Improving the Spanish reading test scores to Commended.

My first teaching position was as 4^th grade bilingual teacher. It was then when I noticed a little underdevelopment among my students specifically in their vocabulary, hindering them to attain commended performance in their Reading and Writing TAKS tests. This motivated me to further inquire on the reasons for this in contrast to the mainstream English classes who scored higher, and how could we as bilingual teachers in my campus could address this problem and improve our test scores through the analysis of historical TPRI and Tejas Lee assessments for students who have attended our campus since K through 4^th grade. 

Last update: Sep, 2012

GOAL: Identify the factors that affect 4th grade Spanish students on the Reading TAKS to perform lower than their English counterparts.
ACTION STEPS	PERSON RESPONSIBLE	TIMELINE: START/END	NEEDED RESOURCES	EVALUATION
Discuss the details of this Action Research with my principal	Israel García-Martínez / Pam McCollum, Principal.	4/02/12 – 4/06/12	Appointment within next week.	Research Plan Log, 30 min
Obtain AEIS Campus data for years 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011	Susy Winn, Accountability Director	4/09/12 – 4/12/12	AEIS Campus data for years 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011	45 min
Analyze and compare the results for TAKS Reading 4th Grade tests both English and Spanish.	Israel GM, Susy Winn, Accountability Director	4/16/12 – 4/20/12	Interview with Mrs. Winn to clarify my analysis and interpretations.	Research Plan Log 120 min
Select a sample of 6 students from school year 2010-2011 in 4th grade who had been enrolled at my campus since Kindergarten. 3 must have been in a Spanish class and 3 in an English class. All of them must be General Ed. No special programs neither retained.	Mrs. McCollum, Mrs. Winn, Israel GM	5/21/12 – 5/25/12	School enrollment and historical data. Student records.	POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
Collect academic data since Kindergarten for each of the students, as well as inquire about any counseling referrals.	Assistant Principal, School Counselor, Israel GM.	6/04/12 – 6/08/12	Academic records and Counseling records.	Research Plan Log POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
Organize the data (Tejas LEE, School & District Benchmarks, State tests) and create a comparison chart in each period (BOY, MOY, EOY)	Israel GM, Assistant Principal	6/18/12 – 6/22/12	Academic records	POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
Identify the variables that could have impacted the student’s reading performance.	Israel GM, Reading Coach/Specialist	6/25/12 – 6/29/12	Literature review of Spanish learners on reading.	Literature review, comparison of our findings with the expert’s findings. POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
Identify the variables that can be modified to further benefit the Spanish reader’s performance in 3rd and 4th grade State tests. These variables could be the academic instruction, teacher strategies and professional development depending on the identification of more variables.	Israel GM, Reading Coach/Specialist, School Counselor, Bilingual Teachers, Professional Learning Community @ Region 8.	07/09/12 – 07/13/12	Literature review of Spanish learners on reading. Meetings with the involved stakeholders to this project.	Research Plan Log POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
Create a report on the findings of this research, as well as a proposal for action in the future student generations.	Israel GM, Reading Coach/Specialist, School Counselor, Bilingual Teachers, Campus Principal.	07/16/12 – 07/20/12		POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
Implement the Plan of Action within the following school year in Bilingual classes and document the progress	Israel GM, Reading Coach/Specialist, Bilingual Teachers	08/2012		Research Plan Log POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
Compare the results after one year of implementing the recommended actions to increase Spanish reading comprehension with prior year TAKS results.	Israel GM, Reading Coach/Specialist, Bilingual Teachers, Accountability Dept.	08/2013	Due to the recent changes in State testing, this plan of action should be implemented in school years 2012-2013 and/or 2013-2014 due to the increased rigor of the Reading tests in the State of Texas.

Blogs and Educational Leaders

   Educational leaders, as any other professionals, can gain a wealth of information and learning through "blogging". Whenever a professional learns something new, reflecting on his/her own learning, and that is then shared among other colleagues, a common foundation of knowledge is then expanded by collaborative feedback from those colleagues and your own contributions to their learning.

Reflection on Action Research learning

Hello:

This week in course EDLD 5301 Research for Teachers at Lamar University, I discovered a tool for school administrators and teachers: Administrative Research (or Inquiry).
Dana (2009) discussed how Administrative Research is a "hands-on" activity that if implemented continuously it will develop a new habit that can lead any faculty member into success through an ongoing reflection on decisions and data analysis.
In a nutshell, Action Research is the practice of analyzing school data and our own practice, reflecting on it (that is thinking about what caused something to succeed or fail) and planning on the next steps or decisions to be made in order to move towards continuous improvement. This approach to research is active because it addresses current school needs rather than trying to apply a case study analysis with its solutions to our present school needs. Additionally, reflective thinking constructs new and valid knowledge because it is derived within a specific context, which encompasses that our conclusions will be based on relevant data allowing us to continuously reevaluate ourselves. Surprisingly, most of the time I reflect on my own teaching but seldom leave out the literature review on similar situations which can enlighten me in this process. In the future, I will keep in mind this factor in order to become knowledgeable on prior experiences from other experts. In this way , the more I reflect, the more I will become "expert" in my areas of influence. 

References:

 Dana, N.F. (2009) Leading with passion and knowledge: The principal as action researcher, Thousand Oaks, CA: Corain Press.