Amanda M Surmann May 5 th 2014 EDU671: Fundamentals of Educational Research (MRD1413A) Instructor: Dennis Lawrence

The purpose of my study is to increase the motivation of the children in my classroom. I believe that giving praise to a child will increase the students self confidence and lead to a better academic success. Praising the child for his or hers efforts, and attitudes rather then their results.

I want to pursue this area of focus because there are a lot of children who do not have the best family relationships so they are lacking the praise and attention that they need and deserve, and the classrooms in our public schools are over packed with over 30 students with only 1 teacher. I want to make sure that no child is left behind. That every child has the self confidence, and motivation to get the very best education possible.

I have decided to go with the younger children around preschool age. My reasoning for going with this age group is at that age children are beginning to increase the use of verbal problem solving skills. (NASP, n.d., p. 5) They use their verbal communication to control their behavior. Children at this age are more acceptable to retaining the information that I give out, allowing them to absorb the praise and strive to continue to grain my praise and attention, farthing their motivation to learn

Will giving praise to my students increase their motivation to learn If I implement the use of qualitative research will this help me best to determine if giving praise to children will increase their motivation. What are the students attitude/behavior to pre and post praise.

Yes my area of focus is within my locus of control. All of the data that is recorded is done by me in my classroom setting. I am the one who will be giving the praise and increasing my students motivation by their needs.

I intend to first send out notifications to all parents notifying them of the action plan. Giving them details about the praise within the classroom, and that I will be observing, and collecting data of their children. I will inform them that all information gained from this research will be kept confidential and no names will be used. I will keep a workbook of each students progress and all data that I observe.

I will work with the parents on a weekly bases, gaining any and all information that they may have on how they view their children's behavior and or attitude. Asking them if they notice any changes with their desire to complete homework, or their over all self confidence outside of the classroom.

I will seek out permission from parents and from the principal of the school before conducting any action research.

With this action research I will make sure that all my parents are aware of what I am doing, and making sure that all data is kept confidential and that I would be the only one to have access to all data and notes. All information gained through this research will be safeguarded. My students with special needs will be accommodated and not left out of the research. Also no names will be released in case of unforeseen accidents or mishaps there will be a student letter and number code that only I will know and an example would be A3. By canceling their identity Ethical Challenges may arise with children in my class for students with a learning disability

I will asses the students behavior in a regular classroom setting before I start with giving praise. I will be observing the behavior and actions of students. Answering some preset questions that I made for myself, such as Are my students distracted, bored. Are they doodling, or talking. Taking notes of the students who seem to having a harder time remaining focus on the lesson and those who have no motivation to complete the task at hand how we will assess them? The purpose of answering the preset questions is to compare these results with the data that I take post student praise. I will begin giving praise to my students. Finding any small thing that I can give praise to a child to make them feel good about themselves and not become afraid to answer or become wrong. If a child gets an answer wrong, I will give them praise for attempting to answer the question, I will guide them to the correct answer and make them feel good about trying even though they were not successful with the answer. By building the students confidence it allows them to become more interested and willing to participate with the lesson, which then leads to more motivation with their learning.

I will talk to the class about goals. What are goals, what are the benefits of goals etc. I will answer all questions my students may have about the topic. Once all my students have an idea of what goals are and the type of goals that they would like to set for themselves I will ask that each students write down a short term goal for the next week, and how they plan to achieve this goal. I will collect all the written goals and look over them. we will begin reaching our goals. An example of a goal that was set within the class was student P (girl age 5) was to complete an easy reader book. She planned on doing so by reading 8 pages per day during her “quiet time” At the end of the week I will assess the behaviors of the students and the outcome of their goal setting. I will compile all notes and compare the progress from each week. I will complete a data table of each week as well as a combination of all weeks. I will assess the final outcome.

Basic school supplies will be needed. Personal funding will be used to supply the following the materials Pens, and Pencils Journal / Notebook Highlighters Folders

Mills, G. E. (2014). Action research: A guide for the teacher researcher (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Hawkins, S. M., & Heflin, L. J. (2011). Increasing secondary teachers’ behavior-specific praise using a video self-modeling and visual performance Teacher Praise: An Efficient Tool to Motivate Students. (n.d.). Response to Intervention. Retrieved April 22, 2014, from interventions/motivation/teacher-praise-efficient-tool-motivate- students NASP (n.d.). Motivating Learning in Young Children. Retrieved May 5, 2014, from o.aspx