Digital Commons Network^™

How Different Grouping Methods Can Improve Students’ Mathematical Achievement In An Appropriate Setting, Hyangmee Oh

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

This research is about finding an appropriate grouping method in a classroom to improve students’ mathematical achievement in a small urban public charter school. It is looking for an answer to the question: Can an inquiry-based discourse taught using an ability-grouping method affect 8th grade students’ mathematical achievement as evidenced quantitatively through numerical self- surveys and scored standardized testing?

Each year, a school will have a different demographic with each student’s own unique math abilities. Thus, we need a solution to best and flexibly group students to adapt to each student’s math abilities based on the unique classroom environment. The …

Strategies To Enhance The Positive Effects Of Bilingualism, Danielle Mcmillan

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Supporting bilingual students is critical not only for the bilingual students but also for monolingual students. Prominent bilingualism in the classroom can translate to higher test scores, increased engagement, and long-term impacts on brain agility. This capstone project seeks to answer the question: What strategies are available to educators to enhance the positive effects of bilingualism in their students? The final result of this project is a website which includes a series of strategies focused on the four domains of language which seeks to meet the educational needs of both bilingual and mainstream students. The website includes a description of …

Content Specific Math Instruction To Improve English Language Learners' Comprehension Of Comparison Math Word Problems, Abigail Snyder

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question addressed in this project was, how can math instruction and comprehension of comparison word problems for ELL students be enhanced through content specific vocabulary on, many, more, and fewer, and combinations of these words? The research demonstrated a need for vocabulary knowledge for English Language Learners to comprehend mathematical word problems and acquire academic English. The project involved creating a ten day vocabulary unit addressing strategies for learning vocabulary found in the research. The Understanding by Design process was used in creating this project. This project utilizes the Math Expressions curriculum by Fuson (2009), utilized in the …

Comprehensible Input And Output In The Math Immersion Classroom: A Professional Development Series, Kimberly Kulhanek

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The one-way immersion classroom provides a unique environment for students to learn content through instruction in their non-native language. However, students in early elementary grades typically have not had enough exposure to the target language to maintain sentence-level dialogue. The professional development series designed for this project uses the concepts of growth mindset, cognitively guided instruction, comprehensible input, and comprehensible output to increase students' ability to process and explain their mathematical thinking in the target language. Both growth mindset and cognitively guided instruction have been used in classrooms for years, but there has been little research into their implementation in …

How Discourse And Collaboration Can Be Used In Mathematics Classrooms To Promote Engagement And Learning, Emily Elsner

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Educators are always looking for ways to promote engagement and achievement for their students. One thing secondary mathematics teachers can do to encourage engagement and achievement is to have students collaborate with each other on group-worthy tasks and engage in mathematical conversations and discourse. Chapter one of this Capstone gives background information as to why this work is important to the author and the author’s personal experiences with collaboration and discourse in mathematics. In chapter two, lots of research and literature is reviewed on the topics of mathematical mindsets, discourse, and collaboration. This chapter gives teachers ways to have students …