Setting Student & Teacher Expectations

For the past couple of years, I have had the students list what they see as characteristics of a idea teacher and student.  In the past, I would then have the students go through those lists to come up with 8 key terms that could be used to culminate all of the characteristics mentioned.  This year to save time, I decided to use wordle instead.  I had every student come up with a list of characteristics for a model student and a separate list for what a great teacher would be like.  I then typed each of those words into a google and doc and copied and pasted that list into a wordle.  I really liked how this turned out because I was able to pass out the expectations to the students as well as hang them in the room.  The way wordle works is that the more often a word was mentioned, the larger that word is.  This helps point out the characteristics that students feel are most important without leaving out any student input.  I was then able to post that on the front page of my class website.  I can then review these expectations throughout the year and use them as a reminder to myself as well.  I am planning on doing a student survey in the middle of the year to see how they believe I am doing on each of these characteristics and then I could also have a discussion with each of them.