Feedback Survey for the Week of October 17 - 21

The pace of the class. 3.59 (4.0)

The challenge of the class. 3.82 (3.67)

Respect to students by Mr. O. 4.71 (4.33)

Respect to students by students. 4.29 (4.33)

Respect to Mr. O by students. 4.47 (4.33)

What went well in class this week?

big group pithy discussions are excellent. a huge improvement.

I enjoyed doing the larger small group discussions. In a couple of them we managed to get a great discussion going from only one quote. The trade off with these groups is that there is not as much time to talk in large groups, so maybe we can alternate the group sizes every other day.

I enjoyed how we went over direct quotes from the Scarlet Letter as a class a few times this week.It was something new and it started a lot of good conversations.

I felt in both small and large group we had really great discussions. Everyone seems to be really into the book and have interesting ideas about the characters and symbolism. It's great to hear others ideas and share your own to be able to understand the book better. I really liked having the games like memory and matching online to practice for the rhetorical devices quiz. They were really helpful.

I have begun to do the alternate pithy quote assignments and I like them very much. I tried to do a pcture one day and that was fun because I thought while I drew and so by the end I had a page of good ideas, all of which were thougth of while I was scratching away.

I liked the pithy quote discussions that we had in small groups this week. I thought that we had very productive and interesting debates about almost every aspect of the book. I really liked hearing what everyone had to say. I liked the medium sized pithy quote groups because they were small enough to let everyone share but large enough to generate good discussions.

I really enjoyed looking at the short essay 'the Rhodora' by Emerson. It was really cool to pick out all the 'hidden' meanings and messages in this essay. I also loved to hear everybody else's opinion. Before we discussed it as a class, I talked to Nathan Potter about it and it was really cool to see our two different opinions! I also really liked the discussion on respect because i liked to hear how everybody felt about it.

I loved our extremely spirited discussions on The Scarlet Letter. It seemed that this week we really got into good discussions/arguments, and everyone was able to talk to the class as a whole.

I thought that the larger small group discussions went well. It's nice to have the small groups like this. I felt as thought we had good discussions and made good connections in small group this week.

My small group discussions this week went really well. Having the alternative pithy quote assignments makes the discussions more interesting, and the larger small groups worked well. I also liked spending less time in large group discussion, because I felt that I got more out of the class.

I really liked discussing pithy quotes with larger groups. Having more people in each group increased the number of ideas that we could discuss, while still letting every person be heard.

I think that the small group discussion went well this week. The larger groups were nice because there were more people to talk to and to help keep the conversations going.

I think the larger pithy groups this past week went very well. There were more opportunities to voice my opinion with more subjects to talk about. The discussions seemed to stay more on task resulting in richer ideas. I also was able to be in groups with different people than usual, which brought to light many of theirs thoughts that I had never heard before. I think we should continue this to maximize our comprehension of the readings.

I thought that our large group discussions really went well. People were passionate and argumentative, which is a good thing. Everyone had a chance to speak, and we came to some excellent conclusions regarding The Scarlet Letter.

Our work on verb agreement went very well this week. I thought that it was new and interesting. It was very difficult to relearn something that I've been doing wrong my whole life but the class and Mr.O very helped me to do well with it.

The class discussion on Thursday went well. It wasn't as good as last Thursday's and choclate bars were mentioned a few too many times for my liking, but all in all it went well.

The large group discussions!

The noun/verb agreement excercise went well for me this week. I feel that my grammer foundations are somewhat shakey and that doing these excercises are very helpful.

The two major things that went really well in class this week was our large group discussion at the beginning of the week and our large group discussion at the end of the week. They were both very high paced and fun to listen to/ be apart of. The bar of chocolate brought about much deep thought and I am very impressed that our minds were liberated enough to talk about that many different interpretations of dicipline. I also liked the subject verb excercises and the device quiz. Also, this survey is looking to be pretty high on the list with its new coor scheme and variation of grouping the pace/challange/respect etc. subjects! thank you Mr. O!

This week i really enjoyed having the alternative pithy quote options. not only did it boost my interest and enthusiasm for the assignments, but it also gave greater diversity to the discussion groups.

What could have gone better?

