Worksheets
Worksheets are the materials that are handed out to the students in every period. This has information and exercises that the students are expected to do.
Students from KG to Std. 5 have space on the same sheet to write. They do the allotted exercises, complete the homework (Std. 3 onwards) and hand it to the teacher. The teacher checks the sheets and returns them to the students. Students from Std. 6 to 10 have information and exercises on the sheets but actually do their writing on separate sheets.
All students carry the worksheets back home through their folders and put them in the respective files.
Walnut worksheets are really awesome. They are an important component of the learning system and a lot of thought is put into making learning more effective.
Each lesson is approached modularly. There is a little bit of learning, thinking, discussion and actual answering of questions on that module in every class. Let us try to understand this better with an example.
Conventionally, suppose a lesson that needs 5 periods is taught across say 3 periods and then in 2 periods the students do the questions and answers. When you do this, on day 4 when you are doing exercises based on what was done on day 1, the child is a little lost and the teacher usually ends up just dictating the answers or marking them in the book. Then, exercises become more of a copywriting activity than a think-analyze-express activity.
At Walnut, the approach is different. In such a situation, the child does 1/5th of the lesson every day. They get introduced to the concept, discuss it and also do exercises based on those concepts. So, that concept gets reinforced in their minds and helps to build a good foundation for the next class. And in each class they get worksheets which have the information and exercises based on that particular module.