The future of my Action Research Plan

I have already begun work on a new research plan that was spawned from my original plan. Our goal is to reduce the number of credits lost due to poor attendance. Based on the original research we have found there is a core group of students who are responsible for the majority of attendance issues. We will be working to form mentor/student groups in order to assist these specific students. We are in the early stages of planning but the basic concept will be to start with a small group of teachers who will monitor 5 students each. The students will report to these teachers before school each day. The teacher will monitor the students attendance and counsel them when they are falling behind. If the plan is successful we will expand the number of teachers and continue until the majority of students have repaired their attendance.

Week 4 musings

After the trials and tribulations of getting my project started I expected things to slow a bit for week 4.

Nope.

My Action Research Plan was approved and is already in full gear and I am working to make any revisions needed to be certain that all the loose ends are tied before we start having students next week.

The goals of the week of revising and reworking the plan do not fit in well with the idea that I have already put my plan into motion but I am working through them as fast as possible so that I am able to use this weeks lessons to catch any potential errors or problems before it is to late.

By the time the program starts, I will be working on a new project as asked by my principal and assistant principal to develop a teacher/student mentor team to help students get to class more consistently. Hopefully this new project will eliminate the need for the Saturday School program. 

Action research plan and program timeline

Action Steps	Person(s) Responsible	Timeline: Start/ End	Needed Resources	Evaluation
Evaluate need	Attendance committee	10-6 through 10-8	Student Attendance data	High need for students to regain lost credits
Identify target areas	Attendance committee	10-11 through 10-14	Committee members	Highest need with freshman and at risk population
Research	Attendance committee	10-11 through 10-15	Student Attendance data	Students at need can be aided with a Saturday school program
Develop plan and procedures	Assistant Principal and Intern Carey Minchew	10-18 through 10 22	District Saturday school plan and procedures to be adapted to fit our campus needs	Have an initial draft of our procedures
Present the proposed procedures to principal for additional input and final approval	Prinicipal and intern Carey Minchew	10-22	Presentation materials, Student attendance records, Final plan	Received approval of plan with minor changes to student sign up form
Finalize Procedures	intern Carey Minchew	10-23	Completed proposal for district approval including all needed forms	Have a final draft of all forms
Train staff	Attendance committee and particpating teachers	10-25 through 11-06	4 core area teachers committed to working 15 saturdays.	Teachers hired
Enlist students	Attendance committee	Through end of year	Sign up forms. Mailing list, Manpower	At risk students signed up for Saturday sessions
Evaluate program	Attendance committee	Through end of year	Student success rates	Are students successfully regaining credit?
Reflection	Attendance committee	end of year	Student success rates	Did the program successfully lower rate of students losing credit due to attendance?
Presentation of data	Attendance committee	beginning of school year 2011-2012	Presentation materials, Student attendance records, Student success rates	Survey teachers and ask if program should be continued.

The basic plan

I started this week with a vague notion of exactly what my research project would entail. I spoke with the assistant principal at my school who is in charge of attendance to get some clarification and now I have a firm grasp on exactly what I will be doing.

I am going to use the Saturday school program to help students recover credits while at the same time improving TAKS scores.

The Saturday sessions will include 3 TAKS sessions and one study hall session. Students will have one hour in each session. The three TAKS sessions are Science, Math and English. I did not include social studies for several reasons. The main reason is that our scores in that area are consistently above the 90th percentile and extra support is no warranted. I only have 4 hours to put the kids minds to work and I wanted to work in at least a little time so that they could complete work for their regular teachers and help to make sure they are passing.

Staff needed for the program will be 3 teachers and one administrator. At the present moment there are 140 students in danger of losing credit due to attendance.

By implementing this plan I hope to achieve greater student success in 3 main areas: Attendance, TAKS scores, classroom grades.

What did I learn this week?

I am a pretty techie kind of guy. I have built websites for personal use and professional use. I have two you tube pages also set up for personal and professional. I use Yahoo messenger, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and any other social site that happens to catch my attention.
I have never blogged though.
Ok, technically Twitter is microblogging but I really don’t count that as blogging.
So here I am now, blogging for a class. I resisted this assignment as long as I could last week. I’m not sure exactly why. I just never thought of myself as a blogger. I read several blogs but the idea of writing my thoughts out for the world to read just never occurred to me to be interesting for anyone else.
So, the point of all this? Well, for that you have to go back to the title of this blog. “What did I learn this week?”
I learned that I actually like blogging.
I didn’t realize until today when I started to write this blog out that I really enjoy blogging. I have been thinking about what I would write today all week. Most of my thoughts this week have been devoted to what to write here that would possibly interest the world at large. I realized as soon as I started typing though that the world at large isn’t my audience. I am my own audience. My blog is a place for me to gather my thoughts on a semi-weekly basis for what I have learned in my courses and to keep myself on track as I work on my action research.
I learned a great deal of other things this week. I picked up new information on different action research project that are often done in school settings. But the lessons I learned are two things.
1. I like blogging
2. My audience is me.
I firmly believe that as long as I keep those two lessons in mind I will  keep this blog going for a long time to come.

Purpose and Significance

My action research project will be a study on ways to improve student attendance at our school. Our school is an inner city school with a large portion of low income and at risk students but that population of our students cannot account for the drop in attendance rates by themselves. In the last few years our attendance rates have dropped significantly among almost of our different student populations.
The significance of finding a solution to our lower attendance rates will be shown in many areas. By increasing attendance our students will be in class more and therefore test scores should improve. We will also gain more funding for our school based on attendance. By having the students in class discipline issues should fall as students are acclimated to class rules on a more regular basis.

How Educational Leaders Can Use Blogs

Educational leaders can use blogs as ways to share information and receive feedback with peers that also have extremely busy schedules. Blogs are an open forum that can be used to share many different ideas and receive input on different topics. One of the great benefits for educational leaders is that they are quick and easy to use without impacting greatly on valuable time. Being able to access blogs at your leisure makes it easy to check in to see if there have been any helpful comments left on ideas or topics you have posted about.

Action Research

What is action research?
Action Research is a cyclic process for problem solving. Action research differs greatly from standard research in that action research involves coming up with new solutions to problems rather that reading a book and reporting on what you have found.
Action research is very compatable with the scientific method as well. In action research as with in the scientific method you start with a question or an observation. The rest of the steps of the scientific method are followed as well all the way through analyzing data and reflecting on what you have learned. One of the key components of action research is the reflection piece. When the experiment/research is over you must take an unbiased look at the results of your study and reflect on what was really found. If your research has proven true then a full scale plan should be put in place, however if your research shows that you have not been successful then you must start back at the beginning and work through the process again.

Another key component of action research is the nature of who is doing the study. If you are doing action research you are researching something you are directly involved in. As a teacher I have decided to do action research on my school’s attendance rates to see if I can find a solution to aid in getting students to class every day. By being on the “inside” of the situation I will have greater incentive to find a solution to the problem. I will also have some insights into the situation that someone from outside of the school system may not have.