Action Research Summary

I am currently putting the finishing touches on my Action Research Project.  My project was to see if a behavior modification program would have any effect on the overall grades and behaviors of a 5th grade class on our campus. For this program, each student was listed on a website with an avatar next to their name. Students would accumulate points over time in which the points could be redeemed for prizes.  Students would be given a point when they were either "on task" "raising their hand" and a few other categories. Students would be deducted a point if they "talked" "did not bring their homework" or "being disrespectful." The biggest component of this software was the fact that each time a point was awarded for positive behavior, a bell would ring and alert the student(s) that a point was being awarded. However, when a point was deducted from a student, a negatively sounding bell would sound, alerting the class that someone had lost a point.  I started off with student's first 9-week grades and used that as a baseline. I used the 2nd and 3rd weeks to run my experiment. By the 4^th nine weeks, there had been so many students switching classes for standardized testing purposes that it became impossible to record data accurately.  As much as the teacher enjoyed using this software, unfortunately, there was no major change in the grades of the students. However, the teacher did explain to me that he did notice an overall improvement in how the students behaved in their class that year.