Last week, Angela (a fellow teacher) forwarded a link to a blog post. Below is what she sent:
In this blog post, the author describes her experience volunteering in her son's elementary classroom. More importantly she explains how her son's teacher uses a specific method to examine classroom dynamics. The blogger, Glennon, writes:This blog talks about the smart way one teacher takes the emotional pulse of her class.
My first thought: why can't we do this in Google Forms? My colleague Angela had the same thought. Great minds think alike! Great minds like a think.Every Friday afternoon Chase’s teacher asks her students to take out a piece of paper and write down the names of four children with whom they’d like to sit the following week. The children know that these requests may or may not be honored. She also asks the students to nominate one student whom they believe has been an exceptional classroom citizen that week. All ballots are privately submitted to her.And every single Friday afternoon, after the students go home, Chase’s teacher takes out those slips of paper, places them in front of her and studies them. She looks for patterns.
Who is not getting requested by anyone else?
Who doesn’t even know who to request?
Who never gets noticed enough to be nominated?
Who had a million friends last week and none this week?
We could quickly create a similar system, and eliminate the slips of paper. Best of all, we could get instant insights into the pulse of the classroom by looking at the response summary.
And that is exactly what we did. We pushed out a Google Form through Google Classroom. It only took a few minutes for students to complete the Form. A few minutes later, we had powerful data.
What you find might be surprising. Below is just a snippet of what one classroom told us. Talk about Student Voice and classroom pulse!
Attached are screenshots of the way this Google Form was presented. If you're interested in gaining some insight into your classroom, I encourage you to try something similar. What your students tell you might surprise you.
The "popular kids" may not be so popular. That "quiet kid" might often be excluded on the playground. It's powerful stuff!
Thank you for forwarding that blog article, Angela. Your willingness to try this gave students a voice in the classroom. That's a true inspiration, for the kids in your classroom and your colleagues. That truly is powerful stuff!
