Research Goals and Objectives:
Goals: To increase parent involvement at the academic functions held at Cedar Creek Elementary
Objective 1: To determine the reasons behind parents’ lack of attendance at academic functions at our school
Objective 2: To uncover what we, as the staff of CCE, can do to encourage parents to attend
Objective 3: To determine if implementing suggestions made by parents will raise the attendance at family education nights in the 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 school years.
Activities to Achieve Goal:
· Cedar Creek Elementary will establish a parental involvement committee, which will be responsible for planning functions to involve families.
· Cedar Creek Elementary will continue to host family education nights throughout the 2010-2011 school year.
· After each educational family event, distribute surveys to the parents in the target classes (2 sections per grade level K-4, one English and one Bilingual). The surveys will focus on the reasons parents attended and also why there were not able to come. Questions will also be asked to get recommendations on how we can improve the recent family night and also things we can do to help them attend next time.
·As the year progresses, we will collect the surveys and compile the answers to find common themes. Recommendations for next year will be based off of these surveys.
Resources Needed
·The teacher of Cedar Creek Elementary-to lead the activities during the family nights
·The parents of Cedar Creek Elementary-to be the research groups
·The parental involvement committee-to facilitate the family nights and collect and analyze data
·The administration-to support the activities with faculty and resources
·Survey Monkey-to conduct the surveys sent out to parents
Person/s Responsible for Implementation of the Action Research Plan
·Genny Wessels-Researcher
·The parental involvement committee-to be determined in the Fall of 2010
·Kathy Cawthron and Kelly Doyle-administration of Cedar Creek Elementary
Timeline for Completion of Tasks
*Establish a parental involvement committee-September 2010
·Hosting family nights at Cedar Creek Elementary-2010/2011 school year
·Survey parents in selected classes-2010/2011 school year
·Compile data from surveys-2010/2011, to be completed in May 2011
Process of monitoring achievement of goals and objectives
·I, along with the parental involvement committee, will utilize the information gathered from each survey in order to increase participation. After implementing new methods, we will continue to survey the parents on what is working and ways to improve our family education nights.
Instrument to evaluate effectiveness of study
·To evaluate the effectiveness of the study, I will use surveys, as mentioned previously. Also having informal conversations with parents and teacher will provide information on how effective the study is going.
Excellent research idea!! This was also a possibility for research at my elementary school. One question, how do you anticipate getting a committee that consists of a true representation of your student population? This is one area that I was struggling with since we have a large population of German students and a growing population of Hispanic students. Your research will prove to be very beneficial for your district.
ReplyDeleteThanks!!! I am working on that with my principal. She is brand new and just getting started with everything that needs to be done at my school. She really doesn't have time to talk to me about my grad class and project. I am hoping we are on the same page about this parental involvement committee because she has a vision in mind too.
ReplyDeleteWe are a majority Hispanic so kinda in the same boat as you.