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Week 3 Assignment, Part 3Draft Action Research Project Progress Report
PARENT AND COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT:
A DOOR TO ACADEMIC GROWTH AMONG STRUGGLING STUDENTS.
Shannon Woodward
Lamar University
Our school fairly young in comparison to all the other elementary schools in our district. When we opened 13 years ago, our school consisted of grades K-5 with a total enrollment of 217 students. In 2005, our campus went to K – 4 th grade with the opening of the new middle school. Our enrollment went from 453 to 403. Over the years we have seen changes in our campus groups and the number of students enrolled. There has been significant growth in sub-groups like our Economically Disadvantaged and At-Risk students. This was brought to our attention 2 years ago when, as a SBDM committee, we were looking at the A.E.I.S. Campus Profile report. The 2009-2010 report showed our Economic Disadvantage group at 18.4%, but our At-Risk students went from 9.2 in 2008-2009 to 21.6% in 2009-2010. It was a siren to our teachers that we have to focus on these students. For the most part, these two groups go hand in hand. Last year, with the introduction of a more rigorous state standardized test, in order to keep our campus state rating, we realized we need to focus on our struggling groups of students and develop ways to make academic improvements in these groups. As we discussed how to go about meeting the academic needs of these students, the obvious answers resulted: Tutoring and RtI. Up until this point, that has been our focus in raising student’s academic scores.
The vision for this action research plan came after reading an article written by Steven R. Hara and Daniel J. Burke called Parent Involvement: The Key to Improved Student Achievement (1998). The article describe a project with inner-city students of Chicago that focuses on parents becoming more directly involved with their students education in order to raise academic achievement. As I read the achievements that were made through parent and community involvement, it inspired me to build an action research project that focused on our need of improving the academic achievements of our At-Risk and Economically Disadvantaged students through parent communication along with parent and community involvement. I will meet first with Administration to approve the plan, then with my fourth grade team. This will be a project that will focus on 4 th grade students. Of the 92 students, roughly 15 students are considered to be in one or both of the focus groups. The teachers will work in communication, collecting data and involvement with community activities. To open up the lines of communication with the students, we would use our Student Planners. Instead of having student write down their homework every day, we decided to attach an brief activity that parents could do with their child. An initial letter will be sent out to parents to explain the desire to open up lines of communication between parents and teachers about their child’s academic growth. We will ask them to take 5-10 minutes, once a week, to conduct an activity with their child that we have sent home in the planners. The activity is designed to be quick and allow the students to show parents what they have mastered in
the classroom. In turn, parents will comment in the planners how the activity went and how their child did with the activity. Through this activity we can recognize the parents who are involved in their students academic lives. Those that are not, we can make personal contacts with through phone calls and parent conference and try to find ways that these parents are willing to get involved. The next step in the action research plan is to gather parents to meet and discuss activities students and parents could participate in outside of school that would engage students in apply what they have learned to real world activities. The parent group will come from a variety of our school’s sub-groups, including our Economically Disadvantage. This may mean that meetings will have to take place at night in order to accommodate work schedules. There is the hope that some parents will have connection to local businesses. The idea is to find businesses who will conduct activities on the week ends that will offer learning for the students and compel parents to stay and get involve. These activities will provide a way for students to apply the skills they are learning at school. I hope to also find a way to offer parents discounts for staying with their student through the activity. Once the ideas are in place and contacts are made, we will move into activities through the spring, opting for at least 4 activities to be planned. Student’s academic successes will be monitored through assessments given throughout the year. The STAAR test results will be a large part of the data that will be used from the previous year, once released in January, and then how the students do on this year’s scores, which won’t be released until middle to late May. Once the results of the action research project are found, there will be a presentation made to our faculty to discuss the findings and the results.
As I mention earlier, one of the motivating factors for putting together this action research plan was reading the article, Parent Involvement: The Key to Improved Student Achievement. Hara and Burke (1998) describe their central purpose for their project was to improve student achievement through a structured parent involvement plan. The plan was formulated through several meetings and discussions over parent involvement and if parents felt welcomed into the school culture. Hara and Burke discussed how this led the group to Epstein’s Framework of Six Types of Involvement. I had also reviewed Epstein’s program characteristics for building parental partnerships through the EDLD 5326 School Community Relations course. In reading through through the Six types of Involvement, Epstein (1995) discuss the need to include parents in school decisions and including parents from all racial, ethnic and socioeconomic groups. Epstein also discusses integrating resources and services from the community. By including the community you will strengthen the school programs and student learning and development.
