Action Research Update

I have had quite the experience working on implementing my action research project.  I have learned many new things not only with the project, but about myself. 

This summer, our district hired a new principal for our school.  I met with him beginning in June and had several conversations through email regarding this project.  He was very receptive to all the ideas I had and wanted to help me make this happen.  Therefore he arranged for the two of us to sit down in a meeting with the district superintendent and the district education coordinator to discuss my plan on July 24, 2012.  The superintendent and education coordinator were very receptive of the idea and excited that someone saw the need and wanted to do something about that need.  They put the entire project in my hands, which I was somewhat overwhelming, but I knew it was for the best so that I could learn and grow.

On August 22, 2012, during teacher in-service week, I was given an afternoon to present my plan to the teachers.  I have never spoken to a large group like this before, therefore, I was NERVOUS! Most of the teachers were very respectful and receptive of the idea of working collaboratively as K-4^th grade teachers in order to help our children become better writers at an early age.  Some of the kindergarten teachers were the hardest to reach.  Many of them had the idea that they are just kindergarteners, and they don’t know how to write yet, but I know some of them have had a new light brought upon them through the book we are studying. It has been very encouraging reading some of the posts on our book study blog site - http://futurewritersinthemaking.blogspot.com.  I hope these teachers really are willing to make the effort to fit more writing activities into their daily lessons.

I hope that this project will lead to further communication between K-4^th grade teachers.  Maybe one day, we will be able to work together to build a writing program that helps the children grow from one year to the next flowing together and taking kids to the next level of writing with each year.  If all goes well, I will be able to meet with the same teachers and the end of the year and we can come up with ideas together in order to continue on this journey of future writers in the making.

I had to make a few changes to my research plan, so here is the updated version.

Action Research
Goal: To create writers before 4th grade by involving K-3rd grade teachers in the writing process.
Action Step(s)	Person(s) Responsible	Timeline: Start/End	Needed Resources	Evaluation
Meet with necessary administration to discuss, adjust, and finalize the research plan.	Amber Guy Superintendent Curriculum Coordinator Middle School Principal	July 24, 2012	Writing TEKS  Writing CSCOPE  Book Ideas Marvelous Minilessons for Teaching beginning Writing K-3 by Lori Jamison Rog and Marvelous Minilessons for Teaching beginning Writing 4-6 by Lori Jamison Rog	Agree on a final plan of action to involve K-3rd grade teachers in the writing process.
Meet with all K-4th grade teachers that teach writing.  Start with the end in mind: Have everyone read a released 9th grade EOC writing piece that scored a 1, discuss the quality of the piece, and make the point that this is why we need to begin writing at an early age. Use the TEKS alignment packet from http://englishspanishteks.net/ to look for commonalities, when brand new skills are taught, and gaps  Discuss our findings from the TEKS alignment  Teachers will look at their grade level Scope and Sequence and match the TEKS that are taught in the 1st six weeks.  Look at a sample EOC, 7th grade and 4th grade STAAR Writing test -spend a few minutes going through the questions and begin answering them for themselves, look at the composition topics, and discuss how these three tests are very similar and the expectations and vocabulary grow with each year of experience. Discuss how increasing collaboration across grade levels can hopefully increase our knowledge as writing teachers. Explain that in order for us to collaborate, we will do a book study and blog our responses to each chapter and share about any of the mini-lessons they may have tried  View blog site – http://futurewritersinthemaking.blogspot.com  If necessary, set up accounts in order to be able to follow and answer questions and post responses to our blog style book study	Necessary Administration K-4 teachers	Start/ End August 22, 2012	Copies of ELA TEKS alignment packet  Copies of each grade levels Instructional Focus Documents – CSCOPE tool to tell each semesters plan  Copies of STAAR tests for EOC, 7th grade, and 4th grade  Copies of books for the book study: Marvelous Minilessons for Teaching beginning Writing K-3 by Lori Jamison Rog and Marvelous Minilessons for Teaching beginning Writing 4-6 by Lori Jamison Rog  Copies of the website and how to set up a Google Gmail account	Review survey on how they feel their writing practices support 4th grade teachers in the writing process. Check blog to make sure all teachers are participating Collect writing samples just to see progress throughout the year
Hold a final meeting to discuss the year and what they learned about the writing process and to complete the same survey from above to see if their opinions have changed.	Necessary Administration K-4 teachers	Start/End: End of May 2013	Survey
Conduct an additional survey (possibly just a discussion) to come up with a plan for the following school year of what we would like to do to continue collaboration between grade levels as well as support the idea of creating writers before 4th grade.	Necessary Administration K-4 teachers	Start/End: End of May 2013	Survey (or board to write down ideas for following year)	Discuss the ideas and come up with a final plan.

