Any good teacher is always looking ways to be a better teacher. So at the end of the school year as I reflect upon the last 9 months and look ahead for planning for the new year, I go to the best source for feedback– my students.

Every year I have students complete a feedback survey about the course and gather insight into the mind of an 8th grader. A lot of gives me confirmation of what I am doing in class, but there is also good feedback on things that I can improve. After my first full year of 100% storytelling, I realized I needed to explain the WHY of my strategies and how acquisition worked.

This year, I have multiple surveys, that I have my students fill out on Google Forms:

Class Novels:

1) What was helpful in increasing your UNDERSTANDING of the reading?

2) One thing I don’t understand about the book:

3) Thoughts about reading the book?

Free Voluntary Reading

This is what my students had to say last year.

1) My Top 2 Favorite Books that I read:

2) Comments on any of the Spanish lectura libre books you read (please say which book you are talking about)- Did you like the book? Was it interesting? Would you recommend it?

3) Time spent reading in class was…. too little? just right? too much?

4) Being able to read a novel in Spanish makes me feel……..

5) What I liked about reading our choices of novels…..

6) Final comments/thoughts about FVR?

General Class Feedback

1) Describe your experience acquiring the language through stories as opossed to learning through vocab lists and grammar

2) What did you like about this class

3) What would you change about this class? What could be improved?

4) What stories/activities left an impact on you or changed your perspective. (Teachers, Note that perspective is a big theme for me)

5) What vocabulary or culture would you have liked to learn?

6) Write a letter to incoming students about what to expect from this class and what they need to do to be successful.

I posted about what I took a way from a survey I gave to my students several years ago in this blog post.

Other questions:

What activities helped you learn the most? Why do you think that is?

What activities did not help you learn? How could they be improved?

Did you feel important in this class?

If you want just a general survey, @MrVaudrey has shared his Google Forms for “Teacher Report Card“, which when you open and make a copy can edit to suit your needs.

What are some of your favorite questions to ask to get feedback from students? Let us know in the comments.