Drafts-Action Research Report
Abstract or
Executive Summary
Title
Improve parental involvement to increase literacy
achievement in a Title I elementary school.
Author
Elisa Carranza
Needs
Assessment
After looking at our campus AYP report, we realized
our campus needed to focus their efforts in improving literacy skills in our
students. A school community needs to be involved in such improvement, so it
was decided that if we provided parents with literacy tools and activities they
could do at home with their children we could involve more people in the
community. My campus’ preliminary AYP report provided by the Texas Education
Agency (TEA) showed we had not met our target by 4 points with our White and by
5 points with our Special Education population. It also warned us on the fact
that our LEP students were above target my only 1%, and our Economically
Disadvantaged students were on target. We knew then there a lot to do for our
students this year. Our campus leaders have started a book study on rigor,
Reading and Writing staff developments, and the district has provided valuable
support with weekly coaches visiting our campus. It is up to us to get parents
more involved, empowered, and motivated to teach their children at home.
Objectives
and Vision of the Action Research Project
The general vision is that by offering parents
opportunities to learn, create activities, take home valuable tools, and
providing them community support they will feel more empowered to get involved
in their students education. The main objective is to increase Reading scores
by providing personnel and parents with trainings as well as with tools to
support the students in this endeavor. The school wants not only to increase
scores to a point where its meeting AYP target, but get them as close to 100%
as possible in the next few years. The school leaders want to ensure the
majority of the 3rd and 4th grade students get a score of
95% or above on the Reading STAAR test in the year 2013.
Literature
Review
There is a vast amount of research regarding parental
involvement, community relations, student achievement, and how family
involvement empowers parents to help their children in school. According to
findings in Boethel’s (2003) research with regards to school, family and
community relations all parents no matter what is their background are
concerned for their children’s success. She mentioned that there is an
inconsistency in how family involvement and student improvement in low-income
populations, but the findings do encourage the promotion of such actions. After
reading her research, and knowing how little participation many of the school’s
parents have in their children’s learning, it was easy to want to develop a
plan that would increase both parental involvement and literacy in students. The focus of Boethel’s (2003) research was
community connections with school. Her findings showed how important it
continues to be to avoid and break those barriers parents have that limit their
participation in their children’s school. It was easily related to my own
school, since parents have time, child care, transportation, language, and
cultural differences that act as obstacles in their involvement of school
activities. It was useful in considering type of activities, time of events,
way parents would be notified of events, ways to ensure they could come. The
plan involved having the activities late in the evening, providing child care,
and telling them about events many weeks in advance for them to be able to find
transportation to school. We also plan on providing all information in both
English and Spanish to accommodate everyone in our school community.
The Scholastic Administrator website provided an
article by Henze (2012) that encouraged the use of data to develop a specific
approach to our students’ needs. It discussed that by creating such a plan and
turning into action were members of the school community are involved there was
a higher probability of success. This finding made me look back to the book our
campus is basing its book study in rigor by Blackburn (2008). This books
encourages raising level of content by adding value to each student. The best
way to add value is to involve as many people around them in the process. If
parents are involved, given the right tools, encouragement, and they feel
comfortable visiting the school to increase their knowledge then value will
definitely be added to each student. The
Scholastics website (2005) also developed an event called Read for 2005, with
the objective of getting the school community to promote students to read.
Parents were encouraged to provide suggestion and participate in the planning
of the events, and were also asked to read to their children to promote
literacy at home. After reading about it, it sparked the interest of creating
something similar for our specific school and its needs.
The plan was developed, presented and put into
action by a literacy campus coach, a first grade bilingual teacher, and a
fourth grade bilingual teacher. The principal approved it and has provided
support and guidance to ensure it adhered to the law and that the appropriate
budget is allotted to this project. The school leader has also encouraged the
Parental Involvement and Literacy Committees to become actively involved in the
project. It was decided that the first semester the focus would be outreach
programs, and literacy enrichment for parents. The second semester’s focus
would include Mathematics and Science literacy as well.
Articulate
the Vision
The vision is to empower parents to be more
involved. Many teachers complain that there is very little support from home,
and that parents don’t know how to help their children with homework. They
claim that even when they provide parents during conferences with suggestions,
they don’t always use them to help their children at home. Parents don’t get
more involved with their child’s learning because they don’t have the
knowledge, or the time. Sometimes it’s a combination of many factors that
prevent parents from supporting their children adequately. We took into consideration
many of this issues and developed activities that would help everyone in the
school community with their problem. We have communicated our vision slowly and
a few weeks before the new activity is to take place to ensure opportunities
for participation by everyone in the school community.
Manage
the Organization
During the summer the triad met to analyze data and
develop tentative plan. Before the new academic school started we met with our
school principal to present tentative plan, and after minimal changes she
approved the plan. We developed a final draft and worked with our school
leaders on the calendar of events. During the first month back to school we
contacted community leaders and business to ensure support and set times and
dates they will be in school. We met with the Parental Involvement and Literacy
Committees to share idea and ensure participation. They also had great
suggestions and new activities were added to our Literacy Night this fall. We
all focused on making sure every activity was related to objectives our
students are struggling with in class, and that all activities are rigorous,
but simple enough for parents to use at home. We also decided that to ensure
there is an adequate amount of supervision when parents are not with their
children; we needed to request more staff members’ participation.
The triad was
assigned with specific duties and responsibilities. One member develops
agendas, flyers, puts information gathered in power point presentation. One
member contacts community leaders and gathers relevant information for power
point. I contact district centers that support our project, contact church
leaders, and translate everything sent home. We meet every few weeks to ensure
we are on track and to support each other when necessary.
Manage
Operation
The school principal has notified the leadership
team that the three of us are working on this project. They in turn have shared
it with their teams. We have also encouraged participation by many with small
incentives. When we meet with different committees, we provide opportunities
for suggestions and accept changes that may help provide better activities for
our students and parents. Our principal has also made everyone aware that our
school’s priority is to increase Reading scores in all students, and this has
proven useful when seeking support from other teachers. Many educators have
shown an interest on supporting parent involvement nights, and are actively
providing great new ideas to include in such nights. Luckily, most of the staff
is supportive and happy about the project. We did have some conflict with our
first event, since our principal had forgotten what we had discussed, and that
meant last minute changes. We later met with her, and she apologized as well as
encouraged us to lead the program to its entirety.
Response
to Community Interests and Needs
All parental involvement night activities will
address every grade level in the school, provide activities and parent
trainings in both English and Spanish, and have teachers supervising of every
grade level. Our Special Education students, Exceptional needs students, and
LEP students will be served, because they will be able to choose what games or
activities to play and later take home with them according to their particular
needs.
Every grade level will provide activities in English
and Spanish designed to increase students’ performance. Teachers have chosen
each activity keeping in mind targeted objectives our students need the most
support on, and have also ensure that they are easy enough for families to put
them to good use at home.
References
Blackburn,
B. (2008). Rigor is not just a
four-letter word. Larchmont, New York:
Eye on Education.
Boethel,
M. (2003). Diversity: School, family and community connections. Austin, Texas:SEDL.
Dana,
N.F. (2009). Leading with passion and knowledge: The principal as action
researcher. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin.
Heinze,
H. (2012). Turning data into action. Retrieved from http://www.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=7394
Scholastics
(2005). Read for 2005. Plan your event: Ideas for community involvement and
getting parents involved. Retrieved from http://teacher.scholastic.com/readfor2005/event/parents.htm
