Web conference EDLD 5397 week 3

The web conference for EDLD 5397 week three was informative in supplying information for the assignments due into Tk20, internship hours, and action research. Questions were asked and answered by Dr. Borel.
She started the conversation off with some APA style practice. I learned much from reading the comments to and from each of the students as they interacted with each other and Dr. Borel. There is a lot of work due in the next two weeks as everyone is creating draft of their action research project. Along with that, week 5 has us documenting and reflecting internship hours. Many questions were asked about the action research plan and what the draft should begin to look like. We should refer to the template given. However, it was still confusing to some people. Students were needing clarification on what the internship hours are and how they relate to the skill. It was said that we could use our research hours toward our 75 hours due at the end of week 5. The next web conference is Wednesday 6-26-13.

Action Research Project Title: Goal Setting

Blog URL: http://brad2hayhurst.blogspot.com/

Number of AR Project Documented Hours: 35 

AR Project Summary (at least 250 words): My action research project revolves around students setting goals and providing continuous upkeep and reflections on tests and homework in core classes. With the high numbers of failing students and written discipline referrals at this campus in recent years, we also hope to see a goal setting mentality bring these numbers down. The idea is that students who may struggle from a lack of motivation or focus will enefit from setting goals early in the year. The student who has a visual reminder and constantly considers what is need to be a successful student will indeed be more successful when goals are set. Working with my site supervisor, I have decided that several teachers will be involved in the process. These teachers, who will be instructing these students, will help these students along with a binder that holds all the information needed to follow the goals that have been set. Similar to a science student maintaining a classroom binder, the student will have a separate three ring binder that lists the initial goals set along with an update section created for each class tests, daily work, and a section to write about things that went well and areas where the student may be struggling. I have collaborated with these teachers and we are in the process of creating the goal setting sheets, shoreing up the best timeline, choosing which students would be the best candidates, and creating an evaluation and analyzation system to best benefit from the data. We all agree that classroom success could be obtained from students who may lack focus by simply keeping a goal setting sheet. With any luck at all the failure rates may go down as well as discipline referrals for the study group.

Action Research Draft

Goals and Objective: To determine if student’s classroom success can benefit from setting personal goals

Materials:  Written survey for students, written survey for teachers, questions written to verbal interview for teachers and students

People Responsible for action research plan: Teachers and Staff

Action Research Chart from text book

Action Steps	Person(s) Responsible	Timeline: Start/End	Needed Resources	Evaluation
School Wide Survey	Teachers and staff	I will give the staff one week to complete the survey	Survey asking a variety of questions about my action research topic
Student Interviews	Students in 6th grades	10 minute interviews with 10 students	Interview questions prepared, recorder, permission slips from parents
Teacher Interviews	Teachers in 6th grade	10 minute interviews with 2 teachers	Interview questions prepared, recorder
Written Student Survey	Students grade 6	10 questions with short answer	Survey
Classroom Observations	Grades 6; Visit 10 different classrooms	Observe the interactions between classmates, students, and teachers teachers	Data of behaviors, test, daily and concept grades

Week two 5301 research reflection

It's great to see other administrators speaking in terms that I am familiar with. The relationship between an administrator and staff should be a healthy one to optimize student learning. It truly is a team.. A team that supports one another. The teacher can give valuable feedback and the principal can give the support needed to fix problems.
"Data driven" is a term spoken more and more each week. Technology has allowed us to absorb and utilize quantitative data faster than ever before. Information would have taken two years in the past, now can be used in days or hours.
As all the data, staff, and administrators work together to give each student the best possible chance to be successful, the learner and his motivation changes just as fast. It's tough to keep up!

Action Research

After studying this week on Action Research I realize how it can be very beneficial in public education. Action Research is used by principals, as well as, superintendents and teachers, to gather data through group research to solve problems or gain knowledge about a program to make it more efficient or beneficial. Action research may be used by a group of grade level teacher who are able to work together to gather data about specific student behaviors occuring in their specific grade. Those teachers can use the information to better the behavior and create a better overall climate for that grade level. Those same teachers may gather data on how to minimize behavior in the classroom that causes students to be off-task. Principal can utilize action research to help parents become more involved in their child's school situation as well as their child's life.
My plan to use action research will include a group of teachers who will be able to communicate with various teachers of different grade levels to gather data on respect for others/adults and how that affects test scores. I plan on creating a rubric for teachers to use to rate random students on how they feel the student-to-teacher respect is shown and then compare those "scores" to STAAR/TAKS/CBA scores .


Educational leaders can use blogs for comunication with their staff. It can be used to relay information back and forth between leader and staff but also it can be a place where different groups can share information and allow the leader to add comments and suggestions.