Last week, I wrote about my experiences looking at student feedback to a survey my colleagues and I administered to all of our math students. One question we asked was the following:
Across all classes, without exception, 100% of the students said yes.
At first, I was excited about this. It’s pretty cool to get 100% yes!! It reassures me that the hours and hours of time I spend scoring Skill Assessments, reteaching content in targeted groups, and building a classroom culture where students can work independently and effectively are worth it.
The student feedback continued to be consistently positive in the open-ended question:
It helps me because I can see how to correctly do the problems I got wrong and how I can fix them. Then I know what i need to practice for next time.
It helps me by telling me my mistake, how to fix it, and what to do in the future.
It helps me because it shows me what i need to work on and what i don’t need to work on.
I think that the small groups are helpful because it fixes my mistakes on what I did wrong so that next time, I will not mess up on the same things that I did previously.
I don’t always understand what I got wrong on my skills assessment, and I think It helps to fully understand what you did wrong, and what the right answer would be so you know the real right answer.
I have fun doing group
I think the skill assessments [are the best part of math class so far this year] because it is a good test to see if you are ready for a real assessment.
The best part about math class is getting to go to groups to get help when I need it.
The best part of math class so far is being able to work in groups when I am stuck but if I am not stuck I can choose not to go.
The best part of math class so far this year is group.
The best part is when I get to ask for help and I get help right away. in previous math classes I wouldn’t always get help like I do now.
So, it’s reassuring to hear that this particular format is “working” for a very large percentage of my students.
But….
There were other comments that I’ve put on my list of things to think about, ways to change my practice.
I think the best parts of math class this year are the times where we are allowed to review work from multiple sources. Like working with different teachers or going on the computers and watching videos….It would be cool if we had some different ways of learning about the new topics
I think one thing that would be cool for math class is doing more activities that will help you visualize what the math topic is talking about. This would be cool because it would be better than doing worksheets, and think it would help students understand more.
It would be cool if we did more projects.
[It would be cool if we] did more interactive things like the thing we did with the measuring tape and measured different things in the room. (relationship between circumference and diameter)
This is valid feedback. My colleague has been pushing for projects for a few years now, but the time slips away, time to plan, time to implement, time before the state exams. As always, when I remember to ask my students for feedback, I end up being reminded that they know good practice, too!
Universal Design for Learning 
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