Week 3 Action Research Plan

This week was tough because there were plenty of steps, tasks and reflections to organize. However, I think this week may help more than any to actually begin to formalize the project from a idea to an attainable study. The difference as we have learned in an action research is that we examine ourselves before, during and after the study to see what our role and how it can be improved (to go along with the findings of the study). I imagine for most of us our topic of research is one that can overlap with most any other campus or district of colleagues or those in which we might move to in the future.


Goals: Determine what factors contribute to school unity and their cause and effect relationship with student achievement.

Outcomes: To develop a plan to generate increased school unity among students and among staff in order to generate a higher level of student achievement.

Activities: Create a database of the number of students involved in extra and co-curricular activities both in and out of the school day. Then I will analyze the amount of programs and activities designed to potentially include all student body members (fundraisers, pep rallies, community events). At that point it will be necessary to examine the current levels of success students are having with a standard measurement tool. Then I can compare the success levels of students who are involved in school activities to those who aren’t. From there I can make an inference as to whether being part of the school unity helps with achievement and if so begin to work on ways to include more students in the unity of the school.

Resources: These will include information from other teachers/sponsors (to collect data regarding student involvement) as well as information from testing coordinators to analyze previous results to the students who are and who are not involved in school unity activities. Perhaps the most important resource will be the information obtained from students. I want to find out from them why they don’t participate more in school-directed activities and what type of activities would appeal to them more.

Timeline: This can begin in the early stages of school to get numbers of student who are participating in activities promoting school unity. Toward the end of the fall semester I can begin to make comparisons from previous standardized scores and fall benchmarks with numbers of students involved in school events and activities and the correlation between them.

Implementation: I will work on the implementation along with help from others sponsors/coaches on campus as well as testing coordinators for test results. Ms. Ellis (my supervisor) will also help with the analyzing of information and the coordination of different personnel.

Monitoring: Each six weeks will provide a good checkpoint for the research. The first will work for the task of gathering numbers of participation. The second will finish in time to match up standardized test results to the involved students. The third six weeks will serve to give me a starting point to begin analyzing the data to look for correlations. Overall, this project will last into the spring and summer to have a complete breakdown of the benefits of school unity to student achievement.

Assessment: Once completed I need to analyze my details to the plan and if I followed the specified steps. Then I need look for adjustments that could have been made and also look for any anomalies that might have taken place during the time of research that could have skewed the results.