Reflect, Review, Revise to Improve Your Teaching

The school year is winding down again. Books are being collected, finals are being given, and the classrooms are being put to rest for the summer in most schools. After you have given yourself time to catch up on your sleep and relax, take time to reflect on the past school year.

One way to critique the past year is to give your students an evaluation form that they fill out honestly and without a signature. This allows the students a better attitude at freedom of speech.

There are several items to include in a course evaluation form.
1. What unit did you enjoy studying?
2. What was your least favorite unit of study? and why?
3. What was your favorite project?
4. If you could add a project to this course, what would it be and why would you add it?
5. If you were to teach this course, what would you do differently?

These I have the students fill out the last day of class, not the day they take their final. Then, I put them in an envelop and let them rest till the end of June.

Before I pull out the student evaluations, I sit and reflect on what I did during the past year, and how I did it. I write each strong point and each flaw in one column and then in a second column, I begin to brainstorm how I might improve on my flaws.

I include comments and ideas on a wide variety of topics.
1. Taking and reporting attendance.
2. Cronic skippers.
3. Behavior management, identifying problem students and how I might have handled situations differently if I had been calm at the time.
4. Recording of grades.
5. What literature units I felt unprepared to teach, mainly because the literature piece was new to me? Why did I feel that way?
6. Projects that I thought would work well and didn't and why they didn't go well.
7. What test questions need to be rewritten.
8. What assignments need to be revised for clarity.
9. Handling phone calls to parents.
10. Handling the return of papers.
11. Did the floor plan in my classroom work to my advantage or not?
12. What materials should I be looking for over the summer?
13. Review the brainstorms I had that came to late to incorporate them into what I was teaching.
14. What ideas are beginning to come across as stale and should be replaced?
15. Anything else I think of.

After creating the list, I open the packet of student evaluations. As I read them, I jot down their ideas and underline or tally the ones that I already wrote down.

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