Ask Your Students How Class Is Going
a system you can use for checking in with your students
Two summers ago, Jim Mayers shared a quick set of questions with me that he had been attaching to his classroom exit tickets—and then wrote a full post detailing the how and why of what these look like.
At the heart of these questions? His goal of creating pathways to get more students in his classroom the support they need and deserve:
Because this student is quiet, and maybe doesn’t want to ask for help in person, I can easily imagine a regrettable scenario where I see her in class on a daily basis working hard, submitting work as best she could, but continually falling behind because she’s confused. I don’t ask if she needs help, and she doesn’t ask me for help, and maybe she just floats along with middling grades and a handful of incomplete assignments until she resigns herself to the idea that AP Lang just isn’t for her, and things stay relatively static from September to May. Teachers have many students, and obviously not enough time to tutor each one individually—much as we’d like to. —Jim Mayers, “An Updated Exit Ticket”
Immediately I recognized how valuable this practice could be and began adapting it into my own classroom, and for the past two years this has been foundational in not only understanding how individual students are doing but also gathering “pulse checks” of each classroom as the year ebbs and flows.
Perhaps most importantly, too, opening the door to conversations in our classroom in which we debrief the results and talk together about what the best path forward can look like.
In today’s post, I want to walk through a few things:
What the monthly pulse check survey includes, both with the initial three survey questions and the fourth question: an optional check-in
A video reflection of the survey system with considerations and suggestions before implementing this in your own classroom
A closing emphasis about the importance of sharing the results with your classroom and building a conversation around them
If you want to make a copy of the survey to create your own, here is a link!
3 quick questions, once-a-month
The structure that I’ve landed on for monthly pulse check surveys has three questions—with the goal of being super-quick but also intentional at creating a snapshot for me to understand how the classroom community is going in that moment but also over the course of the year.
Here are the three survey questions, with a brief explainer for each:
“How are things going for you in this class, 1-7?” This is the baseline question that Jim introduced me to, and I prefer the seven different options to create some range for students in both the positive and negative responses. It also is intentionally vague about what students are evaluating (academic learning, amount of support, fun and enthusiasm, etc.) to lean into what matters most for the individual student filling it out.
“If you had to choose a word to describe how you feel?” I borrowed this from a Cult of Pedagogy post on Semantic Pulse Surveys, brainstorming twenty potential answers that students can select from a dropdown list to name how they are feeling. This is super helpful for me to then present as a word cloud when sharing the results back with the classroom community after the survey is taken. (There is an option for students to write their own word, too!)
“How are things going for you overall as a student”? This number is an important comparison point for me and the initial answers, as a student who selects “2” for Question 1 but then selects “2” for this question as well is a quite-different scenario than a student who selects “6” for this question, indicating that my class is a negative outlier in their day. Additionally, this question allows me to pay attention to the averages overall over the course of the school year and open the door to broader conversations with our classroom community about what their experience is like.
—and 1 optional check-in question
I believe very much in this fourth optional question but I also think you need to be super-intentional about how you word it and frame it to students in the classroom. (See this always-important post by Alex Shevrin Venet for a bit more about why I’m so mindful about this.)
The first priority for me: it is 100% optional. If I give this survey to 100 students, I typically only have 5-10 use this space, which is completely fine. The goal is to create a space for students to let you know how they could be better supported—and even if only a few students use it, the space was there for those who needed it.
The wording matters, too: “to better support you in class.” Sometimes surveys can pressure students into sharing more than they want to and that is the last thing you want to do in your classroom—as the goal here is to better understand what a student needs to be successful in their eyes in your classroom. So make sure the wording communicates that.
Remind them repeatedly that it’s an anonymous survey. This is the one catch with this survey, as I really value that the first three questions are anonymous in order to get honest, reliable results—but at the same time, that can create the occasion when a student fills out Question 4 but then doesn’t leave their name.
Oh, and the other thing? It’s really important to read and respond to these as soon as you can, preferably by the next class period. A question like this can build trust unless a student does not feel that you cared about what they shared with you. So if you’re going to include this, remember that it means following up the next class period.
A few suggestions before you implement this
There is a lot of value in keeping this anonymous—even if it is tempting to have students attach their names. (I also think there is value in longer, name-attached surveys every once in awhile, too.)
Keep track of results over time, if you can—as this gives you a “story of your classroom,” in a way, in the eyes of your students. It gives you a glimpse into the school-wide experience for your students, too, which can be a meaningful data point to bring to others in your building.
Be prepared for some tough results at times—last year I gave this survey the day a major writing project was due and, expectedly, the results were pretty dismal! That led to a fantastic conversation in the classroom, though, and leads to my final, most important point…
You have to share the results with your students
Like, I’m serious: please do not use this tool if you are not going to share the results.
At the end of the day, this is a tool designed to honor student voice and build rapport within your classroom community, and all that falls apart if you fail to bring the results back into the classroom.
Yes, sometimes this is difficult! But I assure you, especially when it is difficult, it can be incredibly meaningful—not just in what you learn about the classroom from the conversations with students, but even more in that you are modeling for students what it looks like to be open to feedback and accountable to all results, not just the most positive ones.
That is a powerful example to set as the adult in the room, and all it takes is giving a super-quick survey and then bringing those results back into the room.
And listening to what students have to say about them.
Note: featured image for post from Pexels.com, taken by Leeloo The First
Yeah I’m stealing this. 🔥🔥
Love this idea! Have you found any patterns about what day of the week is best to hand out the surveys? I wonder if Mondays lean towards less positive answers/ratings compared to Fridays.