Monday, April 1, 2013

Update on Action Research Project 4-1-13

I chose this topic because we are piloting this program on my campus this year. We are only using two teachers this year. A second and third grade teacher. The second grade teacher teaches the Language Arts, Reading and Social Studies component for the second and third graders. The third grade teacher teaches the math and science for both second and third grade students. For the most part, the survey results were mostly positive for both teachers. The teachers enjoyed the fact that these students belonged to the both of them. Whenever intervention strategies had to be completed or implemented, they felt they had a partner to collaborate with about every aspect of that student. When a serious issue or concern had to be presented or confronted to a parent, they would do it together. By doing this they felt they had an even bigger voice and parents were always acceptable of their concerns when two teachers approached them about the same issue and both provided documentations of concerns whether it was academic or behavior. Some of the concerns they voiced were in regards to grading procedures. In our district, the minimum grades allowed are six per subject. Of course, they recommend more to have a broader representation of that child, but having six grades is acceptable. The teacher that teaches math and science is required to have a minimum of 12 grades. The teacher that teaches three subjects is required to have 24 grades per students. You’d think it should 18 grades since it’s three subjects. The component of Language Arts has four subgroups, composition, grammar, spelling and handwriting. Each of these requires at least three grades. One way I thought of fixing this problem or making it a little even is to require the math and science teacher to have at least 12 grades per each subject so that this situation can seem fair and balanced. For the most part, the teachers love this teaching arrangement. Next year on my campus, all of the second and third grade teachers will be participating in this teaching arrangement. As far as benchmarks and STAAR test results, I am still gathering data on that. They won’t take STAAR until later in April so we will have to wait and see how much more successful the students were that participated in this model.

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