Taking a Pulse

After my ‘writing workshop‘ activity today, I polled my students to see how helpful it was and whether or not they had any interest in repeating it. I cut some sticky notes into strips and gave each student two. I drew two line graphs on my whiteboards; one with “Helpful” and “Not Helpful” on opposite ends, and one with “Never Again” and “Often” on opposite ends. I instructed students to place one of their stickies on each of the line graphs on their way out the door.

The results were very helpful in one class: students were almost entirely in agreement that the activity was helpful and that they’d like to do it regularly. In my other two classes, the students were evenly divided along the graph.