Action Research Plan

GOAL:
In what ways can our school develop a homework policy that will promote a culture of high expectations and self-discipline from students?

OUTCOMES
Our goal is to develop a new homework policy for Rogers Middle School that will raise daily grades and test grades because it has increased the student’s desire and want to complete homework given at school. This will greatly increase our student’s ability to grasp the concepts and stay on target with the district and state curriculum.

ACTIVITIES
The activities that I plan to implement at the beginning are ones that my team of teachers have decided upon. We think that an incentive program for students that complete their work and have no zeros in the grade book will be a great way to entice our students to do the work. The reward will be the last thirty minutes of a selected day (to be decided by the individual team of teachers) to spend at “recess”. Our students do not have recess time and only attend PE every other day. Therefore, we think this would be a wonderful incentive. Another activity we will try is a no zero club. These will be lightning bolts (because we have a space trekker theme this year) with student’s names on them to be displayed on our wall of success at the end of each 6 weeks. The principal will come around and pass out the bolts and allow the students to write their names on them. The third activity that we plan to implement is Saturday school. We feel that after the incentives our Saturday school will not be an abundance of children. However, after 3 incomplete homework assignments per subject the student will be given a mandatory Saturday school detention. Busses will be provided (per the principal’s suggestion). This way the students will complete the work in a quiet atmosphere and will have a teacher available to help them. This will insure that the student is getting the needed work completed and is grasping the concepts. We hope that these 3 activities will be good starts to the process. Of course, we will be taking suggestions and tweaking things until they are appropriate for our students throughout the entire process.

RESOURCES/RESEARCH TOOLS NEEDED
The resources are minimal for this process. We will need the time taken from classes on the incentive day. This will mean that teachers will have to shorten each period slightly to accommodate for the thirty minutes at the end of the chosen day for students to play outside. The teachers will also need to figure out a system that works for them as to where the students who do not get recess to be housed. They will have to be housed with at least one teacher on the team. The other teachers will need to be outside observing the students at recess. The lightning bolts and adhesive (to stick them on the wall) will also need to be purchased and these will come from the administration. We will use the article taken from the Leading with Passion and Knowledge: The principal as the action researcher book by Nancy Fichtman Dana. I pulled pages 43-45 from this text because I really liked Lynette Langford’s (2008) ideas on ways to decrease discipline problems and instituting new programs.

RESPONSIBILITY TO ADDRESS ACTIVITIES
The responsibility to address activities will fall in the hands of the teachers mainly. Of course it will be overseen by the administration. However, the success of this inquiry project will depend on how the teams implement the action plans.

TIME LINE
The initial phase of this project will begin as soon as school begins. The 5 man team will be briefed prior to the start of school and the first phase will wrap up at the end of November. This will allow us enough time to find out what works and what hasn’t worked on the team and also allow us the time needed to come together as a school and develop the new homework policy to institute school wide. The second phase of this project will begin in January (as soon as students arrive after winter break) and continue indefinitely. As situations arise we will need to change and tweak our plan; however, we will at least have a strong foundation laid for our entire school to stand on.

ASSESSMENT
The assessments for this project will be taken with each progress report and report card distributed. This will allow us to come together as a team of teachers as well as administration and decide what is working and what isn’t? Daily grades will be a direct reflection of how things are working as well as the amount of students that are participating each week in either the recess incentive or the Saturday school. If the students not receiving incentives is not changing or is growing we know we have a problem. Also, the amount of lightning bolts each 6 weeks will be a great visual of how the program is working.

Revisions to SIP/PIP based on monitoring and assessments
The revisions that I have implemented on this assignment have been minimal up to this point. However, I anticipate them growing as time goes on and more and more issues occur. I feel that our CEIC plan will need to be changed because there will be funds required for the Saturday school initiative. I also feel that after monitoring and reviewing data we will need to re-assess the Saturday school concept. As of now students are sent to the office if they do not have a homework assignment and received a d-hall. If a student requires Saturday school the parents will have to be educated on how the system will work and what the students will need to bring with them in order to have a successful completion of the Saturday school initiative. If this is not working for our students and our campus we will have to take this off the planning block and go back to d-halls.

Week 2 Reflections

After reviweing my peers research topics for this course and discussing matters with my principal I decided to completely change my action research topic. I switched from the overly broad topic of how parental involvement can be increased at my school through the study of habits of parents from other countries to the smaller and more manageble topic over homework. How can we re-vamp our homework policy in a way that will increase the completion rate of homework and the daily grades in our school? This topic is one that we have already began delving into at our school and one that my principal would like us to continue focusing on. Incomplete homework is a huge discipline problem at our campus. We feel that there must be better ways to handle the situation than simply filling out discipline referrals. If we increase homework completion it is thought that our students grades will improve as well as their mastering of concepts (especially in math and language arts). I am excited to begin the journey of finding data and discussing with my colleagues our newest action research plan for the year.

Educational Leaders Analysis

Educational leaders can use blogs in a plethora of ways. For instance, we can use it as a way to hook our students into writing. They could also use it as a way to communicate campus progression to their key stakeholders. It can also be used as a way for leaders to reflect and remember past situations for themselves as well as their colleagues.

Action Research

I suppose it would be easier to discuss what Action Research is not. Action Research is not spending hours upon hours in a library or in front of a computer researching facts about a person, place, or thing. It is not spending a ridiculous amount of time filling in primary and secondary note cards with quotes from books, journals, or internet sources about the said topic. Action Research is used to pin point what needs are not being met and then coming up with practical solutions to making sure that the needs are met. In order for a Action Research to actually be useful one must decide upon factors that determine the effectiveness of the solutions. As with most school information it should be data driven in order to produce the most effective results. Reflection is absolutely of the utmost importance in an Action Research plan. Time should be allotted each day (if possible) in order to reflect on the progression of things. Also, collaboration and input from fellow colleagues and those who are, for lack of better words, 'in the trenches' is highly valuable. Overall, Action Research is a way for people to take a problem by the horns and change the negatives to positives. Things may not completely change, but as they say anything is better than nothing.