How can I debrief survey results with students?

Modified on: Wed, Aug 27, 2025 at 9:30 AM

Programs: ✅ Ascend ⛔ Catalyze ✅ Elevate

Sharing your report data with your students is a powerful way to show them that you value their feedback and to get suggestions about how to improve. It may also lead to improvements in your survey fidelity scores.

A. Why Should Teachers Debrief Survey Data with Their Students?

There is often a disconnect between how educators and students perceive students’ learning experiences. A recent study from the Search Institute asked both young people and adults to report how much the young people experienced things like care expressed by teachers and being challenged to learn. While adults reported that these learning experiences occurred 86% of the time, young people reported them only 45% of the time.

This difference is why PERTS encourages partnering with students throughout the Elevate process. Without a debrief, teachers are left to try to make sense of their Elevate data without the students’ perspective to fill in the gaps, and they may not always make accurate assumptions.

When debriefing, teachers should seek to meet the following objectives:

Familiarize students with a process for discussing quantitative data
Build students’ comfort around expressing their opinions on the data
Deepen your understanding of how students experience the learning conditions (or a subset)
[Optional, but recommended]: Solicit input on practices to try out to improve

B. Why is Debriefing with Students Necessary?

Debriefing Elevate data benefits teachers, students, and the classroom environment.

Teacher benefits:	Learn high-yield classroom practices for their unique students Cultivate a stronger relationship with their students Deepen their understanding of students’ perceptions of the learning conditions
Students benefits:	Co-create an authentic partnership with their teachers Learn foundational skills in self-advocacy Feeling invested and empowered in the learning process
Class environment benefits:	Encourage open communication and trust between teachers and students Create a shared responsibility and understanding of how to cultivate a productive and engaged learning environment

C. How do I Facilitate A Successful Debrief?

Before facilitating an activity with students, set aside some time to plan and prepare the debrief.

View and reflect on your latest Elevate report to learn more about the content in your report and how to approach your improvement.
Document your plan that encompasses your goals and the activities students will engage in (see activities listed below for ideas).
1. Goals: Do you want to reflect on all of the learning conditions or a subset? What do you hope to learn from students? Would you like to develop new practices collaboratively? How much time do you want to spend on this debrief?
2. Facilitation Considerations: While we will provide suggestions for activities, we encourage teachers to customize them to fit their teaching style, comfort levels, and classroom needs. For instance, students can complete activities individually, within small groups, at a station, through a pair-share, or as a whole group. Activities can be completed virtually or in person, synchronously or asynchronously.
3. Using disaggregated data: If your disaggregated data reveals any trends, consider how to explore further. How will you discuss trends in your disaggregated data in a way that is safe and comfortable for students? This could include focus groups, empathy interviews, strategic grouping of students for debrief conversations, and more.

D. Activities for Debriefing Data with Students

Activity	Description & Example/Protocol	Class Time Needed
Bell Ringer or Exit Ticket	Many teachers use bell ringers and exit tickets to assess students’ understanding. Consider adding a question that prompts students to evaluate a new practice you introduced or to clarify their interpretation of an Elevate item. For example, you can add, “Our class report shows that 24% of you agree with the statement, In this class, we have lots of opportunities to interact with each other. As a result, we added more collaborative projects to our classroom, allowing you to interact with each other more. What else could we do to add more opportunities to interact with one another?”	5 minutes
Fist to Five	The ‘fist to five’ method is a quick way to gather feedback from your class. Ask a question or make a statement to gather feedback about a practice or lesson. Be sure that students understand the meanings of 'fist' (low), 'three' (middle), and 'five' (high) in relation to your question or statement. In response, students would display their agreement level by holding up a fist or up to five fingers. Hear a teacher share how they use the 'fist to five' method in their classroom here.	5 minutes
Start, Stop, Continue	Students can provide formative feedback on practices that should start, stop, and continue based on Elevate data or practice changes. Students can document their feedback on this template.	5-20 minutes
2, 1, Q	Teachers will share a portion of their Elevate report in this template, adapted from our partners at the Middle Grades Network. Share two celebrations, one area of growth, and one question you have as a teacher about the data that students will answer.	10 minutes
Y Activity	Teachers will share a portion of their Elevate report in this template. Students will supplement that data with reasons they believe the data point is true, based on their own actions, the teacher's actions, and the school culture.	15 minutes
Circle time	Students sit in a circle and respond to a series of discussion questions. Teachers can create their own questions or refer to this example from our partners at the Middle Grades Network for inspiration.	10-30 minutes
Prioritization	Teachers will select 5-6 items for students to explore. Each student will receive three Post-it notes to place on the items they believe are most important to address at this moment. Students can choose to put one Post-it on three different items or place all three on a single item. Once you have identified which items received the most Post-its, divide the students into small groups to brainstorm ways to improve the selected items. Have the groups share their ideas and look for overlaps or trends. Then, ask the students to vote on one change that should be implemented. Alternatively, you can gather all the ideas and then share which one you plan to try. Teachers can also modify the framing, for example, by having students allocate $100 across various learning conditions.	30 minutes
Empathy Interviews	Conduct interviews with students to gain a deeper understanding of their overall Elevate experience, or use specific questions to explore their experiences in your classroom. This empathy interview protocol, developed by our partners at the Middle Grades Network, includes materials, procedures, and guidance to assist you.	1 hour

Do you have a debriefing strategy that you’d like to share? Share it with us here.