Voice of the Customer: Students Reflect on Continuous Improvement
Guest blogger, Kim Thompson (5th grade teacher in the Mountain View, California school district) shares reflections from her students in her continuous improvement classroom. In the "Voice of the Customer" series, students share their experiences and reflections about the impact of continuous improvement.
One student states “it motivates students, like myself, into reaching the highest point that they can push themselves to go”. Read the rest of this 5th grade student's reflection of continuous improvement in Mrs. Thompson's classroom...
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The Data Center has helped Bubb 5th graders in many ways. For one, it motivates students, like myself, into reaching the highest point that they can push themselves to go. It gives them a sense of where they are academically by explaining and showing their strengths and weaknesses. We have a chart that Mrs. Thompson graphs for us. The chart shows grades for our Math Journals and for our weekly quizzes. Displaying my grades makes me want to do the best that I can do. It also makes our entire 5th grade try to show off.
You know how when you walk into a classroom for the first time, your new teacher gives you your assigned seats and then you unpack your school supplies into your desk. After that, they tell you their class rules and the consequences for breaking them. Then they tell you what they expect for your goal for the rest of the year. When I walked into Mrs. Thompson's class it was different, we got to make the rules for ourselves and determined what our goals are for the trimester. Mrs. Thompson treats us like adults, we get our own say about what we do. The PLUS-DELTA chart lets us express our feelings anonymously, by saying what we're feeling about the lesson and if we fully understand the concept or not.
The Data Center is basically there to expand learning experiences and to help Mrs. Thompson help us. She doesn't just want us to memorize facts and formulas. She wants us to fully understand why we're doing it and to learn how so we can use it all the time. It's not just worksheet after worksheet, it's using tools to understand the concepts. And I think the Data Center helps me feel like I am really learning and accomplishing my math goals and so much more!
My point is, that the Data Center is useful in the classroom.
-5th Grade Student
Mountain View Whisman School Distrtict, CA
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What do your students say about their experiences with continuous improvment in your classroom or school? Post a comment today!
Comments
Your writing about student involvement in their own continuous improvement reminds me of David Johnson’s work in classrooms. As I recall it, he did research that showed that team-based cooperative learning increased knowledge and skills of most students that exceeded individual improvement among the control groups.
In my own work, I focus on resistance to change in organizations. My guess would be that the approaches discussed in this blog reduce resistance to learning since students and faculty feel a greater sense of ownership and involvement.
Rick Maurer
www.beyondresistance.com
Posted by: Rick Maurer | April 26, 2007 02:53 PM
Hi Rick,
Your comments are right on. As you know, engaging students in the learning process increases accountability, responsibility and ownership. In turn, this reduces resistance to change. This isn't much different than reducing resistance to change in adults, is it?
Thanks for taking the time to comment on the blog.
PS- I've had the fortunate opportunity to hear you speak and appreciate your books and website. Keep up the good work!
Posted by: Jay Marino | April 26, 2007 02:59 PM
Dear Rick,
Thank you for taking time to respond to one of my students. What encouragement it will give them that an author would take the time to express his thoughts about something they wrote.
I do believe I've encountered less resistance to continually improving in my students this year due to really listening to their voices, setting SMART goals, and constant monitoring, celebrating sucesses, and giving specific feedback to help each student improve.
The students are excited and motivated to learn. I'm excited and motivated to continue to grow as a teacher.
PS. I'm looking forward to reading your website.
Posted by: Kim Thompson | April 26, 2007 11:31 PM
Your blogs are very good and my students have shown their appreciation as well. They submitted many comments. In our country where problems are entirely diffeent from other parts of the world i have seen that once students ownership is developed they respond quite positively. For last many years i have been practicing team approach very succesfully. I know students will be a better source but i support the idea.
Posted by: ejaz Ahmed | April 28, 2007 03:17 AM