The exercise should have clear measures to check progress, so you will know if the effort should be expanded and continued.

Act Revise the plan for improvement		Plan Determine the need for process improvement Define the process improvement Write the plan for process improvement
Study Study process improvement		Do Implement the process improvement

PDSA - IN-DEPTH

• Start by clearly identifying an area that you would like to study. For example, using poetry to enhance reading comprehension of struggling readers, integrating internet skills with traits of effective writing. Be sure that your involvement allows adequate data collection (i.e. something that you can monitor on a daily/weekly basis).
• Start your data collection immediately. The more information you are able to gather and process the better analysis you can perform.
• After you analyzed and identified a process needing improvement or further study, develop a plan that you believe will achieve it.
• Ask

• What are we improving and why?
• What is the current and past level of performance?

  • What is the current process and is it flow-chartable?
  • Which parts of the process are successful, which parts are not working? Why aren’t they working?
  • What critical changes will result in improvement and why do we think so? Then, how will we know if the changes worked?

    • What strategies will help us improve and why do we think these strategies will work?
    • What resources do we have, do we need?
    • What is our timeline? When should we study our interim results and revise the plan?
  • DO
  • Ask
  • How will the improvement process be communicated?
    • How will we gain support and build teams?
    • How will the improvement process be communicated and made visible to all?
    • How will the data be collected and by whom?
  • Study
    • Ask
    • What are the results and how do they compare to past results?
    • Did we improve? What worked? What didn’t work? Why not?
    • How will we address lack of improvement? ActChange and study the impact of the change. Then act on the information you have gathered and see if you have succeeded. Keep doing small PDSA cycles until you hit on something that works for you and your students.
    • Ask
    • Based on our Study (above), what changes should be included?
      • Who else will benefit from this knowledge?