In my previous post, How My Ninth-Grade English Classes Evaluated Me This Year, I explained I was going to have my students evaluate the class and me after they used an improvement rubric to compare an essay they wrote in September with one they wrote in May. I shared how research studies show the importance of helping students see how much they improve, and its impact. In my post, I reported that last week two-thirds of my students said they learned “some” in the class while one-third said they learned “a lot.” I also predicted, based on past experience, that after having students evaluate the class again following their essay review that those numbers would be reversed.
Well, I decided to do that process today, and my prediction turned out to be correct. No one had any different answers to questions except for that one, and the numbers were reversed — now 2/3 say they learned “a lot” and 1/3 say they learned “some.”
Actually, there was one other change in the responses.
For some reason, I had omitted one question from the original evaluation form:
Would you want to take another class taught by Mr. Ferlazzo?
I added it to the form I passed out today.
All but two responded “yes.”
Hi,
That’s quite interesting. The teacher evaluation thing. Can I have a sample of your questionnaire? I wanna try it with my students.
thx,
You can find different evaluation forms I use for different classes here:
http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2010/05/08/my-best-posts-on-students-evaluating-classes-and-teachers/
Mr. Ferlazzo,
Hello, it’s Deana Nunn again. I recently posted on your blog How my ninth-grade English classes evaluated me this year. I’m happy to see that after giving the students the rubric to evaluate their work, they were able to see that they have improved over the course of the school year. I hope that they feel encouraged by this. Your students may not have realized that they were improving. You stated that you knew the outcome would be the opposite of what they rated themselves. I’m guessing you knew this because you have been grading their work all along and you could see that they have improved. In recent years, have the results of this question often been the same, students rating themselves lower on their level on improvement?
I was also glad to see that all but two students would want to take another course with you. What a compliment! I hope that in the future, when I have my own classroom, I leave the same impact on them that you have left your students.
I have enjoyed reading your posts. Good luck in the future.
Deana Nunn
My Blog
I’m glad to see teachers openly reflecting on their strengths and weaknesses.
I also liked your point about guiding students towards through a reflective process. That’s something that I should definitely start doing. I teach Spanish and sometimes students end the year thinking that they still can’t speak Spanish, but I can see the huge improvements they have made. Thanks for sharing!
I’ve decided to add a post on my new blog (design4learning.net) sharing my end-of-year survey results as well.
http://design4learning.net/2011/results-2011-end-of-year-student-survey
Chris,
Great! Thanks for sharing. I’ll go over to your blog and check it out now.
Larry