Ask the Students

I've noticed lately that teachers are generally planned using their data and have great intentions for their instructional design. However, my colleagues and I decided to explore another avenue that seems all too obvious for designing learning experiences, asking the students. Polling students and pre-assessing their knowledge or comfort level is nothing new, but it does get lost throughout the year.

I recently conducted a small book study with a group of middle and upper-grade teachers. We read Kelly Gallagher's book Readicide. It's a short and powerful read concerning the state of reading in our schools and the controls we have to end readicide in our schools. The book study allowed us to reflect on some important issues in our school concerning reading. These new discoveries prompted us to design a survey that would pull students into the process and help us reflect more intelligently on our approach to teaching reading.


Choosing a Product

Some of the most notable sites for gathering the data for me have been  poll everywhere, survey monkey, and google forms. There are many other sites out there that allow you to pre-assess and collect data.

1. Poll Everywhere allows you to survey or poll your students using mobile devices by sending text messages or using Twitter. The results are updated in real time. There are options for participants to ask questions and text comments too.

2. Survey Monkey provides a unique interface and easy access to question designs. This selection allows you to analyze the data with a variety of export options and charts. My experience with this option is sending the survey as an email attachment. Therefore, all students would have to have an account.

3. Google Forms provides the same ease and accessibility as the other products. However, the forms are far more attractive and everything saves to your google drive immediately.

Selecting Questions

When selecting questions, my colleagues and I decided to ask those that would inform us most and likely allow for the greatest insight into our deepest concerns. We asked questions that could potentially uncover new truths as believed by the students in front of us.

Some of our questions asked students to consider their current feelings about reading by simply asking, "What are your feelings about reading?". We then supplied choices such as, (1) Love it, need more time (2) I find it enjoyable when I pick the book (3)  I do not find reading interesting (4) I have a hard time getting into a book. We also asked about their feelings regarding writing about reading and tools used for reading. The data was eye-opening. We decided to plan using the data and made some modifications such as more time for independent reading, less teacher talk, and improving structures for book selection and book marketing.

When designing and reflecting on the questions, we considered the following:

1. What do we truly want to know or understand about our students' perception of reading?
2. How do we provide choices to questions that truly reflect the students in front of us?
3. How will we share this data with the students?
4. What changes are we going to make to address the reflections of our students?

Our big takeaways from this experience were that the time to prep a survey took less than anticipated, the question design had to come from a place of honesty, and the reflection on the data had to be used in our instructional approach. The students are holding the answers to our questions, ask!