3 Possible Action Research Topics

Topic #1:  The purpose of my action research is to find what types of motivators are successful in motivating at-risk learners on a 90% at-risk campus to succeed in their coursework. The students at this school have seen a lot of failures in their 10-15 years of education. Different motivators including, parent involvement, rewards, peer tutoring, adult mentoring, and discipline will be examined to determine which motivator produces the greatest amount of success in a student’s semester. Success will be measured by tardies, attendance, grades, and possibly graduate success.

Topic #2:  The purpose of my action research is to determine if a change in the schedule at Raines High School will have an effect on student learning and success.  The plan would entail a change of the schedule including cutting the advisory period in half, moving the advisory period to the beginning of the day, shortening each class by 10 minutes, and adding and additional period to the day.  Since there are a number of tardies during 1^st period placing advisory at the beginning of the day will mean students are not missing out on key topics in their core content courses.  Adding an additional period on to the day will mean that students are have the ability to pick up additional content courses in areas that they may struggle.  If they struggle in science, they may have 2 science courses they are working on concurrently.  If the student is struggling with a certain core subject area on their standardized test, a remediation period can be added in this slot to all core content teachers.  The need of the remediation periods can be researched ahead of the start of the semester to determine the number of students that need the remediation and the number of remediation courses that will need to be offered.

1^st period – Advisory – 7:35 – 8:00

2^nd period – 8:03 – 9:13

3^rd period – 9:16 – 10:26

4^th period – 10:29 – 11:40

Lunch – 11:40 – 12:10

5^th period – 12:13 – 1:23

6^th period – 1:26 - 2:35

Topic #3:  The purpose of my action research is to determine whether our current discipline consequence (Working Lunch) is meeting the needs of our learners.  Students are assigned a Working Lunch for various reasons.  Working Lunch was originally designed as a way for students to make up the time missed from class if they were tardy.  The students would have to purchase a sack lunch, eat in the ISS room during lunch quietly, and complete an assignment from their class.  Students now receive Working Lunch for not using their class time appropriately and also for classroom behavior issues.  Our excellent group of Paraprofessionals collect the students 10-15 minutes prior to Working Lunch.  This in essence removes these learners from our classrooms 10-15 minutes prior to the conclusion of instruction.  Some of the students who are on the Working Lunch list however are the very students that need to be in class and cannot afford to miss any extra time.  The research plan would consist of collecting data on the # of students per day that attend Working Lunch, the names of students that are habitual attendees, the grades of habitual attendees in 1^st period and 4^th period (right before lunch), and discipline referrals for the habitual attendees.  Based off of the data, a decision can be made as to whether Working Lunch is meeting the needs of our learners or if new consequences need to be determined in order to ensure that we are meeting the needs of all our learners.