I don't really like the size of our large group discussions. It seems that everyone wants to talk at once, and there are so many people in class that it is hard for everyone to say what they want to say, when they want to say it. This is not the fault of the class, but an inherent flaw in the number of people we are trying to get together at once.

I think that everything went well this week. Nothing really stood out to me as improvable other than the usual, 'let's do something new' comment.

I think that the class discussions could have gone better. I really liked the discussion a week ago that we all really participated and it seemed to 'reappear' occasionally, but not all the time.

I think that we need more time for the medium-group discussions, because whenever we need to come back to big group, we are barely half-finished. That's it.

I think that the class can be a little repetitive. There is a lot of analyzing. I understand this is an important part of english, but I think it would be nice to mix it up. I would like to have a project where we work as a group in class. I think that this would help with the 'disrespect issue' because then we would have to work with each other and in so doing we would learn more about each other and our different levels of respect. So far this year, we have only really talked together in our pithy quote discussions and haven't gotten to know each other beyond the surface. If we have a larger project where we need to work together, I think it would bring us together more and we would understand each other more. It would also be nice to do something a little different from the analytical discussions.

In the big groups, it would be good if we could come up with a better system of determining who talks and who doesn't. It seems that when we just raise hands people don't get called on for a long time. Unfortunately, with such a big class I don't know if there is really any other logical way to do it.

The large group discussion about self respect could have gone better. Although I found it very interesting to listen to everyone's thoughts, and I actually really enjoyed the class, I think that it was hard to get anywhere after a while. Next time maybe we should try to connect the discussion to the book more.

I think the subject/verb agreement could have gone better for me this week. In some cases I just wasn't understanding whether to use plural or singular, or in one case I didn't know which was the singular of plural verb. I am not confident that I did well on that quiz either. I studied for it, but there were some questions that tripped me up, but I guess I'll have to wait and see.

I thought we way over analyzed the graph of our class respect. I feel that our class respect is vey good. There are a few things we need to work on but I felt that we spent too much time talking about it.

I was confused by the online quiz. Are we graded on the one we took at home or the one we took in class? It would be better if we just did the quizes in class because sometimes I don't plan things right at home. For example, I had to take the quiz while I was babysitting. There were screaming kids gargling in my ear and I had to use a prehistoric computer. Ew.

I was fine with doing the preposition packet and discussing it in class, but sometimes people would complain about it. This bothered me because I would have had a much easier time paying attention and understanding it if I didn't have to listen to these caustic remarks.

It felt like the cover discussions sort of tapered off at the end. It was a bit of a bummer

Nothing!

Small group discussion on Friday, everyone in my group just kept side tracking, but I wanted tostay on topic

Small groups could have gone better. I myself prefer the smaller Small Groups because I feel less intimidated and find it easier to speak.

Something that could have gne better this week was my organization. One day i forgot to bring in my subject verb problems and i think i pulled it off pretty well and if i didn't write it in here noone would have known but that is what I could have done better. I'm pretty sure I aced the quiz anyway... just thought i'd let ya know.

The only thing I think could have gone better was some small group discussions. Sometimes it felt like the group would go off on a tangent. It could be frustrating if you wanted to share an idea about the book, but might not have had time. However, I still felt every group I was in made good connections and like having the bigger groups.

The pithy quote groups could have gone better. I think that having a larger group makes it more difficult to stay on topic and give everyone a chance to share their pithy quote. The groups I was in got much more off topic than my smaller groups. I also thought that spending so much time speaking about our respect issue could have been done better. I do not think that it is a very big issue and I think that by spending too much time on this issue it made it more of a problem than it really is for us.

We could have worked a little more on Literary Devices in class.

While i enjoy the large group discussions of certain selections from literature (i.e. The Rhodora) i don't always think that i learn a lot from the experience. i love looking deeper into literature, but sometimes the large group discussions feel forced.

Identity someone who inspired you this week, someone who achieved something above and beyond expectations.

Caroline Eichler impressed me this week. Sadly she has cut back on her epiphanies, but she still always makes great points and isn't afraid to disagree with a popular opinion.

Lila Trowbridge inspired me this past week. She comes up with a lot of great ideas in our discussions. Not only does she think of different ideas, but she also questions the group. This helps us to discover more in our conversations. She also really thinks about her work. For example: Lila did a drawing for one of the pithy quotes. Not only was the drawing very good, but there was a lot of symbolism in it that she came up with.

