Action Research Plan

SIP or PIP (SCHOOL or PROFESSIONAL IMPROVEMENT PROJECT) PLAN OF ACTION

SCHOOL VISION:


GOAL: To find strategies that not only help educators to be successful with students with little or no parental involvement, and to also find plans that districts and schools can implement that will encourage more parental involvement.

OUTCOMES ACTIVITIES RESOURCES/ RESEARCH TOOLS NEEDED RESPONSIBILITY TO ADDRESS ACTIVITIES TIME LINE Benchmarks/
ASSESSMENT Revisions to SIP/PIP based on monitoring and assessments
1. Encourage students to achieve goals without any or very little parental involvement. - Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.
- Learning Rallies (pep rallies).
- Immediate feedback.
- Verbal praise for successes. - Prizes/Treats
- Additional “Praise Statements”
- Support from all staff All staff Continuous throughout the year.
2. Create a parental involvement committee that will implement programs to encourage parental involvement. Members of the committee will meet to discuss and implement plans that will encourage more parents and community members to participate in school activities. - Advertising
- Support from faculty
- Ideas and/or strategies that will encourage involvement
- Discuss with parents and/or community on the advantages of parental support. All Staff This should take place before the school year starts to ensure that plans are finalized, and all responsible parties understand their roles in the upcoming events.
3. Host programs at the beginning, middle and end of each semester that involves family participation. - Back to school night/Meet the teacher.
- Math Family Night
- Literacy Night
- Fall Festival
- Winter Carnival
- Welcome back Part 2.
- Spring Rally
- End of the year conferences - Fundraising Committee
- List of at home activities that families can use to reinforce strategies and skills
- Volunteers for Festivals, Carnivals and Rallies
- Donations from the community The Committee
All Staff Planning will begin the year or summer before school starts. Donations will be sought as soon as school starts.
Fundraising will be continuous.
Classroom teachers or office staff will supply families with a calendar of events.
4. Meet with parents at least twice a semester to discuss students’ success. Parent and Teacher Conferences. Student grades.
Student benchmark scores.
Student behavior reports. Personal observations made by the classroom teacher. Classroom Teachers
Administrators
Support Staff Four conferences for the entire year. Two in the fall and two in the spring. One at the end of the 1st six weeks. One at the end of the third six weeks. One at the end of the fourth six weeks. One in the middle of the sixth six weeks.
5. Encourage educators to have at least one home visit with families of at-risk students. Home visits. Teacher expectations. District expectations. State standards. Classroom Teachers
Administrators
Support Staff Teachers will attempt to have at least one home visit with the families of struggling students once they have identified the student as “struggling.”

Action Research

Action research, to me, is a great tool for school districts. It allows you to move from traditional educational research, and pushes you to evaluate your current practices in order to find new ways to solve problems. By using traditional educational research, schools are looking for a means to "better" their current practices. Traditional educational research does not allow for much "thinking outside of the box." Even though this may have been successful for some, as a whole, we need to focus on new strategies and ways to better our districts instead of just keeping strategies that do not work. That's where action research comes into play.

Action research is the process of using problem solving actions with data driven information, in order to come up with solutions for current and future problems. By researching new strategies, you are educating yourself, as well as others, on strategies that you may not have ever heard of, but they have worked for other schools. You may be able to find school with demographics that are very similar to your school's demographics, and they could quite possible have some of the same problems as you. You can see what they have used to problem solve in these areas. This will help you to better come up with strategies that will work. Like the old saying, "two heads are better than one."

Educational leaders can use blogs to find new strategies to deal with behavior issues. They can find information about how to better involve parents in the community. Action research opens the door for many ideas about issues administator's are faced with every day.