Yesterday, I shared the results of anonymous student evaluations of me and our combination ELL U.S. History and World History class.

Today, it’s time to report from my combination ELL Beginner/Intermediate/Geography course.

You’ll see that, though it’s generally affirming, they are not as positive as the ones from the history class. I’m not surprised — since we stopped having separate Beginner and Intermediate classes a few years ago, we’ve typically had just a very small number of Beginners and the rest Intermediates. This year, however, the Beginner numbers were equal to Intermediates, a number entered the class at various times during the year, and many of the Beginners had little prior academic experience and faced a number of other challenges. I was not as prepared for that change as I should have been, and it took longer than it should have to make adjustments. Alma Avalos, who is officially a bilingual aide but is much more like a full-fledged teacher, did an incredible job this year with the Beginners and I look forward to her obtaining her credential next year.

But the bottom line is that I ended up doing not as good of a job with both groups. In retrospect, I should have:

* spent more time with the Beginners and less time with the Intermediates — as a group and as individuals. Meeting individually at the beginning of the week with some of the Beginners facing particular challenges, and having them identify one kind of behavior they wanted to work on over the next few days, followed by regular “check-ins” seemed to be effective. I just didn’t always make time for doing it.

* modified many of my Social Emotional Learning Skills lessons to make them more accessible to Beginners and Low-Intermediates. I’ll definitely be doing that over the summer.

You can find the evaluation forms I used here.

Here are the results – first, from the Beginners, followed by the Intermediates (to whom I also teach Geography):

BEGINNERS

1. How much English did you learn in class this year, with 1 being very little to 5 being a lot? …One-third said 5, one-third said 4 and one-third said 3.

2. What tasks helped you learn the most… Going to the computer lab was number one- by far. Duolingo and Raz-Kids were ones both Beginners and Intermediates used regularly, and you can see other sites and student projects at our classroom blog.

Songs, using lessons like this one, came in a far second. And our regular academic language lessons came in a close third (you can read about them here).

3. What tasks should we have spent more time on this… Speaking and writing were the priorities. There is no question I should have promoted more speaking activities and will do so next year.

4. How much time in class did you do your best? Forty percent say “most of the time” and the rest said “some of the time.” I really think SEL lessons would have made a positive impact here.

5. Rank how hard you think Alma worked to prepare and teach the class on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 meaning he didn’t work very hard and 5 meaning he worked very hard… Evenly split betweet 5, 4, and 3. It’s not really a fair question, since Alma isn’t supposed to spend any time preparing lessons — since she’s an aide, I’m supposed be the one planning and she implements them. However, since she an incredibly talented colleague, though I gave her many materials and suggestions, the most creative and most well-received ones were lessons she developed herself. Because of time constraints, and my error of spending less time with the Beginners than I should have, I’m the one who really got the less than stellar rankings on this one.

6. Rank how good of a teacher you think Alma is on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 meaning she’s a terrible teacher and 5 meaning she’s a great teacher: Alma received mostly 5’s here, along with a couple of 2’s.

7. Rank how good of a teacher you think Mr. Ferlazzo is on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 meaning he’s a terrible teacher and 5 meaning he’s a great teacher: I received the same rankings as Alma.

8. Rank how patient you think Alma is on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 meaning she is not patient at all and 5 meaning she’s very patient… Alma received practically all 5’s and, considering the challenges she had to face, that’s a very impressive mark.

9. Rank how patient you think Mr. Ferlazzo is on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 meaning she is not patient at all and 5 meaning she’s very patient: (when you look on the original form, you’ll see that I made a mistake and put Alma’s name down here twice — students just crossed it out and wrote mine)… I received mostly 5’s and two 4’s.

10. Rank how much you think Alma cares about your life outside of class,with 1 meaning she doesn’t care at all and 5 meaning she cares a lot: Alma’s scores were evenly split between four’s and fives. She should have received all 5’s — she goes the extra mile to be present and helpful to students.

11. Rank how much you think Mr. Ferlazzo cares about your life outside of class,with 1 meaning he doesn’t care at all and 5 meaning he cares a lot: I received 5’s from one-third of the students and 4’s from two-thirds.

12. Would you want to take another class taught by Alma One-half said yes, one-fourth said no, and one-fourth said they didn’t know.

13. Would you want to take another class taught by Mr. Ferlazzo Practically everyone said yes. It’s not a fair comparison, though, because Alma really did the “heavy-lifting” with the Beginners. Instead of spending a lot of regular time with them (as I should have), I was more the “special guest.”

 

INTERMEDIATE/GEOGRAPHY

1. How much English did you learn in class this year, with 1 being very little to 5 being a lot? A third said 5, a third said 4 and a third said 3.

2. What tasks helped you learn the most… Going to the computer lab was ranked number one, followed by writing essays, with Academic Language lessons a distant third.

3. What tasks should we have spent more time on this year… As was the case with the Beginners, speaking was number one here.

4. How much time in class did you do your best? Two-thirds said most of the time and one-third said some of the time.

5. How much time did you spend outside of class each week studying English… One-third said more than five hours; one-third said three hours and one-third said two hours or less. I was a bit pleasantly surprised at this result — I tried something different this year and didn’t really “require” regular homework.

6. Of the time you spent studying English outside of class, what did you spend the most time on? Online learning sites, primarily Duolingo, was number one followed by reading books.

7. Rank how hard you think Mr. Ferlazzo worked to prepare and teach the class on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 meaning he didn’t work very hard and 5 meaning he worked very hard: Practically everyone gave me a 5. Of course, that might have been at the price of not doing as good of a job with the Beginners.

8. Rank how good of a teacher you think Mr. Ferlazzo is on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 meaning he’s a terrible teacher and 5 meaning he’s a great teacher: Two-thirds give me a 5 and one-third gave me a 4.

9. Rank how patient you think Mr. Ferlazzo is on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 meaning he is not patient at all and 5 meaning he’s very patient: Two-thirds gave me a 5 and one-third gave me a 4

10. Rank how much you think Mr. Ferlazzo cares about your life outside of class,with 1 meaning he doesn’t care at all and 5 meaning he cares a lot: Two-thirds gave me a 5; three gave me a 4 and two students gave me a 2.

11. Would you want to take another class taught by Mr. Ferlazzo? Everyone said yes.

So, I think my big challenge next year is to “up my game” so I can be as focused on the Beginners as I was on the Intermediates this year.

Feedback is welcome.