Feedback from Students:
As part of the "Mr. Kreie Report Card" I ask students to complete (S/O to The Classroom Chef), students were asked the following question and were able to answer anonymously.
Their responses:
Further, I asked students for more open ended feedback.
Some positive quotes from students:
- "It helped me remember stuff from early in the year and how to do things from first semester."
- "I think it was good. The fact that we kept reviewing the same problems and slowly learning the math later in the year really helped me. Plus, once we got to our all time best that was really fun."
- "I think it helped to review the learning targets throughout the year and that it should be used again next year."
- "I loved it. It was a great improvement in class."
- "I think that L to J was kinda fun. I found it a little frustrating when we didn't know the answer, but that was kinda the point. I think we should do it next year."
Some not-so-positive quotes from students:
- "I did not really like L to J. It got really boring."
- "It was the biggest waste of time. Get rid of it."
And some helpful feedback from students:
- "i liked it but i wish it only applied to the semester we were currently in"
- "It sometimes made me feel stupid because there were somethings that i didnt know that i probable should have. it was good but not my favorite"
- "L to J was fun but a lot of people cheat and say they get 8's, 9's, and 10's when they really get 2's, 3's and 4's. Peer pressure is a problem."
- "You should do it again next year but find a new way of choosing questions so we don't repeat the same ones over and over. Maybe you should do it once a month instead of once a week also."
A quick note about the cheating comment:
There were times that students would see the question and be whispering to each other. I was not very strict during these quizzes because I knew that they are not graded. I can do better by not allowing students to converse during the quiz. However, I feel that sometimes valuable learning can take place within those conversations.
Student Achievement:
Many students showed growth as the semester moved along. Here are a few examples of two student's progress throughout the semester:
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| Student A |
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| Student B |
As you can see, student B scored a 10 the very first week. It just so happened that in this particular student's class, all ten of the first week's questions were from the first semester. The second week, however, a number of questions were from the second semester. This student's scored dropped from a 10 to a 6, largely due to the randomness of the questions.
Class Achievement:
Each of my classes achieved at least one all-time best after setting the baseline during the first week. The class shown below set only one all time best. Two factors really influenced the goal of attaining an all-time best each week:
1) How many students are absent the day of the quiz, and
2) What questions are selected.
Having only one student absent really hurts the chances of achieving an all-time best. There were some days that I was missing four or five students in a given section (such as week 9 for this class).
Students did show a very strong interest in the overall achievement of the class each week and showed genuine excitement when an all-time best was attained.
The celebrations for all-time bests were a bit challenging for students to think of and agree on. Students often tried negotiating for rewards -- extra credit, food in class, skipping homework assignments, etc. I need to do a better job next year of selling the excitement of a celebration.
This reward that one class chose did draw some attention around school for a day...
Final Thoughts:
I did enjoy doing L to J as something new this semester and I plan to do it for the full year next year. It took about 25 minutes do complete each week, which led to us not covering as many lessons as we have in the past. {Some weeks we simply didn't have time to fit the quiz in, as evident in the missing weeks on the graphs above. A few of those missing weeks were due to snow days and shortened weeks for spring break.}
I believe the benefit of the spiral review and "No Permission to Forget" outweigh the cost of skipping a few lessons along the way. And most importantly, more than 80% of students said they liked doing L to J this year. I think that's a pretty high success rate.
