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!