach the word order of all kinds of sentences; allows you teach the start-of-sentence capitalization and the end-of-sentence punctuation; allows you to randomize the same worksheet between each printing so that you could give each team a worksheet with the same sentences and yet a different mixed-up order; allows you to teach coherence, the logical order, or the organization for an academic paragraph as long as you enter sentences of a well-chosen model paragraph; allows you to download your worksheet as a PDF; worksheets so generated are for the higher levels of learning on Bloom's Taxonomy; worksheets conducive to a high-level student engagement.
Excellent, user-friendly handling; free with no software to download; allows you to enter well-chosen, level-appropriate sentences on the fly; allows you to teach the word order of all kinds of sentences; allows you teach the start-of-sentence capitalization and the end-of-sentence punctuation; allows you to randomize the same worksheet between each printing so that you could give each team a worksheet with the same sentences and yet a different mixed-up order; allows you to teach coherence, the logical order, or the organization for an academic paragraph as long as you enter sentences of a well-chosen model paragraph; allows you to download your worksheet as a PDF; worksheets so generated are for the higher levels of learning on Bloom's Taxonomy; worksheets conducive to a high-level student engagement.
Cons
After you hit the "Create worksheet" button, if you use your browser's printer button rather than the worksheet's own print option, you will end up printing your screen including the unwanted ads but not your whole worksheet. Also, even when I chose the right print option from the menu within the worksheet window, I got a blank first page printed out before my desired worksheets. Finally, no online storage space as I have to download and save all the different versions of a worksheet - it doesn't look like I can create a free account on the website to save and access my worksheets right on their site.
After you hit the "Create worksheet" button, if you use your browser's printer button rather than the worksheet's own print option, you will end up printing your screen including the unwanted ads but not your whole worksheet. Also, even when I chose the right print option from the menu within the worksheet window, I got a blank first page printed out before my desired worksheets. Finally, no online storage space as I have to download and save all the different versions of a worksheet - it doesn't look like I can create a free account on the website to save and access my worksheets right on their site.
The Bottom Line
Worksheet Genius's mixed sentences tool does not disappoint at all. In fact, it can be a powerful addition to every teacher's toolbox. A huge thank you to Deidre for pushing the student-engagement envelope in her ebullient way.
Worksheet Genius's mixed sentences tool does not disappoint at all. In fact, it can be a powerful addition to every teacher's toolbox. A huge thank you to Deidre for pushing the student-engagement envelope in her ebullient way.
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