Sarah Birkeback inspired me this week with her alternative pithy quote assignments. Two of the times that I was in her group, she chose to draw a picture rather than just write. Her artwork was very well done, and it helped me see the deep connections that she had made to the book. After seeing how well her artwork came out, I was inspired to do an alternative assignment as well.

Sarah inspired me this week when she drew instead of writing pithy quotes. I thought that her drawings were excellent, and really said something about the book. They allowed me to look at symbols and scenes in a new way.

HhHhHhHhHhHelllllo Caroline. Caroline is inspiring. She is inspiring because she likes to argue and I like to argue so all's well when we argue. Go for it Ms. Eichler!

I was inspired by Sarah this week. I was in her small discussion group many times this week and every-time she had drawn a picture instead of the original pithy quote essay. I was impressed not only by her obvious artistic ability, but also the deep literary analyses behind them. She brought up many lively discussion topics and I thoroughly enjoyed being in her groups.

Kelsey was a great inspiration this past week in pithy quote discussions. I had the oppotunity to be in her group twice during the week as we talked about pithy quotes from The Scarlet Letter. She continues to impress me with her interpretations of passages from the text as well as identify exceptional literary devices that helped to understand the emotions of the characters.

Lila drew this amazing picture and an equally great quote with it, and Caroline kind of shot down my weak argument, which needed doing (What was I thinking?)

Lila impressed me this week with her amazing piture of the stunted forest and the brook. I was impressed by both her artistic skills and her insights about Pearl being the stream and the Puritans being the stunted forest. Thanks for giving me new ideas!!

Lila Trowbridge and Sam Bond inspired me this week by making incredible drawings for the alternate pithy-quote assignments. They are both great artists and they each had good reasons for their pictures. They generated very good discussions and made this week's small groups very interesting.

Michelle ever ceases to inspire me. Her attitude and focus in class is exceptional, as are her contributions to our discussions. I am constantly impressed with her attitude in the small groups. She always listens to what everyone has to say and always has something interesting to add.

Sam Bond inspired me this past week with her artistic abilites. She chose to draw a very symbolic picture as an alternative assignment atleast twice last week, and she was able to go into great detail describing them. She made some amazing connections and opened up our small group discussions with many new ideas.

Sam Bond was expiring in the extreme this week. she did drawings at least once, if not twice this week. I enjoyed her drawing of the dress with sand and rocks and the letter A.

Sam MacIntire impressed me this week when we had out chocolate bar discussion. He seemed to have some really interesting ideas that prompted a good class discussion.

Sam MacIntire inspired me this week during our discussions. I was impressed with his ability to speak his mind and really back himself up. When he was confused with one of the homework problems, he didn't just accept the answer, he asked why. Sam also contributed a ton to our discussions. I always love to hear his thoughts and what he thinks about certain things because his ideas are great and he can always explain himself.

Sarah inspired me this week when she continually created drawings instead of doing pithy quotes. I thought that her drawings were very good, and that they gave me a different perspective on imagery and symbolism in The Scarlet Letter. Kudos to Sarah for being different!

Sarah really inspired me this week. She did the alternative drawing instead of a pithy quote and I was really impressed. My favorite was her drawing of the green 'A' Pearl made for herself. Sarah really picked up on its importance and made an amazing picture. I haven't done an alternative assignment yet, but Sarah has made me want to try one.

Shanon inspired me this week with her interesting approach to the pithy quote assignments. i was in her group several times this week, and for her pithy she often chose an insight into a certain character. i loved her analysis of each character's motivation and morals and enjoyed her love for learning.

Someone who inspired me this week was Sam Bond. Last week i chose her as my inspriation because she chose to do the illustration instead of a pithy quote and it made a lot of sense to me. This week she hand embroidered a letter 'A' and put it into her illustration. She has shown dedication to the class and I cannot wait to see what she has for us in the weeks that follow. Keep it up SAMMAYYY

This week I was inspired by (surprise, surprise) Charlie Beyer. In our pithy quote group, he really wanted to read his pithy quote. Instead of being just the everyday 180 words, Charlie had gone on a tangent about Beauty. It was incredible. I was amazed at his depth of thought and his courage. He inspired me to try harder and not hold anything back when I write.