Preliminary Findings: Student Wellbeing and Student Voice Surveys

Due to what has been happening this term with lots of children in and out of school due to sickness and other reasons my biggest focus was students wellbeing. Reading is my overall inquiry focus but in order to figure out my next steps there I wanted to ensure that my students wellbeing was being looked at and addressed. Wellbeing is so important and I believe that this needs to be understood before any learning can take place. If a child has low wellbeing how do we expect them to learn in the classroom with so much going on in their own worlds.

Building relationships with my students this year has been a challenge due to the number of ins and outs there have been. So i conducted some wellbeing surveys so that I could have a clearer understanding of my students well being and what they needed from me as their teacher to help school and learning to be enjoyable and not something that they dread each day. I conducted two surveys that I adapted from other surveys I had found online to fit with my students and also the types of data that I was looking for. Below I have summarised some of the key data I found from these surveys. 

Student Wellbeing Survey Results 

The first graph shows how the students feel overall at school. As you can see from the graph 15 of my students strongly agree with this statement where I also have a number of students who somewhat disagree or strongly disagree. This has given me a great indication of how my students feel coming to school along with an area that I need to investigate why these students don't feel happy at school. My hunch is that there is a slight fear of being at school with covid in our community however this is something to investigate further. 

Another statement in this survey was teachers are there to help me. This graph shows that the majority of students strongly agree with this statement with a small portion who somewhat disagree. Most of the data indicates that students feel like teachers are at school to help them learn, I kept this broad as I wanted students to not feel like they had to base in on the current classroom teacher. Again this data has shown an area to investigate further and see what I can do more as a teacher to ensure that all of my students feel that they can come to a teacher for help. 

Another key statement in this survey was school is mostly fun. I thought that this is an important question for students to be able to answer as it would gauge how the students feel coming to school and if they are having fun at school. This is a big aim for us at Pt England to make sure that children are coming back to school and also having fun at the same time. Again from this data I can see that most of the students agree to some extent with only a small number disagreeing with this statement. We have been trying to incorporate a lot more fun days and activities so far this year so looks like this could definitely be something to continue on with. 

Student voice survey results

Another survey that I conducted with my class was to find out student voice and see how they felt in the classroom with their peer, learning and teachers. Below are some of the key results I found out along with a brief discussion. 

This question was I feel safe in the class sharing my ideas, the data shows that some to most of the time the students do feel that that can share with some feeling like they don't often or hardly ever feel safe to share ideas. This is an important area as I would like all of the students to feel safe to share thoughts and ideas with each other. This links to confidence as well which I do hope to see increase over the year. 

This question was I know what to do when I have a problem, the majority of the class at least some of the time know what to do when they have a problem with a small portion not really sure. This again is another important work on as students should know what to do when they have a problem and should know how to seek help when needed.

This next question was similar to the previous survey but I related this one to how students feel about their teacher. This one was phrased as I feel like my teacher knows me. The data shows that all of the students at least some of the time feel like the teacher knows about them and their lives. I think this is really important if we are wanting students to succeed they need to know that their teacher is also there to support them. 

Finally the last question of significance in this survey was linked to learning and if students did know what they were actually learning about. From the data I can see that this is an area that needs continued development. 

From both of these surveys I managed to gain a greater insight to my class and see some areas of strength as well as some areas that require development throughout the year. I think having wellbeing and student achievement and engagement linked will have a huge impact on not only student achievement but also about how they feel about coming to school. These are just some of the questions not all by all means but just a snapshot into the class to begin the year.