ARP Update

Thus far the plans for my action research project are going well. I received approval from my principal for my research and gathered all my materials in the middle of August.  I explained the process to my new teaming partner, and she readily accepted the idea and has been a tremendous help in keeping me informed of when her class needs to receive beads for compliments or when a student falls below green on the conduct display. 

At Meet the Teacher night, I was able to explain how the beads and incentives will work to the parents and students who attended. There was a lot of excitement among the students to hear that they could potentially earn gift certificates to McDonald’s or Taco Bell as well as other prizes.

I spent a good deal of time the first day of school explaining how the bead system works to both of my classes. At the time, all students were anxious to start receiving beads to wear on the shoe strings because they were interested in receiving the prizes.

After four weeks of school, I am pleased with the way things are going in my classroom. I have a total of three students who have not accumulated nearly 25 beads, but there have been no office referrals as opposed to this time last year.

 By the fourth day of school, every student in my homeroom was in appropriate the clothing described by our dress code. They have remained that way daily. One young man even keeps an extra belt in his back pack in case he forgets to put one on at home. In my second class, the  students have maintained appropriate dress code since the 7^th day of school. One student in that class had to wait for his mother to purchase a belt for him, which was unfortunate. However this is still a massive improvement over my students from last year.

The most amazing part of the bead system has been in the area of homework. Almost all students are turning in both homework pages each week. My homework retrieval rate has never been so high in the time I have taught. Students are also returning progress reports and other items that need parent signatures in a more timely fashion.

We are coming up on our first set of major tests during the week of September 23. The weekly test grades have not been as high as I expected them to be. However, there are outside factors to be considered. We had very little time during the first two weeks of school to do much core subject teaching because we were required to teach and practice procedures. I was encouraged today when grades were better on both the math and science weekly tests. I hope the review work before the major tests next week will be sufficient to prepare students and help catch up on anything we had to hurry past or was otherwise not mastered.

The six weeks ends on October 4. The first round of prizes will be given out on October 10 or 11. I am eagerly anticipating the counting of the beads to see which students will receive which prizes. I am also eager to see what will happen next six weeks when students have seen what they can earn and hopefully strive to earn more beads.