Mallory Goetz

Artifact #1: Action Research—The RAP Strategy

Description of Project

This project was an action research study about student writing improvement using a school-wide writing strategy called RAP.  In order to complete it, I researched writing strategies, research and study methods, chose the writing strategy and then presented it to the staff for school-wide implementation.  After presenting the idea and convincing the staff to support me in school-wide implementation, I was in charge of staff training on how to use the strategy in general, and how to use the strategy in their subject area specifically.  This fit in with that year’s school goal of improving student writing achievement based on CSAP scores and so obtaining administrator support for this project was not difficult.  Administration promised to encourage and reinforce use of the strategy for all staff members—to help cut down on staff resistance to the idea.  I made posters of the strategy to put in each teacher’s room and led my own students in the strategy.  The school’s data specialist, Johanna, another language arts teacher, Christina, and I put together the school-wide, RAP response rubric, a grade level specific test for students to complete twice, and graded all the responses.  I, finally,compiled and analyzed the data, including recommendations about how to move forward for the following year.

Professional Reflection

For me this was one of the most influential projects I completed while in the SLIT Program.  It was a learning experience in every sense of the word.  I had never done action research before and, even though I am in a Librarianship program, was not very interested in doing heavy research in general.  However, after doing this action research with the RAP strategy, I not only felt engaged in the research process, but felt that I could make a difference for my students by using it.

I really struggled with getting started on my project at first.  I looked at all the problems and challenges I face every day in my inner-city school and just felt overwhelmed.  I think what helped me the most was my professor’s reassurance that this project did not need to be perfect—it was about the process—and our project didn’t necessarily need to be successful.  This took off the stress and pressure of feeling like I had to change everything with this one action research project!

After I got started, I think what I learned is that my project really could make a difference.  I was lucky because my work with the RAP strategy did turn out to make a positive difference within my school and for my students.   This would have never happened if I had not done the action research project.

The other thing I grew to like about action research is that maybe someone would have tried doing a school-wide writing strategy at Smiley, but without the data and the research to back up that it was working we would probably have dropped the strategy because of staff pressure.  My staff was not 100% thrilled with doing a school-wide strategy, but because of the positive data about how it was helping kids—they had nothing to complain about.  In fact, many of them were won over because of the data!

Overall, the action research process was long and laborious, frustrating and time-consuming, but ultimately it was rewarding and fulfilling, satisfying and a positive experience.

Demonstrated Competencies

1: Reflective Practice

This project fits the Reflective Practice competency because it uses action research to solve a problem.  In this case it was our school-wide problem of writing.  Our students were not doing well and we had to come up with a way to help them.  We not only reflected on what was not working, but we put a plan into place and reflected on that plan—what worked, what didn’t—in order to improve our practice for the following year.

2: Program Analysis and Planning

The nature of action research lends itself to program analysis and planning.  I analyzed the learning atmosphere that my students were in, the history of the problem, and then planned for how to work with those existing conditions in my study.

3: Design and Development

During this study, we designed a school-wide strategy, a school-wide rubric for scoring, as well as, the school-wide tests we used for the study.  These were all based on the knowledge of our students’ needs and developing the tools to meet and assess those needs.

4: Evaluation and Assessment

This project was heavily about assessing and evaluating student learning and our intervention.  Students were given a baseline evaluation, were given in-class summative evaluations by all teachers, and then were given a formative assessment to compare to the baseline.  We used these evaluations to monitor the progress of student learning and to evaluate our RAP intervention strategy.

5: Implementation and Change

Overall this project was about changing the student’s low writing skills and our own practice in teaching writing to them.  We looked at this problem and developed a strategy (RAP) to teach—we taught this to every teacher and then to the students.  We obtained administrator support in order to legitimize and add weight to the implementation process. We analyzed our final data and presented it to the staff in order to help convince them that not only was the strategy working, but that over time we needed to stick with it—with some slight revisions to the process.          

6: Management