In the past few years I have struggled with students not
turning in their assignments and parents not taking responsibility for their student’s
irresponsibility. That has led me to do an action research project on strengthening
teacher/parent/student communication to promote academic success. Last year I questioned many teachers about their
strategies concerning this problem. Chad
Bender, who is our technology specialist on campus, talked about a classroom
website, Facebook and Edmodo. He felt as
though he had a very successful year due to the added communication.
I have already had several people suggest that I use
Reminder101 as my technology resource so I am looking into that as a possible
communication tool. I really like the
ease of Reminder 101 but have not made up my mind yet.
Action Planning Template
|
||||
Goal: To increase communication with parents and
students through the use of technology.
This technology will give them access to classwork and grades in order
to help students stay more organized and turn things in on time.
|
||||
Action Steps(s):
|
Person(s) Responsible:
|
Timeline: Start/End
|
Needed Resources
|
Evaluation
|
Make a survey to give
parents at the beginning of the year.
|
Kelly Rodriguez
|
August 2013
|
Internet resources,
articles, peer teacher ideas
|
The survey
|
Give parents and
students a survey on access to technology and what kind of communication they
would like from their teacher.
|
Kelly Rodriguez
|
August 2013 - September 2013
|
Survey
|
Results from
Parent/Student survey
|
Set up Edmodo account
with information requested by parents and students.
|
Kelly Rodriguez
|
September 2013 –
December 2013
|
Computer and Edmodo
Account
|
Keep track of parents
and students that are using Edmodo. Are students turning assignment in on
time?
|
2nd survey for parents and
students to find out what is working and what is not
|
Kelly Rodriguez
|
January 2014
|
Survey
|
Results from
parent/student survey
|
Using the information
from the second survey, I will add or delete items to the classroom Edmodo
account.
|
Kelly Rodriguez
|
January 2014 – May 2014
|
Edmodo and computer
|
I will monitor the
Edmodo account to see if the site is used more often. Are students turning assignment in on
time?
|
Compile Data and see
if communication with parents and students helped in assignments being turned
in.
|
Kelly Rodriguez
|
May 2014 – June 2014
|
All data since
September 2014
|
Compare data from the
beginning of the year. Was there a
significant change in assignments being turned in on time with communication
through technology?
|
Share results with
others including site supervisor
|
Kelly Rodriguez
|
June 2014
|
Results of action
research plan with graphs and/or documents to back up the results
|
Final
product to share results
|
I think your plan looks very nice and is easy to follow. I like that you will go back and survey time and time again. Are you planning to survey during parent teacher conferences? Out of curiosity what age group of students are you working with?
ReplyDeleteIt looks like a good plan. I might add a step between setting up the account and the second survey. I realize that you will be adding to Edmodo but it doesn't state how often there will be notifications to the parents. You could then have a question on your second survey about frequency and if they wanted it more or less often.
ReplyDeleteGreat idea Carrie. Thanks!
DeleteWhat other steps include research like journal articles or other outside sources?
ReplyDeleteI teach math and science to fifth graders.
ReplyDeleteOur school starts the year with a meet the teacher a couple of days before the first day of school. I plan on having the information available on that day and will try to set up the parents that day.
ReplyDeleteAre you trying to track how to increase parent involvement or how to increase your students turning in their work? I feel like most of this is how to increase parent involvement and then you throw in students turning in their assignments towards the end. I think that may be a benefit to parent involvement but I feel like parent involvement is your main focus from what you have written.
ReplyDeleteThank you Katie for your questions. My inquiry is about communication with parents and I am hoping that one of the positive aspects that comes from it is completed assignments.
DeleteVery impressive Kelly. Did your site supervisor mention what permissions (at school level, or district level) to survey students and parents? My site supervisor, the associate principal, is determining what / who can authorize me to do so. If memory serves, Edmodo under administration tabs you can determine the last log-in by user. That is data on parent utilization in and of itself. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteJay...Good question. I hadn't even thought about that. Thanks!
DeleteI tried to implement a classroom blog last year to have parents and students get on and talk about the learning from the classroom and how that carried over at home. I didn't have a very good amount of participation. I teach at a school where parents are very active, and I provided incentives for blog posts and comments. I am interested to see how well this works for you. I hope that you have better success than I did. I plan to try again with the class blog this year, so I might be using some of your ideas as you post what you are doing!
ReplyDeleteI had a classroom Facebook last year but wasn't very successful at it either. I plan on using incentives to lure parents and students on to the site. The students of today are excited about technology so if I can approach it that way I am hoping to get a larger participating audience.
DeleteKelly, I'm interested to see how this works. I'll be implementing Moodle in my classes this year, so we're doing something kind of similar. I don't know if you could do this, but at my school, our software sends an automated email home to parents when an assignment is missing or the score is failing. (My students affectionately call these "nasty grams") is there a way to do something like this or are you relying on parents to log in to check?
ReplyDeleteKathleen I have never heard of such a thing. What a great resource. What software is it?
ReplyDeleteKelly,
ReplyDeleteI am interested in your research project. I am going to be using technology to communicate with parents as part of my internship plan. I hope that you will read my blog and comment on some of my posts. My URL is harproject.blogspot.com
Kelly,
ReplyDeleteWould you please look at my action research plan and make a comment? I only need one more comment for my week 4 assignment. Thank you. My URL is harproject.blogspot.com