My Action Research Afterthougths

I am now winding down my school year.  As I mentioned in my last post about my AR, I had an awesome idea and experience, but my implementation had some challenges.  I loved this process so much that I would like to continue to make this work.  Since I am at the end of my school year, I am going to start developing this for next year.  I may even stretch this into my next AR project.

The changes that I need to make are to be more deliberate in my planning to include the right steps in my learning targets.  When I formed the targets this time, I just went off of the standards.  Sometimes that was enough, but I found for other math subjects, like long division, there are more steps that I needed to monitor along the way to a high level of understanding.  So I am going to write additional targets that students will need to get to the standard.

I also want to find a way to involve parents in my process.  The idea is that I will know where every student is at with math comprehension, every single day.  Often parents want to know where they can help, so if I create a second checklist, students could take this home and parents would also have a way to know if their student needs support.  I am not sure how I will do this.  My only idea right now is to have them self assess on two checklists.  I feel like I need one in my possession so I have it to refer to and pull students as needed.

The last change I would like to make is to have a plan on what to do when I see that students have rated themselves as not understanding a topic.  I did okay with it this time around, but I would like a more formal procedure.  I am thinking about setting a time aside at the end of the day that will be a math support time.  I currently have a snack break that I intend to change.  I would like to have a menu of options for each topic I teach.  I have been making a lot of games to use for this purpose.

Overall I am still very excited about this research plan.  I am feeling great about starting it, making some mistakes, and then having the chance to make changes and make this a very valuable tool in my classroom.