Action Research Plan Progress Report

Draft Action Research Project Report. a. Title – What academic gains will be achieved using technology to access instructional materials by students with specific learning disabilities? b. Needs Assessment – As the Special Education director I was constantly seeing low achievement among students with disabilities in the area of reading fluency and reading comprehension. This deficit affects the student across curriculum. I saw a need for facilitating access to curriculum using text to speech technology c. Objectives and Vision of the action research project. (ELCC 1.1) – To increase the academic achievement of students with disabilities. By utilizing technology, specifically text to speech technology to access curriculum. To use this technology not only with coursework, but with state assessments as allowed. d. Review of the Literature and Action Research Strategy –– All literature so far has been from BooKshare websites and blogs. This is an area that I must spend more time researching. I will address this in my revised Action Plan. e. Articulate the Vision (ELCC 1.2) – I presented at an in-service for the staff outlining the data pre implementation of the pro ject. I posted announcements on school website and blog and school wiki. I included the data on state assessments for students with disabilities and their non-disabled peers. I theorized that students with reading deficits were performing poorly on state and local assessments because of the inability to access the curriculum. f. Manage the organization (ELCC 3.1) – I asked our RtI director and her staff to help with the assessing and gathering of data. This was data before, progress monitoring during, and post plan data. The superintendent is responsible for allocating district resources and motivating staff. The general education teachers are responsible for modifying content to allow technology to facilitate full access to students involved in research. They are also responsible to gather data on assessments and progress monitor. I am responsible for the purchase and installation of software. g. Manage Operations (ELCC 3.2) – I have not experienced any conflicts among the teachers and staff involved in the plan. We have struggled with resources required to gather the data, mostly time. The early success of the students on state assessments has acted as a motivating factor. h. Respond to Community Interest and Needs (ELCC 4.2) – I have received overwhelming support from the community, faculty, and administration. The students with special needs, usually left behind, are having their specific needs addressed. We are changing delivery of the content material to address their needs and deficits, not trying to change or correct there disabilities. We must use the technology we have now to better serve this long neglected group.