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.