Sunday, February 3, 2013

Action Research Draft Report


Action Research Draft Report

Todd Nix

Allie Ward Elementary-Abilene Independent School District

The PBIS discipline model

 

                            I am doing my action research plan on the PBIS method.   I am interested in seeing if a PBIS matrix would help the discipline issues we have faced the past couple of years.   I am interested in seeing if it can also improve the morale of a campus, if it really works.   I just kept the name PBIS method as my title since I am testing it.

            I originally was going to test the different discipline models out there and my site supervisor or principal suggested that I narrow it down to just doing one kind of discipline model.  The demographics of our campus have changed a lot in the past five years and we had lots of discipline issues due to it.   This was different for our campus because we had never had problems before.   We decided to look into a positive discipline model because the old style was no longer working.   This was causing morale problems because people started to blame each other for the issues.   The principal and I decided on the PBIS model after we talked to other campuses that are using it and looking at the number of referrals we have had on deputy dawg.   I will collect my data from deputy dawg with the principal’s help and by using surveys.  

            After I did the needs assessment I came up the vision that we would cut the referrals into about half and see morale going up because teachers do not have to spend the amount of time on discipline.   They will be able to spend that time doing instruction.   I will look into ways of how to implement the program better and look at data from our campus so that I can modify it to fit our campus.

            According to the information and data I have collected, the PowerPoint titled Active decision-making:  Transforming Data into Useful Information shows examples of how much office discipline referrals can be changed using PBIS. (Horner, R., Todd, A., Newton, S., Algozine, B., & Algozzine, K.)   This PowerPoint illustrates the how the program can help the campus.   During the decision to change the campus to a PBIS campus, the principal, counselor, and I were involved in the initial decision meeting.   We discussed how the old plan wasn’t working at our campus anymore, and how we needed to do something to get the campus back under control again.   We talked to other campuses to get ideas from them and then we did a little research before coming up the final decision.     During the meeting we decided who should be on the committee and when we planned to have the meetings.

            The information on the action research took place during the summer so the only people that knew about the plan were the schools PBIS committee that I shared it with.   When the school started back for staff development days we shared the information with the rest of the staff.   Then we shared the information with the students during their classes and signs in the halls.   We sent information to the parents by school newsletter.

            We organized a meeting were we had a guest speaker attend that had a matrix created from a prior campus.   She discussed things we needed to think about and had examples of matrixes that we could look at for examples.   The program didn’t cost any money at first, but we had to think of ways to finance rewards.   We have been fortunate to find cheap rewards that the students like as well as free rewards.   We have also got some of the rewards through donations.   We had everyone research a different part of the school and come up with behaviors for their part.   We then discussed rewards from information that the instructional coordinator and I had brought with use from research.

            During the program I have designated small jobs to people that would have better acess to things then I do.   I compared data from the previous years and created surveys to use at the end of the year on morale.   It was easy to get everyone on board because something needed to change.

            The program isn’t designed to help any certain group, but the students as a whole.   We hope it will get rid of some of the distractions you have as teachers in the classrooms.   We have noticed unfortunately that most of the discipline problems happen from the lower economic status students.   This has help by giving them praise and showing that people care for them.   We are rewarding them for positive behavior.   It has also helped by teaching the students what is expected from them through mini lessons that deal with behaviors.

Resources

Horner, R., Todd, A., Newton, S., Algozine, B., & Algozzine, K.   Active Decision-making:
          Transforming Data into Useful Information.   Retrieved from                                                                           


          Powerpoint presentation)

 

 

 

 

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