Changes for the Better

In order to improve my action reseach plan I participated in several brainstorming sessions to find ways to make the plan more effective and efficient. One of the meetings that took place was with members of our Math department. I also met with my principal to discuss ways to improve the plan. The following points are changes that you can see in my plan below.

•Student Survey: My student survey needed to have more options for students to choose on the questions. The students were not that creative in their answers. Probably because they are the students who are more apathetic toward math and don't want to give an opinion. Next time, I will give them more options to choose.

•Apangea: Through my project I have found that the Apangea math program helped student achievement. However, one major challenge I faced was finding times to pull students out of their "normal" classrooms to have adequate time to work on the program. This next year we have scheduled two classes to have the Apangea program in to give students more time on task in Math.

•Parent/Student Conferences: Our department started too late in the year with the parent/student conferences. We didn't even get to meet with half of them. This was a time to get students and their parents dedicated to coming to tutorials and to plan an individualized intervention plan for each student. The change I am making to meet this challenge is to start the conferencing in September.

•Follow-up with tutoring attendance: I still need help with this problem. We have posted signs for tutoring and told students to come to tutoring. However, logistically it has been a nightmare to follow-up with the students who are not attending. I definitely need some ideas for this. We will be brainstorming ideas to adjust our plan to create more follow-up during teacher in-service.

•Promethean Data Responders: Not all teachers are utilizing the responders as they should. The idea I have to meet this challenge this year is to give teachers time during in-service to register their responders so that they can begin usage day one. I am also going to make my expectations for their use more clearly to the Math team. This is a number one resource for Formative Assessment in the classroom.