One of the most useful things I did on my first practicum is invite my students to complete a Survey Monkey about my teaching methods. I used the AITSL standards as a basis for my questions and tried to keep it nice and sweet. For each question it was a Yes or No with an option to leave a comment. The questions I asked my students were:
1) Did you feel like you knew the purpose of the Facebook get to know you activity?
2) Do you feel like I challenge you enough in class?
3) Do you feel like you can ask me questions in class?
4) Do you feel like I explain things well?
5) Do you feel like you learn in my classes?
6) Do you feel like the class environment is well managed?
7) Do you feel like I give you enough feedback on whether you are achieving the learning outcomes of my lessons?
8) What do I do in class that you like? Or what would you like to see What do I do in class that you don’t like?more of?
9) What do I do in class that you don’t like?
Obviously I kept it anonymous. However, I wanted to bribe my students to do it with candy so I added a second page that they could screen shot to show me that they did the survey. Side note – I would never give out candy as reward for doing class work. That should be a reward in itself. *off my soap box now*
You can view the results of the survey.
There are some things that arise from this survey
- students felt that they knew the purpose of the get to know you activity however some questions were irrelevant
- I don’t challenge my students enough. They feel like I’m just cruising them through on the bare minimum that they need to know. This has a lot to do with my inexperience at differentiating lessons. I don’t go into enough depth with the content sometimes.
- I encourage students to ask questions in my class and I’m approachable
- I explain concepts well but sometimes I go too fast. Using different methods to get my point across e.g. videos helps my students to understand better. The use of analogies was very helpful in explaining difficult concepts.
- I try to explain things a number of times to ensure that my students understand.
- Students need more guidance as to what to write down.
- I don’t give my students nearly enough feedback on whether they are achieving learning outcomes.
- Students overall liked: animated descriptions, humour in class, mini-whiteboards, videos, class discussions, guided note taking, practicals, fun facts, the questioning methods I use.
- Students didn’t like: comprehension worksheets, that I didn’t challenge them enough, when I explained things too quickly, too much information, not revising previous lesson or outlining learning goals.