 

Reflections for EDLD 5301

Groan, moan, whine…RESEARCH? I don’t want to do research! Where am I going to find time for this? Five weeks ago, these were my exact thoughts.  A lot has changed in five weeks.  In these passing weeks I have grown very excited about research…action research that is. 

As I began the journey through this class, I had no clue what action research was. Through reading one of our texts for this course, Dana, N.F. (2009). Leading with Passion and Knowledge: The Principal as Action Researcher. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. I became enlightened on what action research is truly about.  I know that we all have our own definitions for what research is, but through this text I feel I have gained a better understanding of what action research is all about.  Here it is explained best, “Simply stated, practitioner inquiry is defined as systematic, intentional study of one’s own professional practice.  Inquiring professionals seek out change by reflecting on their practice.  They do this by posing questions or “wonderings,” collecting data to gain insights into their wonderings, analyzing the data along with reading relevant literature, making changes in practice based on new understandings developed during inquiry, and sharing findings with others” (Dana & Yendol-Hoppey, 2009, pp. 9).  I have learned that action research is a way to dig deep and find the areas in our schools that need improvement and then we must become personally involved in the improvement process rather than relying on others to change our school. 

Once week three rolled around, I felt nervous and excited all at once.  I began conversing with my principal through email about my ideas.  He told me to choose the plan that I was most passionate about.  Once he told me to do this, most of the nervousness began to disappear because I knew that he would support me in whatever I chose.  I really enjoyed coming up with a plan that would create collaboration between several grade levels in order to support our students’ growth as writers.

Week four was a good week as well.  This week helped me realize that reviewing and revising are important parts of creating a research plan.  The Force Field Analysis, the Delphi Method, and the Nominal Group Technique (Dana et al, 2009, pp. 94-97) were all enlightening as well as encouraging in the fact that I came up with the idea of adding an additional step to my action research plan and because I have already, in some ways, begun using these without even realizing it . The CARE Model (Dana et al, 2009, pp. 97-98) is a great planning tool as well.  This tool made me think of the positives and not just the negatives.  Sometimes when we are looking at an area in which to improve, we often just look at what is wrong with our school, but this tool makes us look into what our school is doing right that we want to make sure we are continuing to do.

The discussion boards have been an interesting part of both courses I have completed.  I sometimes feel that I am the only one that feels like I do about any particular topic.  As I completed and read through the weekly discussions, I realized that we are all in the same boat and that I am on the same page as all of the rest of my classmates.  The discussion boards have helped boost my confidence in that someday I will make a good principal and as for now, a teacher that is looking for ideas to help improve the education for our students.

Blogging is something that is new to me.  I have heard about it for years but never felt that it was something for me, however, through this course, I feel that it is a great tool to share my thoughts and opinions and to simply reflect on the steps I take in becoming a successful leader.  I have even included blogging as one of the steps in my action research plan.  I hope that this tool will become a successful portion of my action research plan in order to create collaboration between writing teachers.  I would love to even use blogging in my classroom.  I want my students to learn new technology skills and what better way to teach new technology skills and have them write all at the same time.  I have also begun to ponder more ways to use blogging in the future.  I am glad I was introduced to this tool.

Overall, I enjoyed and learned a lot in this course.  This course has made me want to become an active part in improving my school.  I want to be able to collaborate with others in order to make us a stronger district, and I want to begin reflecting on anything and everything that I can in order to not only improve myself but my school so that our students can have a learning rich environment.