Survey+Biology

toc =Reflection on Survey = This survey was administered about three quarters through the class. I have asked for informal feedback from students at several points, but this was a more formal survey.

Highlights:
I'm pleased to read that most students value my time and effort to give help. I do spend a lot of time and energy on this, and it is good to know that students are perceiving it. I think much of the data (see Summary) indicates that I am meeting the needs of most students and engaging most students in the course. While I think both are areas that I can continue to work on, I think in the past couple years I have been able to refine my style of teaching. As I have more comfort and understanding of the content, I am able to be more nimble in class with answering student questions, giving more background knowledge on topics, improve various techniques for engaging students in content, etc. I get the sense, both in class and from the survey, that most students feel comfortable in the class and comfortable with me. I am very proud of that as a teacher.

A couple students commented on the overall organization of the class and the wiki for the class. What a relief to know that my efforts on this are working! I feel that a wiki might be a type of tool that students may take for granted in a course, and it was great that a few students commented on it.

Areas of need and Next steps:
While I have seen my own improvement over the past three years, I can still see the glaring needs to improve. Students made comments about needing to be more explicit on assignments and homework expectations. I can see how I sometimes slide that in at the end of class and need to bring more attention to it if I want students to take it seriously. I would like to work on the types of homework we assign in Biology. I don't think students are always putting in effort into doing the reading or homework assignments because they don't connect the dots between putting in effort on homework and learning the content. This has been a big obstacle for me, particularly this year. Students have been vocal about not performing well on assessments, despite me spending more time reviewing with games and opportunities to ask questions. I continue to urge students to spend time outside of class.

Another topic that was brought up as something I can improve is using more variety in the delivery of content. While some students have recognized that I have been mixing it up to some degree, others point out that there are still class periods that are taken up by note taking. I agree that this is something I need to work on. When looking back at my portfolio from year 1, I notice these comments. While I think I've improved this since then, it is still something that I need to work on. I would like more variety for activities. I think if we had fewer long-term projects in the class I could spend some more energy working on activities that take up 30-45 minutes on a topic or two. In the remainder of the year, I will try to use more of those types of activities. I'm thinking about a Human Dihybrid-Cross Punnett Square?

Another common theme in the comments was the overall amount of content in this course is a heavy load. I think that is the biggest reason for the perception that this is a difficult course (see Summary below). It is clear that some students have a difficult time learning a lot of content at one time. This relates to the Marzano chapter about how to reinforce and practice with content. Marzano mentions that students need to interact with the content in more sophisticated ways four times over two days to develop conceptual understanding. That is for //each// concept. That creates a __natural conflict in this course__. For example, there are about 25 cell parts that we teach students. How is it possible to develop conceptual understanding for each in the time that we have for this unit? I find that everytime I slow down to work on a concept in this manner, I get further behind in our time schedule for the year. //This push and pull of meeting the state standards and conceptual understanding for students is one I have a hard time with.// It is clear to me that some students just memorize for tests and quizzes without really knowing what anything means. I don't feel I'm doing students justice by rushing through content. How is this worthwhile? In all honesty, this is the only justifiable reason I can see for grouping by Honors and College Prep in this course. It very well might be a way to meet more students conceptual needs. Honors Challenge might be a way to meet these needs, as well.

Summary with specific reflections
media type="custom" key="3500622"

Data
I've highlighted a few comments of particular interest in this spreadsheet. media type="custom" key="3492356"