As I’ve posted in What Do You Do On The Last Day Of Class (Part Two)?, I have my students complete an annual evaluation of the class and my teaching (anonymously).

I had students in my ninth-grade mainstream English class complete it a couple of days early this year, and thought I’d share the results here.  It might provide some additional ideas on questions you might want to include in your own survey — if you choose to do one.  I also included other examples in the “last day” post.

One of our administrators, Jim Peterson, was commenting on the importance of year-end student evaluations yesterday.  He framed it like this:

“After the first couple of years of teaching, many teachers don’t get observed much in the classroom by administrators or other mentors.  However, teachers get observed by students for hundreds of hours each year.  Why not take advantage of their experience and ask them for their feedback?”

Jim offers these simple questions as suggestions:

1. What did you find about the class or the teacher’s method of instruction (way of teaching) that helped you?
2. List 2-3 suggestions to improve the class or to help students more
3. Other comments

Here are the results of the evaluation done by my students:

1. In this class, I feel I learned…..1/3 said “some”; 2/3 said “a lot” no one said “a little”

2. I tried my best in this class…. 1/2 said “a lot of the time” 1/2 said “all the time” no one said “some of the time”

3. My favorite unit was…. Jamaica was the clear winner

4. My least favorite unit…Nelson Mandela was the clear “winner”

5. As a teacher, I think Mr. Ferlazzo is… 1/3 said “okay”; 1/3 said “good”; 1/3 said “excellent”; (no one said “bad”)

6. Did you feel that Mr. Ferlazzo was concerned about what was happening in your life? .. 2/3 said “yes; 1/3rd said “no”

7. Mr. Ferlazzo is patient..1/4 said “some of the time”; 1/2 said “a lot of the time”; 1/4 said “all of the time”

8. Did you like this class? all said “yes” except for one “no”

9. What was your favorite activity in this class? “Working in groups” was the clear winner with “Practice Reading” in second place (Practice Reading is the fifteen minutes at the beginning of each class when students can read a book of their own choosing).

The last two questions were where students could write in what they wanted:

10. What could you (the student) have done to make this class a better learning experience? “read & write more”; “be a better listener”; “participate more” were some responses

11. What could Mr. Ferlazzo have done to make this class a better learning experience? “It’s perfect” “Be cooler” “You did good” “lower voice when doing read aloud” were a few responses