I love the accountability from my Action Research Plan. While I had never mapped out a plan of action like this, it sure is making me be very intentional with my planning. Over the summer I was able to get started. Upon receiving the data from the STAAR test, I was able to start studying my students and start looking at what specific skills I needed to address with them. I highlighted my students that were within the range I had decided upon - within 5 questions of scoring advanced on the test. This was quite a number of students. I then started looking at the standards that they missed just a couple of questions on. I have been able to start grouping them by standards and by class (since I have 4 classes). Since I do more strategy groups instead of guided reading at the 5th grade level, I have been working with students based on the area that I am teaching in class. I am making progress with getting my schedules all worked out. I can say that have I successfully been able to meet with a small group of students each day, I do however need to continue to tweak my schedule so I can get another group in my time with each class.
I have been able to pull more resources also. I have been using a variety of resources and books to work with the students so far. It has been so very helpful to have the standards of each student laid out for me. I have used a couple of "new to me" resources with my small groups this year. I am hoping that with the integration of these new resources, I will be able to meet their specific reading comprehension needs.
I
am still pulling all my research together, however I have already found many
resources and research that proves that small group targeted instruction is the
best way to meet the specific needs of each student. While it is difficult to constantly be switching these
groups based on standards, I feel that it best maximizes my time to meet the
students where they are.
I
am anxious to see how the strategy groups improve scores. Our first real test won’t be until our “Winter
Staminia” when we give a STAAR like benchmark. I am hoping the test will give me even more data to continue
to work with and allow me to make changes I see fit based on the data.
