After meeting with my site supervisor, we have agreed upon this action research plan. If I ammended my plan due to our conference, I have highlighted it in red. Please feel free to look and make comments and suggestions.
Thank you!
Genny
Research Goals and Objectives:
Goal: 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. Some possible topics for family nights are: Math, Literacy Nights, and Science.
·Cedar Creek Elementary will continue to host family education nights throughout the 2010-2011 school year.
·After each educational family event, a link will be set up off of our campus website for parents to take a survey. Our campus newsletter will contain a brief description of my action research project and the link. Parents may also request a paper copy if they do not have access to the internet. 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 teachers 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
·Paper copies of the survey for families with no access to the internet.
Person/s Responsible for Implementation of the Action Research Plan
·Genny Wessels-Researcher
·The parental involvement committee-to be determined in August of 2010
·Kathy Cawthron and Kelly Doyle-administration of Cedar Creek Elementary
Timeline for Completion of Tasks
·Establish a parental involvement committee-August 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 teachers will provide information on how effective the study is going.
I really like how you are using parent surveys to gather information about family nights. Just one suggestion in the same vein of activity. Would it be feasible for your parent involvement committee to send out a survey before your first parent night to see which topics have the most interest and identify current reasons that parents are not attending. Maybe some issues such as childcare or time/date/venue could be dealt with before even your first parent night, and the feedback afterwards might even be more insightful. Great job on your research plan so far. This is going to make a huge positive impact on student achievement!
ReplyDeleteGood idea about the child care and time of day. My action research is in the same area as you Genny and we are going to submit a survey to parents and the community to find out what they need and expect from us as a campus. We are wanting to get the parents and community involved in meaningful activities that will hopefully lead to student success in their academics. I will be following your blog, please follow mine so that we can stay in touch. Good luck on your school year.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great suggestion! I have not even thought about doing a pre-survey. I will be chairing the parental involvement committee and will definitely remember to do discuss that at our committee meeting at the beginning of the year. Thanks again!
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