Describe a current or past school improvement effort at a (your) school. How could action research potentially further that initiative?
(MY SCHOOL IS AN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL)
ANSWER THE ABOVE QUESTION AND THEN REPLY TO MY CLASSMATE’S DISCUSSION TO THE ABOVE QUESTION AND EXPLAIN WHY YOU AGREE. (MINIMUM OF 325 WORDS TOTAL FOR BOTH)
CLASSMATE’S POST
Currently at the junior high in which I work, we are implementing ICE time. ICE (intervention, challenge and enrichment) is meant to place students with similar needs in a classroom of their peers with the same need. ICE will be conducted once a week during the normal ELA period for the student. Each ELA teacher was given a subject area to concentrate on in order to improve student learning in that area. The school has determined the areas of need through a standardized test called MAP that every student take three times a year. After the fall MAP scores the administration, with help from the building leadership team, placed each student with a teacher. This means that once a week students may or may not have their same ELA teacher. The whole idea is like a centralized differentiation day. In reference to action research, more specifically, Mills’ Dialectic Action Research Spiral, my school has completed all four stages. We have collected data, analyzed data, identified an area of focus and have developed an action plan. Now it is time to implement the plan and continue to collect and analyze data in order to identify where a new area of focus is and create another action plan. The simplicity of the Action Research Spiral model is that it is never completed. It allows schools, or businesses to always strive for better and keep finding areas to improve. Action research will help my school if we are not ready to be satisfied with what we have already done. In the spring, the students will take the MAP again and that data needs to be analyzed in order to find areas of concern so that we can create a more effective action plan.