ALP Planner:

Supporting Students’ Performance in the ALP through Graphic Organizers

by

César A. Pablo

Teacher

December 14, 2015

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Abstract

The purpose of this project was to find out the effectiveness and usefulness of the

ALP Planner in young adult and adult students studying the Adult Program at Instituto

Cultural Peruano Norteamericano in the North Lima Branch. In order to reach the

objectives of this project, I followed the cycles and steps suggested by Bailey, Curtis and

Nunan in their Pursuing Professional Development: The Self as Source. Also, I used

surveys to find out students’ opinions about the usefulness of this planner. The results

were positive since most students could have a chance to organize their information in a

better way. After collecting data, I made some changes to the planner. First, I introduced

a planner with dotted lines whose main purpose was to serve as a draft. This draft was

used weeks before the actual presentation of the project. A second change was the

division of the central part of the planner in which students write their actual summary,

presentation or conversation. This proved them helpful because now they have more

room to write their information. To sum up, I learned a lot from doing AR and now I can

make better decisions when it comes to providing support in the Autonomous Learning

Projects.
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Introduction

Since I started working at ICPNA, I had always been wondering how I could help

my students to be efficient when working on the Autonomous Learning Projects. The

first year of my working here was of search for something that would help them

efficiently deal with their ALPs. I could see most of my colleagues helping students with

their ALPs by reading the transcript of their conversations and providing support by

either correcting their sentences or by making suggestions on how to improve their

sentences. Then again the question: “How can help students be more efficient when

working on the Autonomous Learning Project?” kept coming to my head. First, I came

up with a simple three-stage process: Introduce, Present and Close. I called it the IPC

Model for Project Presentations. For every step, I provided some prompts, so students

knew what to do and what to say to start each step. I did this especially for students at

the low basic and mid basic levels (basic 1 to basic 8). Later, this IPC model led me to

come with a graphic organizer (ALP Planner), which reflected the model. That is,

students would go further in developing their project ideas and put all the information

in this planner. I still provided the prompts for them to be confident in how to student

and finish their presentations.

After some time I decided to compare empirically groups of students who used

this planner with those who didn’t. The observation was basically on how organized

their presentations were. Definitely, those using the planner showed better

organization and it was easy to tell. This comparison led me to take this problem as part

of my investigation. So I decided to start collecting data regarding the usefulness and

efficiency of the planner from the perspective of the students. I did this by direct

observation of the students’ presentations of ALPs and one-to-one interviews. The

results of my observation and interviews helped me make some changes to the format
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of the planner and my own attitude when providing support before, during and after the

Autonomous Learning Project presentations.

Finally, I decided to provide this planner to all my students as soon as a class

started, so that they had enough time to collect and organize their information in the

planner before their presentations. This has become a common practice in my teaching.

I do this as a suggestion. That is, at the beginning of each course I tell my students that

they can download the ALP Planner from Virtual ICPNA and they can use it to organize

their information, but it is not demanding to use it.

Theoretical Framework

In this part I will describe the relevant literature there is regarding planning,

project and graphic organizer.

First, as defined in the Longman Business English Dictionary, a plan is a set of

actions for achieving something in the future, especially one that has been considered

carefully and in details. Indeed, with this planner, I want my students to plan carefully

and in details what and how they are going to present their projects in class. In fact, they

have a chance to show me their advance using the dotted lines form that is the draft.

Later, on the day of the presentation, students show me the actual planner and they

start their presentations. They do not use this planner or any extra material during the

presentation. They basically use their Power Point Slides or any other materials as part

of the presentation.

Another term that I want to define for my readers is project. S. Thornbury (2006)

defines project as an activity that extends over more than one lesson and it involves

some research outside the classroom. The final product can be presented in spoken

form and illustrated visual aids. He further adds that the teacher should monitor this
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activity at all its stages: planning, development and presentation. This will help the

teacher ensure that students are all on task. That is exactly what I meant when I came

up with the three-step model and the planner. I wanted to make sure that all students

were and are on task, so all have the same chance to get a good score and learn more

English during this process and also improve their planning and organization skills. I

would also like to add the concept used in the ICPNA Teacher Packet regarding projects.

