Week 3-Action Research Plan

1. The goal of our action research investigation is to discover whether a group of three or less versus a group of 4 to 6 yields greater results in a guided reading group of kindergarten through third graders.
2. Classroom teachers and reading specialists will engage students in small group guided reading activities focused on predetermined needs of the students.
3. Tier 2 and tier 3 students will be administered benchmark exams, progress monitoring exams, and beginning, middle, and end of the year TPR I. Resources necessary for this will include Palm pilots, computer spreadsheets, and manipulatives necessary to administer the kindergarten tests.
4. Progress monitoring will begin in September of 2010 and the last TPR I should be administered in the last week of May 2011. This should give a full school year’s worth of data to analyze.
5. The people responsible for the implementation of the action research plan include kindergarten through third grade classroom teachers, reading specialists, and the reading coach.
6. As a reading coach, I am in a unique situation to monitor the implementation of the goals and objectives of this action research plan. It is my job to collect all the data for the reading programs; therefore, I will be able to access it for the needs of the study.
7. Data gathered from the TPR I, benchmarks, and progress monitoring will be disaggregated to determine the impact of group size on guided reading groups. Student performance will be the indicator.

Week Two

When I look at the possible topics for my action research opportunities, I realize each of them are things of great interest to me. I feel passionate about affording the opportunities that small group guided reading can give our students. I have seen and experienced the success myself and, as a reading coach, I have been very frustrated and maintenance to get upper-level teachers to buy and to flexible reading groups. I've also been very frustrated by the lack of support from our district to conquer our spelling programs in second and third grade. I feel, therefore, that if it's going to get better we will have to take care of it ourselves. I also see a great need for more empowerment for our minority parents. I know that they have more to give but are often unsure as to how to participate. Surely, we can find a way to enable them to fully participate in their children's education.

Action Research

The concept of action research appeals to me as a future leader because it includes my philosophy of being the "head learner." I would never want to ask a faculty to do anything I was unwilling to do myself, therefore, the action research approach would give me as a principal the opportunity to pursue inquiry on important issues. As the faculty sees their servant leader pursuing this line of inquiry hopefully, with training and guidance, they too will become excited about the prospects and opportunities action research can bring to our students. Much as we strive for cooperative learning groups and our student population, so can we as educators use the idea of cooperative efforts to pursue action research to achieve our goals.
The idea of practitioner inquiry particularly appeals to me. As an educator, we know that hands-on learning is the preferred method of teaching- so is it the preferred method of inquiry. Rather than traditional educational research being passed on to us in a passive way, the practitioner is actively involved in the action research method.
Elliott's (1988) description of action research as a continual set of spirals made up of reflection and action depicts each spiral as involving (1) clarifying and diagnosing a practical situation to be improved or the practical problem that will need to be improved or resolved, (2) developing action strategies for improving the situation or resolving the problem, (3) implementing the action strategies and evaluating their general effectiveness, and (4) clarifying the situation, to resolve the new definitions problems or areas for improvement, and so on, and so on- spiral to spiral. Using this framework, practitioners have a flexible realm of inquiry within which to address problems.

Educators love to talk about education! Bouncing ideas off of the lively minds of other educators is an excellent use of blogs. Whether to use as a place to ask specific questions or as a place to bounce ideas off one another, a blog can be an excellent tool for educational leaders.