Student Voice Surveys

This was an extremely eye-opening experience for me. Joetta and I had spoken to Matt Anderson about the toll all of the grant work and the school transition had been on our own classrooms, and he sympathized but agreed the results would be worth it; however, I didn't realize the real impact it has had. What I perceived as my learning environment and what I "heard" from the students in their surveys was quite different. I chose a survey about the class and teacher that had 2o questions with 3 choices, yes, sometimes, and no. It also had 3 open-ended questions. I then used one of the books suggestions, and on the back of the survey I asked them to list 4 things that helped them learn, and 4 things that hindered learning. I have looked at these surveys over and over and have learned much that will help me incorportate student voice to make my classroom more enjoyable. In the future I hope to display the responses graphically and elicit more specific responses from the students about each question.