In this document, project work is part of ICPNA’s teaching and learning philosophy and

it is called Autonomous Learning Project. The ALPs encourage students to explore and

discover the language in their own ways as well as work collaboratively with their

peers. So that, when the day of the presentations comes how much they have learned by

performing role-plays, presentations or any type of communicative interaction.

The last construct I will define as part of this AR Project is graphic organizer. T.

Walter (2004) defines Graphic Organizer as tools that help to visually organize

information. She further adds that graphic organizers actually help the brain to store

and process information more efficiently. That is what exactly this planner does. It helps

students to organize what they are going to say in their role-plays, presentations or any

other form of communicative activity that they present as part of their ALPs.

Clarifying my Action Research Project

This AR Project was conducted as a response to my students’ needs in their ALPs.

I consider myself a planner and facilitator of my students’ learning experiences.

Therefore, I had to come up with something that would help them efficiently prepare,

develop and present their ALPs. I had had this concern since my first year at ICPNA.

However, by then I provided help in other ways such as reading their ALPs in slips of

paper which they showed me enthusiastically but they and I knew that it was not the
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right way to present their advance neither their final products. This gap between the

students’ planning and the final product presented in the classroom is completed by the

use of a tool, which I called the ALP Planner.

The Road Map of My Action Research Project

In this part I mean to inform my readers about the different steps I went through

in order to complete this Project. There were two cycles: initial and second. There are

seven steps I had to go through to make sure the project was well conducted.

INITIAL CYCLE

1. Problem I wanted to provide support for the Autonomous

Learning Project without interfering much since

students are supposed to work on their projects

independently. This rose as a problem because

students’ performances were not satisfying although I

provided guidance when giving instructions for the

ALPs.

2. Preliminary investigation I explored different ways of supporting students when

it came to ALPs. Once I tried check students’ advance

of the projects one by one. This proved to be time-

consuming and I was not promoting independence as

expected. After trying many different ways of helping

students, I came up with a three-step process for

project presentation. Namely, introduce, present and

close. For each step I provided prompts for students

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to use in their actual presentations.

3. Reflect/Form hypothesis How can students present their ALPs in a more

organized way without the intervention of the

teacher?

4. Plan intervention and act After having introduced the three-step model for

project presentation, I came with the idea of providing

further support by having students organize their

information in a kind a graphic organizer. I did this

with some groups and in those groups with some

students to find out the effect of using this new tool.

At first, some students did not know to use it or were

a little reluctant, so I changed my strategy. I asked for

volunteers to use this new tool. Most of these

volunteers could use this new tool and their

presentations seemed more organized. After some

months I started posting a PDF version of this graphic

organizer in Virtual IPCNA for students to download

and use it.

5. Monitor/Collect data The method I used was direct observation and

interviews on a one-to-one basis. I spent some months

observing students presentations. In those months I

compared students whose presentations were not

influenced by the use of the new model or by the use

of the graphic organizer as well as those whose

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presentations were. Students answered questions

such as “How has the use of this new model helped you

in your presentations compared to previous months?”

and “How would you rate the use of graphic organizers

and especially the use of this ALP Planner?”

6. Observe the outcome The feedback I got from students could be

summarized as follows:

a. Some students said that they could plan their

ALPs in an easier way since they basically had to

fill in the planner with information they produced

and found somewhere else as the Internet or some

books.

b. Since they could recall a lot of information due to

the organization of that information, they could

perform better and students felt more motivated

to keep using this tool.

c. Most students rated this planner with four points

out of five. This means they liked using it and that

they felt the real benefit which was to help them

organize information and improve their

presentations.

Based on the results I can conclude that students were

eager to use this planner even though they were not

forced to do it. As I said earlier, they were given the

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choice whether to use it or not.

SECOND CYCLE

7. Reflect As a result of the feedback I got from students who

used the planner I made some changes in order to

improve the appearance and usefulness of the

planner. This change was to divide the center of the

planner in two columns for students to write more

information. Also, I added a header “Autonomous

Learning Project” because I wanted students to be

aware that this tool was exclusively for that purpose.

