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As I do every semester, and usually even more often than that, I have my students complete anonymous evaluations of our classes and of me. I always learn a lot from them, and have shared all their results from over the years at Best Posts On Students Evaluating Classes (And Teachers).
In fact, my most “famous” evaluation was headlined in The Washington Post this way: Teacher asks students to grade him. One wrote: ‘I give Mr. Ferlazzo an A at being annoying.’
Here are the results of this past semester’s one from my ELL Newcomer class. Only fourteen students actually responded because two weeks earlier I had moved six students to our Intermediate class to accommodate six new students who joined us. Since they were so new, I did not invite them to complete the form.
I’ll post the question, the results, and a short analysis:
QUESTION ONE
Analysis: I work hard at making this class academically rigorous, as well as fun. I’m happy with these results.
QUESTION TWO
Analysis: I’m less-than-thrilled with these results. I’m very confident in saying they have all learned a lot of English. However, it’s obvious that not all of them feel the same way. What that says to me that I need to put a greater emphasis on them being able to see their improvement. I haven’t been meeting with students as much as I should showing them visual displays of their progress.
QUESTION THREE
Analysis: Here again, I’m not super-excited at the results. Of course, if I had done this evaluation before I moved six students to the Intermediate class, it’s a safe bet that those six would have accurately rated themselves as a “5,” which is one of the main reasons they were able to advance to the next level. I have to admit I haven’t been doing as many of the activities I often do to explicitly create the conditions to support student intrinsic motivation, and I guess it’s time for me to make that a higher priority.
QUESTION FOUR
Analysis: I’ll take it. If you’re interested, you can see what my typical day/week looks like at Here’s A Revised & Updated Version Of What A Typical Day & Week Of My ELL Newcomers Class Looks Like.
QUESTION FIVE
Analysis: I’m fine with these results. We don’t use Google Classroom much – only for student slideshows and to have resources students can use at home.
QUESTION SIX
Analysis: We work a lot, and I’m glad students feel good about it. They whine a lot less than my IB Theory of Knowledge classes (you’ll read their evaluations soon!).
QUESTION SEVEN
Analysis: I’m happy with these results. Some might consider me an “easy” grader, but just imagine what it must be like for a student to come to a new country, new culture, new language, and generally with no voice in the decision to make that move. They deserve a little slack.
QUESTION EIGHT
Analysis: I think I’m a pretty good teacher, and most students seem to agree.
QUESTION NINE
Analysis: I’m a little surprised these results aren’t a bit higher because I place a very high priority on developing positive relationships with students. I assume I did something on the day of the evaluation to get one of my students unhappy with me, which is why they gave me a (1). I can’t really think of any students in class with whom I don’t have a good relationship.
QUESTION TEN
Analysis: No surprise at all that peer tutors are number one. Also, it’s not surprising that practicing conversations was tied for number two. I’m a little surprised that using Speakable and using the Quizizz flashcards were also ranked second. Use of the Picture Word Inductive Model came in third. I was pleased to see that, though students obviously love playing Blooket games, they also recognized that it was not necessarily one of the most effective ways to learn English.
QUESTIONS ELEVEN, TWELVE & THIRTEEN
Students needed to write in the answers to these three questions:
What was the most interesting thing you learned in this class? ¿Qué fue lo más interesante que aprendiste en esta clase? Puede escribir en inglés o español.
What was the best thing about this class? ¿Qué fue lo mejor de esta clase? Puede escribir en inglés o español.
What was the worst thing about this class and how do you think it could be improved? ¿Qué fue lo peor de esta clase y cómo crees que se podría mejorar? Puede escribir en inglés o español.
The answers to the first two were all over the place. For the third question, practically everyone wrote “nada.”
So, I’ve got some things to do this semester in terms of helping students more clearly see the progress their making and, connected to that, take some additional actions to create the conditions to support the growth of student intrinsic motivation. Both of those are important insights that I probably wouldn’t have identified if I hadn’t done this survey.
As I do every semester, and usually even more often than that, I have my students complete anonymous evaluations of our classes and of me. I always learn a lot from them, and have shared all their results from over the years at Best Posts On Students Evaluating Classes (And Teachers). In fact, my ESL Web Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…
