Wednesday, October 24, 2012

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

  1. 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


  1. Student Interviews



Students in 6th grades
10 minute interviews with 10 students
Interview questions prepared, recorder, permission slips from parents


  1. Teacher Interviews



Teachers in 6th grade
10 minute interviews with 2 teachers
Interview questions prepared, recorder


  1. Written Student Survey



Students grade 6
10 questions with short answer
Survey


  1. 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

Friday, October 19, 2012

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!

Friday, October 12, 2012

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.