New and Improved Plan

Based of the feedback I received from my peers (YOU amazing people), the CIS on my campus and my site supervisor, below is my new and I hope, IMPROVED action research plan. I have made adjustments to my timeline, giving myself the summer to bring all the data together and develop a presentation. My plan is to present my findings to the third grade teachers, our CIS and our Principal(my site supervisor) during work week in August. Please let me know what you think of my plan. Comment any suggestions you may have, because there's a good chance I haven't thought of everything. Thank you all so much for being so helpful throughout this course!! :)

Megan Marks’ Action Research Plan
Goal: To discover if using the program Istation is beneficial to our third grade students.
Action Steps(s):	Person(s) Responsible:	Timeline: Start/End	Needed Resources	Evaluation
Research the Istation Program and the effects it has had in other elementary schools	Myself	March 2013	-Internet	Compare the research from multiple schools and type up a summary of my findings
Meet with third grade teachers and develop a plan to get students on Istation for at least 90-120 minutes per week.	Myself, Third Grade Teachers	March 2013	-A meeting place -Access to third grade’s daily schedule	Develop a new schedule, including Istation time for each student.
Collect and analyze data from students’ initial placement test on Istation.	Myself, Third Grade Teachers	April 2013	-Access to third grade teacher’s Istation accounts. -Excel	Make a spreadsheet of students’ initial placement test.
Collect and analyze data from students’ SRI tests before they began using Istation.	Myself, Third Grade Teachers, CIS	April 2013	-Access to third grade teachers’ SRI data for their students. -Excel	Add students’ SRI data to the spreadsheet
Assess students’ middle of the year SRI tests to see if there are any improvements.	Myself, Third Grade Teachers, CIS	April 2013	-Access to third grade students’ middle of the year SRI tests. -Excel	Track students’ progress on Excel spreadsheet.
Analyze students’ monthly data on Istation to see whether or not they are progressing.	Myself, Third Grade Teachers	April-June 2013	-Access to third grade teachers’ Istation accounts. -Excel	Track students’ progress on Excel spreadsheet
Interview third grade teachers individually. Ask whether Istation is helping their students and if they would recommend the program for other teachers.	Myself Third Grade Teachers	May 2013	-A meeting place -Interview questions -My iPad to track teachers’ responses	Write a reflection on teachers’ responses.
Create a binder with all data collections and findings, along with results	Myself	June-July 2013	-Data I’ve collected -Presentation Binder	Produce a final binder to present to the third grade teachers, CIS and Principal
Meet with third grade teachers, CIS and Principal to discuss the results.	Myself, Third Grade Teachers, Principal, CIS	August 2013	-A meeting place -Presentation Binder	Feedback from teachers, CIS and Principal on my findings.

What Spring Break!?

AhhH! I am FINALLY through with my week 3 assignments. Hopefully it's not just me, but this week was VERY lengthy and challenging. Thankful to have everything submitted and plan on starting week 4 tomorrow or Monday. Hope everyone has a great rest of their weekend!

Action Plan

Megan Marks’ Action Plan
Goal: To discover if using the program, Istation is beneficial to our third grade students.
Action Steps(s):	Person(s) Responsible:	Timeline: Start/End	Needed Resources	Evaluation
Research the Istation Program and the effects it has had in other elementary schools	Myself	March 2013	Internet	Compare research and type a summary of findings
Analyze data from student’s initial placement test on Istation.	Myself, Third Grade Teachers, CIS	April 2013	Access to third grade teacher’s Istation accounts. Excel	Make a spreadsheet of student’s initial placement test.
Meet with third grade teachers and develop a plan to get students on Istation for at least 120 minutes/week.	Myself, Third Grade Teachers	March 2013	Conference room, access to third grade’s daily schedule	Develop a new schedule, including Istation time for each student.
Assess student’s weekly reading tests to see if there is any improvement	Myself, Third Grade Teachers, CIS	May 2013	Access to third grade student’s weekly reading tests. Excel	Track student progress in Excel spreadsheet.
Analyze student’s monthly data on Istation to see whether or not they are progressing.	Myself, Third Grade Teachers, CIS	May 2013	Access to third grade teacher’s Istation accounts. Excel	Track student progress on Excel spreadhseet
Create a binder with all data collections and findings, along with results	Myself	May 2013	Access to third grade teacher’s Istation accounts. Presentation Binder	Produce a final binder to present to the third grade teachers, CIS and Principal
Meet with third grade teachers, CIS and Principal to discuss the results.	Myself, Third Grade Teachers, CIS	June 2013	Conference room, Presentation Binder	Feedback from teachers, CIS and Principal on my findings.

Well! Hopefully I did this right, but theres really no telling. Feel free to let me know what you think so I can make any needed adjustments. 

New Week, New Findings

This week has seemed like it will never end and I am STILL not through with my assignments. I am in the process of moving this week so things have been nothing less than chaotic! Thankfully we are on spring break this next week so I will have plenty of time to organize AND work on homework. Well, enough about my personal life. This week I had the opportunity to sit down with my site supervisor and narrow down the choices for my action research study. After talking, we came up with three different ideas; motivation techniques, benefits of LLI, and the benefits of Istation. After discussing all three in detail, we settled on the benefits of Istation as the most beneficial one to myself, our students and our school as a whole. I am very excited to start researching Istation and gathering student data over the next several months. This masters program has already led me to so many opportunities I never would have experienced without it. It has been very educational being able to interview multiple leaders in education and begin to research different areas that could benefit from an action research study. I am looking forward to the rest of this course and the ones after it as well.

Blogs for Educational Leaders

I'm sure there are an endless number of reasons why educational leaders would use blogs. This is my first blog to write, but I have followed a lot of friends from college on their blogs, which they update about their newest adventures in life as well as their jobs. They share things such as their vacations, new recipes and intriguing articles they come across. There is no limit to what you could use a blog to share. I put myself in the shoes of an educational leader and came up with a few different ideas to use a blog for. I could use a blog to keep my staff updated on new campus information, minutes from staff meetings, and any district information I felt is important to pass along. I could also use a blog to share my ongoing learning experiences with my staff and colleagues. I feel that as an educational leader you have to constantly learn new things and stay up to date with the current research. A blog would be a great place to share articles, books and your thoughts on those. I am excited to continue using this blog for my action research plan and may even create a new one some day for other purposes.

The Truth About Action Research

Before reading about action research, I had no idea what it was. As far as I was concerned, action research was the same thing as traditional, everyday research you hear about all the time. To my pleasant surprise, that was not the case at all. I was relieved to learn that action research is based on reflecting on your current state and asking questions regarding whether you could better yourself and your surroundings. Based on your inquiry, you can then make the changes necessary to improve the current situation.

Unlike traditional research, action research is done by people who are directly involved, such as the principal or the teachers. University researchers, who have no understanding on what goes on in each specific school, do traditional research. I have always felt that the people who are closest to the source are the ones with the greatest chance in improving it.

Action research can be used for an endless amount of things. I am planning on doing an action research study on whether or not Istation is a worthy program for our third grade students. There is a way to pull the data monthly to see whether or not student performance is increasing, decreasing, or staying the same. I plan to use this information to decide if Istation is worth the time spent on it.

I am excited for my action research plan, as well as many more to come after that.

Getting Started in EDLD 5301

Hi! My name is Megan Marks and I have created this blog to post about my journey in creating my Action Research Plan. I am planning on sitting down with my site supervisor as well as a few other educational leaders in my school to come up with the best idea for my plan. I am looking forward to developing and implementing this plan. As soon as I come up with and narrow down my ideas, I will post about it. Until then, have a good week and good luck in implementing your own plan!