Another change I implemented was to create another

version of this planner with dotted lines. This was for

students to write their advance as a first draft. Here I

kept my intervention at a minimum. On the day of the

presentation, students handed in their presentations

in written from, which was done using the ALP

Planner.

8. Plan intervention and act After the results of this investigation which lasted

three months I concluded that:

a. I should give students the choice whether to use or

not the ALP Planner. In this way students can also

explore other ways of organizing their information

they feel more comfortable with.

b. Intervene only as needed. For example if students

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want to show me their advanced using the dotted-

line version of the planner, they can do it. The idea

behind the use of this planner is not to control

how students work on the ALP.

The Story of My Action Research Project

The ALPs are supposed to be developed solely by students. That is, teacher’s

interventions should be kept at its minimum. Following this idea, I came up with the

ALP Planner, which was an answer to the question “How can students present their

ALPs in a more organized way without the intervention of the teacher?” After I carried

out some observations of students’ presentations of ALPs and interviewed those who

wanted to use the ALP Planner. In those interviews I asked students the following two

questions: “How has the use of this new model helped you in your presentations compared

to previous months?” and “How Organization of Information in

ALPs
would you rate the use of graphic 11

organizers and especially the use of

5
4
this ALP Planner?” the results were
2
very gratifying since most of the 0

1 2 3 4 5
students agreed that their

presentations were a lot better regarding organization. Those students represent 55%

that is 11 students out of 20. Not way behind is the group of students who think that

their organization abilities changed dramatically. With a total of four out of twenty,

these students felt that the benefit was total. In general those whose opinions ranged

from 3 to 5 (that is from good to excellent) found the ALP Planner a useful tool.
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Now whenever I am assigned a new course, I show students the ALP Planner and

tell them that they can find it in a folder on Virtual ICPNA in case they want to use it.

They can feel free to download and even share it with other classmates who study with

other teachers. Also, they can find the Power Point slide with some prompts especially

for the “Introduce” and “Close” section of the planner. This way they can confidently use

the planner and present their projects in a more organized way.

Further Reflection and Continuing Questions about My Action Research Journey

This was my second time working on an AR project. It could say that it was a lot

much easier than the first time because I could follow the steps more easily. That is, I

could tell when and where to start collecting data and intervening as needed in order to

meet the objectives of this project. The first time I did an AR project I used a different

method to collect data. This time I invested more time in order to find out students’

actual opinions regarding their ALPs. The interviews were time-consuming but their

proved to be more accurate since I could tell students feelings regarding the use of the

ALP planner first-hand.

During the course of this investigation some other questions and issues came up.

Such issues as whether I should force students to use the ALP Planner. Fortunately, I

could solve this problem easily since what I wanted to know was if this tool was in fact

helpful or not. I ended up by giving students the choice to use it or not. Also, if I had

forced student to use the APL Planner, most of the student could have felt as an extra

job. This was risky for my investigation since whenever students see extra work, they

end up demotivated.

In conclusion, the ALP Planner proved beneficial for most students who have

tried using it. These students found that it was easier to organize their information and
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their presentations were easier to follow. Also, they were supported positively by the

prompts given by the teacher on a Power Point Slide. Another important aspect of this is

that the teacher’s intervention was kept at its minimum. This is important because the

Autonomous Learning Project is supposed to be done exclusively by the students. The

teacher should not intervene much during the planning and presentation stages. The

teacher’s intension should only take place when giving instructions, evaluations and

giving feedback. By doing so, the objectives of the Autonomous Learning Project will be

met.

References

Longman Business English Dictionary (2007). Pearson Education Limited. iOS

application created and developed by Enfour, Inc., Tokyo.

Taylor and Francis Group (2010). Becoming a Teacher through Action Research, second

edition. Routledge.

Thornbury, S. (2006). An A – of ELT: A dictionary of terms and concepts used in English

language teaching. Oxford, Macmillan Education.

Appendices

1. ALP Planner: These two pages show the dotted line ALP Planner and the solid-lined

planners respectively.

2. This a Power Point Slide screen capture that shows the prompts students are

suggested to use for the “introduce” and “close” parts of the ALP Presentation.