Every year our grade 4 to 6 students do a survey called Tell Them From Me (TTFM). The TTFM survey is meant to give students a voice at their school and to provide Alberta Education and schools some information. This information can be very useful in identifying strengths and areas of growth in a learning community.
Last year we decided to try to give students a bigger voice at Our Lady of the Assumption School. In addition to doing TTFM we used surveymonkey to create Tell OLA From Us (TOFU – educators love acronyms) for our grade 3 to 6 students. These were locally developed questions that we gave students every two months or so. The data we gathered from the students was very useful and helped to guide our staff in making decisions. Here are two examples from last year’s TOFU survey:
This year we are planning to continue our TOFU survey. Also, we are expanding our TOFU survey by using a scale rating system and providing students a written response to some of the questions. Here are the questions we are asking this year:
Giving students a voice is important in creating community and provides valuable information for the learning community. TTFM and TOFU gives our students a voice that is heard.
Greg Kostiuk
Greg Kostiuk 
Cool. I’m especially impressed with your staff that feels secure enough to go public with the results!
This definitely looks helpful for the staff and students. Feedback is always an eye opener. Did the staff figure out why the “Positive Learning Environment” got such a low rating by the grade six students by the end of the school year? If it is addressed, it could help ensure a more positive response for next year’s grade six class 🙂
Thanks for the response. Staff did look into this. Interesting, the big drop corresponds to the students writing the mandated provincial achievement tests