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Daily Tally Marks
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Each day started with an empty tally chart on the white board. Throughout the day the whole class would earn tallies for each time they hit or cursed. These were the indicators for the social-emotional skills that students had deficits in. As weeks went on, the tallies lowered as students started to self-regulate their emotions and behaviors due to conflicts with peers. Cursing was a sign that students were not able to express their emotions when they became frustrated with peers. The cursing was usually yelled and disrupted the rest of the class. Hitting was an indicator of students not liking their peer’s actions. Their response to the unwanted actions was through hitting.
First Week​
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The first week was different than the rest because side conversations was added to the white board. In the picture you can see that side conversations had the most tallies while the other sections had none. This was due to not only having days off from school during that week and I was also absent for two days attending training. Students were extremely dis-regulated and disliked it when I was gone. This became apparent through their side conversations because I was back on the last day of the week and had to get them re-acclimated to the classroom routine. By the second week, this section was no longer needed and I was able to get a clearer picture of the social-emotional skills that were missing.
Second, Third, and Fourth Weeks​
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The second, third, and fourth weeks always had one category that was higher than the other. This was usually presented in the same way as it is in this image that was taken during the third week. Every time we learned a new social-emotional skill that connected to the week's theme, it presented itself in either the class cursing or hitting. For example, the fourth week when the theme was behavior and discussing bullying. Students were able to show an understanding of that skill by expressing their emotions of how they felt when someone said something they did not like or an idea they did not like. However, hitting started appearing more frequently. Students would hit someone when they did not like their peer's action such as borrowing a pencil without asking. The students during these middle weeks struggled to find that balance and connection to maintaining all the skills they learned together at the same time. This led me to give laps at recess specifically for students who continued to do each of these actions and pull in alternatives for those actions during social circle when a peer is made them frustrated. For example, we talked about collaboration with peers during social circle. Throughout the lesson we utilized non-examples of collaborating with peers to highlight alternative actions they could use , such as comprising when a peer was not wanting to use their idea.
Fifth and Sixth Week​
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By the fifth and sixth week, students were able to find their rhythm and maintain connections between words and actions. They started to understand that their words or actions have consequences. The other reason our marks started going down was because the five students I was focusing on most started owning up to their actions and confessing that it was them. They showed great growth by owning up to their actions. While they did confess in private, occasionally they would state in front of the whole class that they deserved that tally and accepted that lap on behalf of the class. When comparing those five students from the beginning of this action plan research to the end, this was astonishing to see that they realized the importance of owning their actions or words and how they impacted others around them.
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