Increasing+Self-Direction

=__ **Professional Learning Community: Increasing Student Self-Direction ** __= **January, 2012 **

Our goal is to increase student self-direction as this pertains to middle school activities and achievement.
 * 1) ** SMART Goal ** ( **S **pecific, **M **easurable, **A **ttainable, **R **ealistic, and **T **imely):


 * 1) **Rationale: **

We believe the skills that are related to self-direction are paramount to success, are teachable, and are transferable to other areas of life besides academics. Our group met through a common recognition that we learned best ourselves, as students, when we were self-motivated and self-directed. We all therefore share the belief that a key component of increasing student confidence and success is to increase their self-direction. This will subsequently enhance student perception that success is linked to an inner locus of control as opposed to exterior factors. Overall, this should increase student motivation and increase academic performance. This should particularly provide assistance to those students who struggle academically, so this is pertinent to our second new PLC goal, which is to lessen the achievement gap between 'Partially Proficient' and 'Proficient' students.

Robert O'Grady, Desiree Viggiano, Brian Neal, Patrick Pergola.
 * 1) ** Action Plan **
 * **Activity** || **Person Responsible** || **Timeline** || **Outcome** ||
 * Devise overall plan. || Whole group || October || Plan developed. ||
 * Devise indicators of student self-direction. || Whole group || November/December || List of indicators created (see below). ||
 * Tally number of times self-direction indicators are not followed for a week. || Each teacher in group. || January || 402 (see below) ||
 * Discuss with students the benefits of self-direction, examples of people who succeed due to it, and what this means for middle school. Teach and model goal setting, planning, and monitoring skills. || Each teacher in group. || Ongoing, concentrated in January and February. || Ongoing ||
 * Pick two students who are clearly in need of assistance being self-directed and provide more intense instruction and monitoring for them on a one on one basis. || Each teacher in group. || Starts in January and is ongoing. || Ongoing ||
 * Repeat tally of number of times self-direction indicators are not followed for a week. || Each teacher in group. || Springtime after our efforts are complete. || Pending ||
 * 1) **<span style="font-family: 'Tahoma','sans-serif'; font-size: 18.6667px;">Group Member Names: **


 * 1) **<span style="font-family: 'Tahoma','sans-serif'; font-size: 18.6667px;">Which Middle School goal does this impact? **


 * Goal #2- Lessen the achievement gap between 'Partially Proficient' and 'Proficient' students**.

**General Information (some of this is a repeat of action plan information):**
Our group met through a common recognition that we learned best ourselves, as students, when we were self-motivated and self-directed. We all therefore share the belief that a key component of increasing student confidence and success is to increase their self-direction. This will subsequently enhance student perception that success is linked to an inner locus of control as opposed to exterior factors. Overall, this should increase student motivation and increase academic performance.

We initially held discussions about what exactly student self-direction is for a middle school student, and how it manifests in different classes. Our overall plan for this PLC is to develop indicators of self-directedness, then measure the rate at which our students display these indicators. Next, we plan on instructing students in the importance of self-management, and we will also teach specific, related skills. These skills include goal-setting, schedule, and self-monitoring/adjustment. Finally we will again measure the rate at which the self-direction indicators are met, to ascertain the effect of our instruction.

We were hopeful to find usable measures of self-direction on the internet, and after our first meeting we set off in search of such measures. We discovered that while there is an ample amount of self-directedness measures for adults (geared towards supervisory use in the workplace), there was nothing we could find for our use at the middle school level (we did find one report of some middle-school measures but could not access it). Therefore, we realized we need to develop our own indicators.

We met again and devised the following list of indicators of self-direction in middle school students:

1) Student writes down assignments without being told. 2) Work is completed on time - excuses are not given. 3) The student knows why he or she is in school and this is apparent. 4) The student does not need to be told to refocus. 5) Class procedures are followed. 6) The student can make a plan and follow it.

Our overall plan is as follows:

1) Each teacher will record the number of times in a week that the above-mentioned indicators are NOT followed (this will be easier to count than the number of times they are followed). Tally marks will be placed next to names on seating charts or rosters so individual instances can be tracked as well as overall numbers.

2) Teachers will overtly discuss with students the benefits of self-direction. This will include how adults/people working in the "real world" need to become self-starters, how goals can be set and progress towards them measured, how successful people do this routinely, and how to plan and monitor basic goals relevant to middle school students. We will give specific examples for how to plan and set goals for different activities that are part of our classes.

3) We will also work more intensely with students that we know will need more assistance with goal setting - those students who we expect will attain many tally marks from #1 above. This will include one on one discussion/support, organizational help, and periodic check-ins. Each teacher in our group is doing this more intense follow-up with two students we think are in need of this type of involvement.

4) After our efforts and our instruction on increasing self-direction, we will again tally in a week the number of times we see indicators that students do not show self-direction (as in #1 above). Hopefully, we will see improvement as indicated by a lower number of occurrences.

Results:

Here are the number of times the 4 teachers observed instances of student behaviors that indicate a lack of self-direction, before our instructional efforts, as described above: 78, 168, 92, 64. The total number is therefore 402.

After our efforts, here are the number of times the 4 teachers observed instances of student behaviors that indicate a lack of self-direction: 74, 159, 99, and 65, for a total of 397.