Waiting game

So as of now, I am in a waiting game. My plan must be approved by the Director of Elementary Curriculum before my site supervisor can give the go ahead to my project. I, based on the 1 comment received, am going to talk to her about adding a luncheon to recognize students who receive Ranger awards. I am thinking that if a student receives a Ranger award then their name will go in a drawing. Once a month, 2 names will be drawn & those students will get to have lunch with someone special (the person may change monthly).

Any other suggestions on how to improve my project? Hope everyone else is getting a good start on theirs!

Planning the Action Research Project

This is the part of researching that I hate . . . planning the project itself.  I enjoy coming up with the ideas, I like carrying out the research project, I don't mind summarizing what I have learned/determined from my research - but I do not like planning the project.  However, that being said, I trudged through doing so & have a basic idea of what I am looking to do.  So here it is:

• Goals and objectives/outcomes of the research investigation
  

  The goal is to determine in student achievement (in any area) is impacted by recognition of student accomplishments in that given area.
  

• Activities designed to achieve the objectives
  

  * A character award to be implemented during morning announcements (Ranger Award) for recognition of students who are applying the character traits that are being learned.
  

  * An award for perfect attendance and near perfect attendance (less than 3 absences in a semester).
  

  * An award for 'honor' roll students for each six weeks, semester and year.
  

  * A B.U.G. award to recognize students who have improved their grades by a certain amount of points (5 or 10, TBD) each 6 weeks.
  

• Resources and research tools needed for data gathering
  

  * Need to have access to attendance records to determine which students will receive awards; also to track any changes in attendance trends by 6 weeks.
  

  * Need to print grades to determine 'honor roll' students.
  

  * Need teacher assistance to determine which students need to receive BUG awards for each 6 weeks.
  

  * Need all personnel assistance to be on the lookout for students displaying the character traits that are being learned.
  

  * Need award paper, award ribbons, and prize (pencils?, gift certificate to local restaurant?) incentives to use for student recognition.
  

  * Need access to data on office referrals to determine if character award recognitions decrease the number of office referrals.
  

  * Benchmark testing data to determine increases in achievement
  

• Draft timeline for completion or implementation of activities
  

  *
  Character awards – to be implemented after the 1^st semester.
  

  * B.U.G. awards to be implemented at end of the 2^nd 6 weeks.
  

  * All others to be recognized beginning with end of 1^st 6 weeks.
  

• Persons responsible for implementation of the action research plan
  

  * PEIMS personnel (for attendance), Teachers (for grade based awards), All staff members (for Character awards)
  

• Process for monitoring the achievement of goals and objectives
  

  * Disaggregating Benchmark data to determine trends
  

  * Determining attendance trends
  

  * Reviewing office referral data to determine if character awards result in a decrease in office referrals
  

  * Monitoring of students receiving BUG awards; what do their grades do after receiving the awards (maintain new level, decrease, increase)?
  

  * Compilation of the data for 'honor roll' students, how to the number of students receiving these awards change (maintain, decrease, increase)?
  

• Assessment instrument(s) to evaluate the effectiveness of the action research study
  

* Disaggregation of student data (from previous years and current year) to determine what impact the awards had on student achievement.

I am sure this will need revision once I am finally able to coordinate a meeting with my site supervisor, but it is my foundation J So yay, I got a basic plan down!

Determining a purpose

This week we were charged with determining a purpose. I have been unable to connect with my site supervisor to discuss my action research project, but am really hoping she feels that the topic I want to do is relevant for my new campus. I want to investigate the relationship between recognition of students and student academic achievement. Does recognizing student accomplishments throughout the year really lead to high academic achievement for our students? Or are we just spinning our wheels, wasting time in recognizing our students hard work, in utilizing this to increase academic achievement? Would we be better served to recognize them once a year (thus decreasing the output needed by staff members to organize the recognitions) versus every 6 weeks?

I personally feel that we should be recognizing these achievements at least every 6 weeks, if not more often, but am not sure if these recognitions will translate into higher student achievement of if they just help with our students self-image. I look forward (if approved for this topic) to researching this!

Use of blogs

Educational leaders can utilize blogs in a variety of manners. Blogs can be used to communicate with a variety of stakeholders. Blogs can utilized to communicate with faculty and staff members about the daily workings of the campuse. Blogs communicate with parents and community members about important and interesting activities occurring on campus. Blogs can be utilized by teachers to share classroom happenings with family members of students and other staff members. Blogs can keep track of the progress of action research projects occurring on campus, to elicit knowledge in and input from others not directly involved in the project. I can envision blogs being a very useful communication too within education.

Edited to add : I had the idea that a blog could be utilized as a reflection on learning tool for the classroom. The teacher and/or students could post their reflection on a learning activity for others to read about and then post their own reflections and/or responses to the posted reflection. This would help all learners, teachers included, in stretching the connections they make from the learning activity that took place in the classroom.

Beginning thoughts on action research . . .

I have to admit I was not excited at all about this course after seeing the title – research. It did not sound like a course that I was going to enjoy at all, on the contrary, it sounded like a lot of drudgery. Partially it seemed this way because I thought research at this level would be dreary and unexciting. It was all I could do to get motivated to get started on the readings and the assignment. However, once I forced myself to get started I was pleasantly surprised. On the contrary to what I had anticipated, I actually like the idea of action research. Action research is how I feel changes should be implemented on a campus. All too often changes are implemented at central office without the input of the campus personnel, who then feel the changes are being forced on them without regard to the needs of the stakeholders on the campus, causing conflict. Action research allows a campus to implement needed changes while allowing the stakeholders the opportunity to be a part of the decision making process for that change. This is critical for getting stakeholders to 'buy-in' to the changes that are coming. I believe that action research is something I can utilize to ensure that the greatest possible number of stakeholders have involvement in the changes that need to occur on campus. I also believe that teachers can be taught to utilize this method to the benefits of their students, and the campus as a whole.