Week 3: Action Plan

Tool 7.1 Action Planning Template
Goal:	To increase student classroom attendance through the implementation of teacher involvement in tardy sweep
Action Steps	Person(s) Responsible	Timeline: Start/End	Needed Resources	Evaluation
1. Determine areas of concern for student classroom attendance which could benefit from the implementation of our new tardy sweep method.	Attendance Office, Administrators, Teaching staff, Self	November 2012/ January 2013	School tardy sweep records for last year and this year, student surveys, and teacher surveys	Establish a checklist based on the “needed resources”.
2. Determine the reasons behind poor student classroom attendance. o    Which day of the week has the most tardied students? o    What period has the highest number of late students? o    What reason(s) are behind student tardiness? o    Resolutions for improving student attendance.	Attendance personnel, Administration, Committee members, Teaching staff, Self	November 2012/ December 2012	Student surveys, Teacher surveys, Last year tardy sweep records, This year tardy sweep records	Establish a checklist based on the “needed resources”.
3. Establish a method for the program. o    Determine which teachers would like to volunteer o    Establish a way to keep track of the number of students that are brought back to class.	Principal, Assistant  Principals, Teaching Staff, Self	January 2013/ September2013	List of students brought back to class, List of teacher volunteers	Evaluate results by comparing tardy sweep numbers to determine if our new method is successful and find out what may need to change.
4.        Assign volunteer teachers to certain periods of the day and days of the week.	Principal, Assistant Principals, Teaching Staff, Self	January 2013/ September 2013	List of teacher volunteers, List of teacher assigned periods and days of the week	Analyze assignment outlines, make changes where needed.
5. Evaluate the success of our program through data records, teacher surveys, and student surveys.	Principals, Associate Principals, Attendance personnel, Teaching staff, Self	February 2013/ September 2013	Tardy sweep records, teacher questionnaires, student surveys	Evaluate data records and determine if improvement was achieved.
6.  Share results discovered through my research	Principal, Assistant Principals, Teaching Staff, Committee members, Self	January 2013/ October 2013	Analyzed data, Reflection journals and blogs	Analyze data and determine if success was achieved.

Week 2: Lessons Learned

This week I finalized my research topic by choosing “Student classroom attendance”.  So many students are missing classes for numerous reasons i.e., they don’t like the class, have homework due that isn’t completed, have a project/presentation due etc. and this has become an issue at my school that’s worth investigating and finding a resolution for. 

I’m on a committee and we’re implementing a new tardy sweep method.  If you’re unfamiliar with tardy sweep, it might be called something different where you work, I’ll fill you in on what it is. 

Tardy sweep is where students go to a certain location in school if they are late to class.  Instead of the student disrupting classroom instruction, by walking in late, they’re required to go to a specified location in school, sign in and listen to classical music for 55 minutes.  They’re not allowed to talk, sleep, etc.  Some students use tardy sweep as a “get out of class free pass” however it isn’t a privilege going to tardy sweep.  Some consequences are getting counted late/ absent from class which counts towards not being able to exempt your final exams, each tardy you receive gets you closer to receiving after school detention, Saturday detention or even suspension.

What we’re doing this year is taking about 10 minutes of our conference period, whenever we can, and we’re going down to tardy sweep and escorting students back to class.  With this students are still getting reprimanded for being late, however, instead of listening to classical music and sitting quietly they’re having to attend their regular class.  Hopefully with this new method students will realize there is no point going to tardy sweep since they will have to go to class anyway.