As the action research plan began to unfold, the inial meeting began with my administrator/site manager. We discussed the need to improve the scores of our At-Risk and Economically Disadvantaged students and the activities that were already in place to support the improvement. I presented my idea of creating greater parent involvement through communication and discussed my desire to involve parents in the planning of community activities for the students. We agreed that this could improve student’s academic interest and perhaps open an avenue for further parent involvement outside of our strong PTA program. From there, I met with the fourth grade teaching team to discuss the action research project. We discussed how to start communication with the parents, when the idea of the student planners came up. We had purchased them at the end of last year with the idea that students could keep track of their schedules and homework due dates better. We decided they could be better utilized by presenting parent with weekly activities they could use to help us assess how their students were doing academically. The next meeting that is planned is to invite a group of 8-10 parents to participate in organizing community projects for students and parents to do that will engage students in applying what they have learned to real world activities. The fourth grade team is planning on
discussing the parents to invite, making certain to use the suggestion from Epstein, considering we have parent leaders from various ethnic and socioeconomic groups. Once the parent choices are made and the meeting time and date are decided, we plan to send invitations to parents to present to them the idea of uniting all stake holders in their student’s academic progress. The next meeting that will be planned is meeting with the business to present the idea of developing activities for these students. The meeting will consist of Administration, 4 th grade teachers and parent leaders that will collaborate to plan the activities throughout the spring. After the activities, the parent leaders and teachers will meet back together to discuss the achievements made through the activities and any changes to consider for the following activities. Toward the end of the spring, parent leaders, administration and teachers will meet to make final evaluations of the processes and to consider and evaluate data collected through out the year to show academic achievements.
The initial presentation of the action research was presented to my administrator. Using the Lamar Action Research Plan document I had created, I walked her through the plans I had made. I described the way I had planned to present the idea to parents and the businesses. From their I approached my fourth grade team. I presented them with a oral synopsis of the article by Hara and Burke and proceeded to describe the action research project I had put together for our fourth grade students. The meeting with the parents will be requested through a formal invitation. The evening of the meeting I plan to present orally along with a power point presentation what we are proposing. The presentation will include data for the students along with the desired outcome of our activities. Once we have determined the business to contact, we will approach them with a brief powerpoint presentation that will explain the purposes for the activities.
It will be the responsibility of each teacher to help track and analyze assessments taken throughout the course of the action research project. We will meet during PLC to discuss progresses made with students and parents. As we approach our parent leadership/community projects, I plan to assign parents to different responsibilities to help facilitate that activities and their success. I plan to use parents as the contact persons for the businesses. We will likely have no starting budget, but we will ask that the business donate time and any products or tools that will be necessary to conduct the activities. Each activity will have a parent leader that will work with the business to make certain everything is set up and in order for the students. I will have another parent leader who will be in charge of advertising and creating flyers, working with Mrs. Tatum to send out phone calls to remind parents of the activities. I also plan on assigning a parent to organize the attendance of each event by students and parents. In order to utilize all parents, we will rotate these roles with each activity, as long as the parents are comfortable with the roles. As we plan the activities, the main focus will always be how this is engaging students in using what they have learned in the classroom. We will ask if the activity applies the use of objectives thoroughly. We will also discuss student safety and what measures will be taken to provide for their safety. For example, if we happen to work with a painting company or a contractor to figure how much paint it would take to paint a wall, we would need to take the measurement of the wall, do the multiplication of the measurements to figure the square footage of the wall, and then determine the amount of paint needed. We would provide students with a budget and discuss the costs of paint and determine the most cost effective paint choices to make. We will determine total cost of the project. (I would develop the form that would keep all the information organized for the students and parents.) We would then offer the students the opportunity to give to back to their community by painting the Amarillo Women’s Shelter. For safety reasons, we would need to make certain that only students must
be accompanied by parents, students would need to wear safety goggles and painting masks. Under no circumstances would the students be allowed on ladders, and we would have to consider if we need to have parents sign forms that would release the Woman’s Shelter, the paint company/contractor, or our school from any accidents that might take place while on the work site.
As I mentioned above, we would look for activities that would present the students giving back to the community, such as painting the Amarillo Women’s Shelter. I believe we would could involve parents from various ethnic, socioeconomic and racial backgrounds by considering what activities would interest those groups and how to motivate the parents of those groups. While the project itself is focused on two predominant subgroup types, there are several ethnic groups within the subgroups. I believe offering the parents something they could find value in would motivate them to come to the activities and get involved in the communication with teachers. For example, finding a business who will offer all participating parents free product or deep discounts, if possible, might motivate parents to come out. For the special needs students, I believe working with our Special Education teacher to get involved with the project and being a contact source at the activities may compel students and parents to be more at ease with the participation of the project. We can also discuss, prior to the events, any modifications in the activities that would need to be made for those students.
REFERENCES
Epstein, J. L. (1995). School/family/community partnerships: Caring for the children we share. Phi Delta Kappan, 76(9), 701-12.
Hara, S.R, Burke, D.J. (1998). Parent involvement: the key to improved student achievement. School Community Journal, 8(2), 219-228.
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