Student Interest Survey

I think this is such a great worksheet to hand out to your students at the beginning of the new school year. As a teacher, the questions listed give you an opportunity to get to know the students better which in turn helps to make your classroom differentiated. When I was a student all the way back in elementary school, and even now in college, I absolutely loved it when my teachers took an interest in me. It really showed me that they cared about me individually and wanted to get to know me better. I can remember distinct times in my educational career where teachers played a huge part in my life. In elementary school, Mrs. Long knew I was shy, took me aside, and told me she knew I was going places. She told me to speak up and voice my opinions. I had a lot of great ideas inside my head, she said, and I needed to share them with everyone. In middle school, my English teacher Mrs. Williams really helped me to succeed in her class. She took each student and worked with them one-on-one to help them understand more fully how to write a five paragraph essay. Mr. Boberg, my high school history teacher, told me how impressed he was with me, expressed the expectations he wanted of me in his class, and always told me when I was doing well. I look back, and I see just how great these teachers were. And now, I look at this worksheet and hope that one day, I can be a teacher just like them. With the knowledge I'll gain from the responses of the students, I can really have a differentiated classroom. I can learn their strengths, weaknesses, likes, dislikes, and goals from just one worksheet. I can create activities and lesson plans based on the findings from the answers. When the students know that I want to help them learn more about things they are interested in, I believe they will work harder in class, trust me more as a teacher, and really try to succeed in my classroom.