My Action Research Plan

Emily Faggard’s Action Research Plan
Goal: To investigate the existing knowledge of second graders’ basic math fact recall skills and to ultimately increase their knowledge to achieve mastery of basic math fact recall skills in current grade level and retain mastery when they move to the next grade level.
Action Steps(s):	Person(s) Responsible:	Timeline: Start/End	Needed Resources	Evaluation
Collect the second grade math fact data results from first nine weeks math assessment	Emily Faggard	October 2010	Classroom data assessment result print-offs from the AWARE program	Gather and review data from AWARE
Survey classroom teachers to understand the strategies currently being used to teach math facts, how often they practice math facts in the classroom, and to gather student information of the current levels of math fact knowledge	Emily Faggard	October 2010 - November 2010	Survey	Gather data from surveys and analyze results
Survey second grade students to understand their current knowledge of their math facts, how they practice them, and how they learn them	Emily Faggard	October 2010 - November 2010	Survey	Gather data from surveys and analyze results
Survey parents of second grade students to understand how often math facts are being practiced at home and their understand of their child’s current progress.	Emily Faggard	October 2010 - November 2010	Survey	Gather data from surveys and analyze results
Research math programs used to help second grade students learn the math facts.	Emily Faggard	November 2010 - December 2010	Websites for accredited math programs available to use	Gather information, names, and prices
Conduct a meeting with the second grade teachers to discuss and review the information collected from the first nine weeks assessment, surveys, and research on math programs	Emily Faggard Second grade teachers at SRE	December 2010	Classroom data assessment result print-offs from the AWARE program Teacher, student, and parent surveys Research data collected Meeting agenda	Review information and choose a math fact program that will work best for our grade level at our school
Meet with site supervisor/principal to seek permission to implement math fact program in January	Emily Faggard	December 2010	Classroom data assessment result print-offs from the AWARE program Teacher, student, and parent surveys Research data collected Agenda from previous meeting with team	Either start getting materials prepared for program
Implement an accredited math facts program in second grade with the permission of my principal	Emily Faggard Second grade teachers at SRE	January 2011 - May 2011	Materials from accredited math program	Gather student work from each class to analyze
Collect the second grade math fact data results from second nine weeks math assessment	Emily Faggard	January 2011	Classroom data assessment result print-offs from the AWARE program	Gather and review data from AWARE to monitor progress of math fact mastery
Conduct a group interview with the second grade teachers to discuss any problematic patterning taking place from the data collected thus far	Emily Faggard	March 2011	Interview questions Classroom data assessment result print-offs from the AWARE program Student data collected from math fact program	Collect feedback from interview and reflect on the results
Collect the second grade math fact data results from third nine weeks math assessment	Emily Faggard	April 2011	Classroom data assessment result print-offs from the AWARE program	Gather and review data from AWARE to monitor progress of math fact mastery
Conduct individual student interviews with my class of second graders	Emily Faggard	May 2011	Interview questions	Collect feedback from interviews and reflect on the results
Survey parents of my second grade student class to understand how they will help their child practice their math facts over the summer	Emily Faggard	May 2011	Survey	Gather data from surveys and analyze
Collect all second grade students’ math fact data from math fact program being used	Emily Faggard	June 2011	Student data	Gather and analyze data collected to understand what students achieved mastery of math facts
Collect the second grade math fact data results from fourth nine weeks math assessment	Emily Faggard	June 2011	Classroom data assessment result print-offs from the AWARE program	Gather and review data from AWARE to understand which students have achieved mastery level of math facts
Conduct a group interview with the second grade teachers to find out likes/dislikes about the program, analyze data together to see if the program did/did not worked, and discuss implementing the next school year	Emily Faggard Second grade teachers at SRE	June 2011	Interview questions Student data collected Tool 8.1 CARE Model: Planning Tool	Collect feedback from interviews and reflect on the results
Continue to implement an accredited math facts program in second grade with the permission of my principal	Emily Faggard Second grade teachers at SRE	August 2011 - May 2012	Materials from accredited math program	Gather student work from each class to analyze
Survey teachers on the third grade team to understand if students retained their math facts and carried them over to third grade	Emily Faggard	October 2011	Survey	Gather and analyze data from survey and make changes needed to current second grade math fact program
Collect the second grade math fact data results from first, second, third, and fourth nine weeks math assessment	Emily Faggard	October 2011 January 2012 April 2012 June 2012	Classroom data assessment result print-offs from the AWARE program	Gather and review data from AWARE to understand which students are achieving mastery level of math facts

Final Decision

I met with my site supervisor, Susan Fambrough, this past week to discuss my ideas for an action research project. She is a wealth of knowledge and ideas so I was very excited to meet with her to discuss my ideas. Here were two ideas for action research that I presented:

1. Second grade student’s math fact recall - What are students, teachers, and parents doing help learn math facts? What teaching strategies are they using? Are they using any at all? What prior knowledge of math facts are the students entering second grade with? Why are the students not retaining these facts then they move up to third grade?

