Every year I find some way to get feedback from my students. I’ve been getting feedback from my students for years to determine what I’m doing well and what could use some fixing. I especially wanted to see what students thought this past school year about getting feedback from me because I struggled finding time to give enough feedback to all 135 of my students. It was purely a time management issue. I was taxed for time so I ended up giving the most feedback verbally with students whole class, in small groups and one-on-one as I wandered and conferenced with kids. What I liked about talking to kids is that I felt like a coach but I was aware that for kids if my comments weren’t written down they felt like I didn’t give them feedback.
I used a Google Form with 11 questions, most of which were short answer questions to allow kids to write and tell me what’s on their minds. In the past when I made these feedback forms anonymous I got enough silly and/or mean comments that I decided this year to have kids write their names and own their feedback. I believe that I developed a culture of trust so that they could tell me what they really think. Out of all my students in 6th and 8th grade 91 out of 135 actually took the survey, about 68%. That is always disappointing to me when kids don’t care enough to take a few minutes to give me, their teacher, some feedback on how their year went.
I asked two questions about getting feedback from me. I asked them how they got feedback this year and how they would like to get feedback. A bunch of students wrote that they got feedback from me telling them, which is what I tried to do. I also tried to get students to give each other feedback, especially in the form of blog comments and a bunch wrote that as the way they got feedback. Some said they got comments on Google Docs, some said they asked their friends, and one even said that he didn’t get any feedback. His impression even though I remember it differently. A couple admitted that they didn’t get as much feedback as they would have liked. I figured that so that is something I have to improve upon for this coming school year.
Students reported that they like getting feedback on their blogs in the form of comments, one said that he likes to get feedback that is “fairly easy to comprehend,” and a majority of students misunderstood the question because they wrote that they did indeed like to get feedback. I was looking for specific ways they wanted feedback.
I was curious about students attitudes toward Science so I asked students to rate their love of Science on a scale from 1 to 10 where 1 was, “Don’t care for it,” and 10 was, “I really like learning Science.” Here are the results of that question (click on the graph to see a bigger image of it):
It was nice to see that most students liked Science. The next question I asked I probably shouldn’t have asked but I did. I asked, “Did you like Science more, less, or the same than you did before this school year started?” Here’s what I got:
59% said that they liked Science more!
29% said it stayed the same.
12% said they liked Science less!
What?!? I expected to have students that started out not liking Science but I never, ever expected any of my students to like Science less after taking my class!! That’s something I can’t afford to do. So my ego got the better of me in even asking that question but thinking it through I know that not all of my students will like me no matter how hard I try. Every year there are kids who, for one reason or another, just don’t get me or really end up not liking me or not getting along with me. And 12% (11 kids!) is a high percentage! Ouch. For some of those 11 it might have been something entirely different than getting along or liking me, maybe the content or the way they had to learn it, because the rest of their comments were positive. Some didn’t like blogging and we did quite a bit of that so I can see how that would decrease their feelings toward Science. Too bad. I was hoping to increase their liking of both Science AND blogging. Can’t win them all I guess.
I also asked students their thoughts on not being graded. I wanted to know how they liked working in a class without the pressure of grades and here are those results:
1% said it was the same as being in a graded classroom.
12% didn’t like it and said that they preferred getting grades.
87% liked it and were glad to have no grades to worry about. Many wrote that they were able to learn without the pressure of grades over their heads.
The last two questions I asked were about what worked well this year and what they would want to change. Out of 91 responses I have to say that for any one thing one kid said went well, another kid wanted to change it. The biggest one I get every year is how some students let me know that I talked too much while other comment that I should have explained more. This year a bunch of kids wrote that they liked it when I let them work on their own instead of helping them along. What their feedback tells me is something that I strongly believe and I see every year, that I have to offer my students choice and keep using different strategies (change things up often enough). Whatever I do in my classes or have students do there will be some that love it, some that tolerate it, and some that hate it. Different strategies work for different kids and in a differentiated classroom there needs to be different things going on for different kids. I also have kids do new things because that gives them different skills or at least exposes them to different things. That way they aren’t always doing what they’re good at thereby remaining in their comfort zones and never stretching themselves. So I try to give kids a balance of doing things they like and are good at versus new things to try and see if they like it.
So for this Fall I will continue to provide as many learning experiences as I can while looking for ways to provide more feedback for my students.
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