Wow – this year has flown by! Although, for me at least the last couple weeks of school seem like they go on FOREVER 🙂
The end of the year isn’t just a time for students and teachers to get stir crazy with that summer fever – or for students to spend hours and hours anxiously sitting in a desk to answer 100 multiple choice questions in order to determine their future level of success… It’s also a great time for End of the Year Surveys!!!
If you’ve been around on this blog since the beginning you might remember me posting about my End of the Year Surveys previously.
Basically to sum it up for you in case you don’t have time to click the link above – I always like to give my older students a survey at the end of the year to get some feedback and insights into what is working with my program, where I might be failing my students and ways I can improve my program during the following year.
Your students are the most qualified people to give you insight into your teaching – they are the one’s you should be catering your instruction to.
Do you know your students interests? Do you know what they enjoy? Do you know which units are the biggest hits and which units are a struggle? Maybe you have a good idea – but it never hurts to ask. You might be surprised by the results. Especially if the surveys are anonymous – they’ll be happy to give you some honest feedback.
Previously, I’ve always done a paper pencil survey – super simple with a few questions:
- What are your 3 favorite activities we’ve done this year?
- What are your 3 least favorite activities we’ve done this year?
- What are some activities that you wish we had done, but we didn’t?
- What is some advice you would give future students to be successful?
While the feedback was always great – I hated having to record the paper/pencil answers to get percentages and see any trends throughout the school. So this year I finally did it – I got all Techy and went digital with my surveys using iPads and Google Forms. Since I don’t have enough iPads to go around for a whole class, I just set it up as a station activity during our last couple weeks of school. (More tips for teaching with stations Here)
Check out the video below to see how I did it and what the survey looks like inside Google Forms:
Using QR Codes with Google Chromebooks
You can also use QR Codes with Google Chromebooks which I recently discovered since our school got rid of iPads and switched to giving kids Chromebooks instead.
Check out the video below for a quick walkthrough of how it works.
Links from the video:
- 5 Awesome Warmup Activities
- How to make a QR code
- Link to My Google Forms Survey… Also I made a quick tutorial that will show you how to make your own in 5 minutes – check it out below:
A few of my favorite responses from my kids:
- What’s the most important thing you learned in PE this year?
- “I think the most important thing I learned was to practice activities after school and keep going if you are tired and always keep trying harder to achieve goals”
- “That you don’t have to be perfect to have fun”
- “To solve problems on my own”
- “Beef- B- balance e-eyes e-elbows f-follow through… The cookie jar!!!” 🙂
*Yikes – I need to find a way to do fitness better – I want to make it more fun, personalize it and help make it more meaningful for kids. I also realized after looking at this that maybe a better way to phrase the question would be “Where there any activities that you did not enjoy”. This is going to be something I’m going to explore next year.
Can you give advice to students who will be in PE next year?
- “Just to try your best and always get up again. Never feel like a failure”
- “Pay attention. Almost everything Coach Landers says is valuable info” 🙂 for real though… 🙂
- “Exercise set goals and have fun!”
- “Practice practice practice because practice makes perfect.”
- “Do not talk when the teacher is talking it will waste your time.”
- “All the students next year should keep going and don’t give up on something even if it is hard you should still try and give it your all in P.E because you never know what activity can change your life mine is soccer.”
- “Do your best at everything, you’re not going to win all the time”
*I really love that last question – I feel like it’s a good indicator of the kinds of philosophies you focus on with your students and reflects what you think is important – or at least the things you have communicated to your students to be important.
You can also take your students’ responses and paste them into the text box over at Wordle.com and create a cool poster with your schools philosophies (see below for an example).
That’s About It…
I really think having your students complete surveys is a great way to get some insight into your teaching and your students interests and perspective.
Ideally, I would love to sit down and have a one-on-one conversation with each and every student, but unfortunately that’s not possible – this is a great second best solution that allows students to give me honest feedback and then I can go back and review their answers when planning for the next school year.
Have an AMAZING close to your school year and get some rest over the summer.
As always…
Have Fun and Teach On!
Alex says
Useful
Thank you
Marcus says
You’re welcome Alex! Glad you’re enjoying the resources!
Teri Howe says
Thanks for all of your great videos. I picked up a lot of great ideas. I am retiring after 41 years of teaching. I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed your ideas on teaching P.E.
Marcus Nellems says
Teri! Thanks for reaching out!
Congratulations on the retirement! What an accomplishment! Kudos to you for all the lives you’ve changed over the years!
Enjoy retirement! Well deserved!
Tamara wood says
I also am really needing help teaching good sportsmanship. The students seem to have lost how to have good sportsmanship and I feel it’s because we give everyone trophies. Do you have any suggestions.
I love you videos, I use them almost every week.
Ben Landers says
We use “The Good Sportsmanship Code” there’s a link on our resources page. Also I have a video on “Winners and Losers” on our FAQ Page, also linked up on our resources page:
https://www.thepespecialist.com/home/
Tamara wood says
I have noticed in your videos that you have equipment high up on the walls, could you send me some pics or put out an email of how you organize? I’ve received 2 $3,000 grants and I have more equipment than I have room for. Thanks
I love you videos, I use them almost every week.
Ben Landers says
There’s a video explaining the storage area at the bottom of this post:
https://www.thepespecialist.com/nets/
Coach Larson says
Ben…do your students have access to computers/iPads to fill out your survey during PE class?
Ben Landers says
Yes, we can rent iPads from the Media Center for kids when they are available
Aimee Rosier says
I’m curious, do you cover Volleyball or Football? Those are two sports that I struggle to teach. I don’t see it on your survey so I was just wondering? Are those sports covered in your curriculum?
Ben Landers says
I have taught volleyball as a 3 week unit and taught “throwing a football” as a one day lesson, but I have since scratched them and we do games that I think more elementary kids will play like 4-Square, Spikeball, general striking challenges with beach balls and baloons etc.