2. Second grade Developmental Reading Assessments (DRA) scores - I want to utilize the CAFÉ book study to work with my team to implement effective strategies in the classroom and among the grade level to improve DRA scores. Why are students not meeting grade level DRA scores at the end of the year? What reading strategies are teachers using to help their struggling readers?

Immediately when I presented these two ideas, she told me she really liked both topics because they were all practical to for me to research and apply in my current classroom and grade level. We talked through each one. I expressed that my first idea, student math fact recall, has been a weak area for second grade every year. It is brought up as an area to improve in but then nothing more is actually done to improve student learning. I told her this was something I was very passionate about because I love to learn and teach math. It is very frustrating as a teacher to see my students not be successful in this area.

The second idea came from previously viewing district DRA data from previous years. My site supervisor asked why I would choose this topic. I told her it was because I was very shocked and disappointed in the low scores our grade level at our school produced. It was honestly embarrassing. We talked about how my team is already on board to use some PLC time to do a book study to go more in depth in using the Daily 5 program that we currently use in our classrooms. I told her this was not one of my favorites out of the three ideas. She asked how I was going to go about doing this as an action research project. I could not really give her a detailed step-by-step answer so she suggested that I maybe not pick this topic.

I was really glad that I was meeting with her because I had struggled to come up with a third idea for an action research project and asked for her help. Here was her suggestion:

3. Effective Team Planning and helping my team to become a professional learning community -When or how often to other teams plan? How do other teams plan? What should we be doing to make the most out of our planning times? How can I bring my team together? What does my team want to focus on to become a stronger PLC? When can we have PLC time?

First of all, I liked the idea of this but to me it was so abstract I could not wrap my mind around how I would complete the entire action research process. I am a very visual person. Visually I did not see this working out and how I could collect data or what data I would use. As my site supervisor was talking she realized by the look on my face that I was not crazy about this idea, even though it was a good one. I told her I did not see myself being passionate about completing the action research if this was my topic. I told her that I learned if you are not passionate about what you are researching then it ultimately was a waste. She agreed and so we went back to the two original ideas I had come in with.

I really expressed to her however every time I go back to the idea of picking one topic for action research, I always go back to the student math fact recall. It is something that is presently on my mind. I feel passionate about it the project. I feel my students would immediately receive the benefits from choosing this as my action research project. I told her my only hesitation would be my ability to get everyone on my team on board if I ever needed their help in the research process. She immediately told me not to worry about that and she could help with that if it comes down to that. She is on board to help me out in anyway she can. She really liked the fact that the end result of me doing this action research would benefit our school in so many ways. She has suggested to also use our campus instructional coach as a resource (if needed) as well, which was a good reminder for me. In the end, it was decided that I would do my action research project on second grade student’s math fact recall.

Why Use Blogs?

Blogs are online journals, diaries, or a space to write about whatever you want. It is a place where someone can read or write about information important to them that they would like to share with others. Blogs are interactive. Using a blog as an educational leader can give them an advantage as a leader.

Educational leaders can use blogs to share information about what is happening at their school. They can post problems or questions they have and then others can comment to help answer or give suggestions for solutions. You can post polls and surveys on a blog. If an educational leader wanted to hear others opinions or give a choice about something they could put up a poll. Then the leader could use the information gathered on the blog to make their final decision. Educational leaders can also visit other blogs that contain information about education or are dedicated to education. They would be able to explore what others in the education world are doing to make improvements to their school. Blogs allow you to give and get ideas. You could have a blog completely dedicated as being a resource to Response to Intervention or whatever your school might need. Blogs can be a wonderful resource to any educational leader.

Action Research

Action Research, also known as administrative inquiry, can be a very valuable tool for educators. According to Dana, “administrator inquiry refers to the process of a principal engaging in a systematic, intentional study of his/her own administrative practice and taking action for change based on what he/she learns as a result of inquiry.” Inquiry is a systematic way of investigating ways for school improvement. The way it works according to Dana is this, an individual will first “pose questions or ‘wonderings’ and then collect 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.” Through using action research principals or teachers become life long learners.

As a graduate student studying educational administration, it is very beneficial for me to learn what action research is and how I can use it before stepping into a real administrator role. Currently as a second grade teacher, I would like to use action research to study why students are not remembering their basic addition and subtraction math facts from one grade level to the next. Using action research is going to give me a hands-on process to use to discovery information and data I need to make the necessary changes to improve math fact recall for my students.

There's a FIRST time for everything

Hi Everyone,

This is my FIRST blog and my very FIRST post! I am very new to the blogging world.

I am doing this blog as a part of a grad school class. In this particular class we are learning about action research. In my posts that follow you will hear all about what I have learned about action research and how I might be able to use it, along with many other findings about action research.

Enjoy!

Emily