Friday, July 23, 2010

And the Survey Says...

I had my 4th-6th grade students take a survey at the end of the school year with questions about my teaching style/habits, the mural project, and their favorite lessons of the year.  Today I finally had a chance to go through all of the surveys and count the number of votes for each lesson.  If I put an asterisk next to the lesson title, it means that only half of the classes or less got to do that lesson due to scheduling.  I also want to point out that I'm not counting the votes for the mural project in the rankings.  I had such overwhelmingly positive feedback for that project that I knew it would be the favorite so I had asked students not to write it down on their surveys.

4th Grade
Watercolor Fantasy Landscape 21
Geometric Shape Op Art 21
Continuous Line Drawings 14
*Doodle 4 Google 12
KS Critters: Bugs 5
Colored Pencil Still Life- Gourds 4
Jr. Duck Stamp 4
*Sun & Moon Folk Art 1
"Drawing" 1
Mural 6


5th Grade
Mixed Media Clothes Lines (I need to blog about this one!)28
What if _____ Grew on Trees25
*Doodle 4 Google13
Jr. Duck Stamp11
Landscapes- Mixing Primary Colors6
"Everything"/"All"3
Kansas Critters: Bugs1
Gourd Still Life Drawing0
Mural5



6th Grade
Aboriginal Inspired (will blog about this one too!)27
Complementary Landscape Painting13
Monochromatic Silhouette9
Jr. Duck Stamp8
*Doodle 4 Google8
*Raining Popcorn7
Gourd Still Life- Pencil Rendering7
"Everything"/"All"3
"IDK"2
Free Draw2
Kansas Critters: Bugs1
Mural7



I think I want to try finding out the students' favorite projects at the end of each semester so they will be fresher in their memories.  I could just make a sign and let students put a tally mark or sticker to vote for their favorite project.  Finding out favorite projects was the most useful part of the survey I gave.  The questions about teaching were not quite as helpful because the students contradicted each other and themselves!  It amazed me how much their perceptions varied!

4 comments:

  1. What an interesting idea! I may have to try that one next year. jan

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  2. Great idea to survey the kids. Except I usually KNOW what they would pick by their reactions, without asking: toothpaste batik or papier mache in gr5, and and in grade 6, a toss-up between plaster bandage finger puppets (so much fun), and altered books. Grade 4 would say wampum belts, coil pots, or crazy cardboard houses. Grade 3, papier-mache. As you can see, the 3-D stuff almost always wins - but I don't see any on your list. Don't be afraid of working 3-D with kids; they LOVE it and it's easy!!

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  3. I'm not afraid of 3D, it was just a weird scheduling thing that prevented it! It took a while to get my budget figured out since it was my first year so when I finally got my clay in, I had a cool clay project planned for spring. Then I found out that they would be using the art room for testing and I had to wait until after testing to start painting the mural project with the kids. I was kinda bummed out and so were they that we didn't get to do a 3D project last year but I explained it was because of the special mural project. I told them we would do a clay project this fall to make up for it and I'm really excited to do some cardboard relief sculptures! I'm just excited now to get my calendar at school so I can start figuring out when we are going to do each project (and what I need to plan for my maternity leave!)

    Your cardboard houses sound really cool!

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  4. I'll have to do a post about the cardboard houses. I got the lesson from Arts & Activities Magazine online - it was originally intended as a Halloween-y spooky house thing, but we ran out of time and finished them after Halloween, so they were just strange crooked houses. The kids loved it.

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