It has been about a month since school let out and I’ve been enjoying the summer so far. I’ve been reading, working on the lawn, painting and took a vacation. During the last month I decided to focus my time on things not related to school work. This balance of time tends to give me a better perspective when I do come back to working on items related to school. Now I’m starting to see school supplies (already!) in stores and am looking back at how the school year went last year. Every year I attempt to gather information about my students and how they perceived the school year as a whole. I give a survey and use that information moving forward for the next year. I decided to wait a bit over the summer to look over the results.
Back in June I gave a survey to all of my students in 3-5th grade. The survey was related to instruction models and preferences. This year I intentionally varied my models throughout the year and didn’t stick with one particular tool for activities. I started off the survey with a brief question about their favorite math topic this year.
Before giving the survey I went into detail about each topic. The purple is measurement and I’m not sure why it didn’t show up with my advanced table Gform add-on. The next question was related to why they felt this was their favorite topic. Here are a few responses:
Next time I’m going to put a minimum character limit to extract more information.
The next section, which was the largest, was related to instruction models/activities. Students rated them (1-5) 1 being the least effective for learning and 5 being the most. A brief explanation of the items is in each caption.
Teacher gives prompt and students discuss as a group and share out responses to the class
Used for retrieval practice – students used this individually and in groups of two
Similar to Kahoot, but more self-paced – used to reinforce concepts
Similar to Number Talks – prompt is displayed and class discusses concept
Used for notation on slides and showing student’s work to the entire class
Used K-5 math for whole class or independent exploration of math concepts
Students are digitally randomized into groups and then they work on a particular task with that partner. Students report out their responses afterwards.
I display work (sometimes student work) on the document camera and the class discusses strategies
I had 59 students take the survey, but I have 65 + students in 3-5th grade. Some of them were out for other activities during the time the survey took place. Something to consider … some of these activities were used more frequently so students had a larger sample size. Overall though, it seems students enjoyed most of the tools/activities for learning about mathematics. I think it should be mentioned that there’s a difference between a tool and strategy and I might be blending the lines a bit in this post.
The tools in the box were used independently or with a partner. They also required some type of technology (iPad, Chromebook), while the other four didn’t. I think having a blend between the tools/strategies is helpful and students aren’t dependent on using one medium to show their learning. I’m looking forward to diving more into this data as the summer progresses.
Educational Aspirations 