Education Commons^™

How Should Context-Dependent Words Be Taught To Beginning Readers?, Abigail M. Turner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examined three different instructional methods for teaching beginners to read context-dependent words. Two types of context-dependent words were taught: irregular past tense verbs and function words. The words were embedded either in scrambled contexts or in meaningful sentence contexts. Three different instructional conditions to teach the words were compared. In the Meaningful Context condition, students studied the target words embedded in meaningful sentences. In the Scrambled condition, students studied target words placed in scrambled word sequences. In the Combination condition, students studied target words in both types of contexts that were alternated across learning trials. Participants were 53 …

Do Spellings Of Words And Phonemic Awareness Training Facilitate Vocabulary Learning In Preschoolers?, Robin O'Leary

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this study was to examine the contribution of phoneme awareness training and orthography to the learning of new vocabulary words by partial alphabetic phase readers. We hypothesized that four and five year old children taught to segment words with letters would outperform those trained with shape markers and those that received no segmentation training on an invented spelling task. We also hypothesized that students seeing the spellings of new vocabulary words (names) would learn the words in fewer trials, remember the names and features better and would be able to better recognize letter labels when presented alone. …

Goal Setting And Choice On Student Motivation, Donna K. Dodge

Masters of Arts in Education Action Research Papers

The purpose of this research is to determine what effect weekly conferences and goal setting opportunities have on the motivation of kindergarten children, in a multi-age (3-6 year-old) Montessori early childhood classroom in the Midwest. The goal was for children to become selfmotivated to choose and practice independent work that is developmentally appropriate. Data was collected before, during, and after the project using an observational checklist to determine the effectiveness of implementing goal setting and conferences with students. The research showed that writing goals in a journal was helpful for the majority of students. The students involved in the study …

Social-Emotional Strengths And Academic Outcomes In Kindergarten Students, Bryan B. Bander

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Social-emotional competence has received increased attention as being critical to a student's success in the classroom. Social-emotional strengths are multidimensional and include assets such as social competence, self-regulation, empathy, and responsibility; however, previous research has not investigated which of these strengths contribute most to a student's academic success. Additionally, limited research has investigated the use of multiple informants (e.g., parents and teachers) to determine whose perceptions are more predictive of academic achievement in kindergarten students. This study examined the relationship between social-emotional strengths, as rated by parents and teachers on the SEARS (Merrell, 2011), and academic outcomes, using the AIMSweb …

The Effects Of School Autonomy On Students' Reading Achievement In Early Grades: A Dose-Response Treatment Approach, Esther Ferreira Dos Santos Carvalhaes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

School autonomy is at the core of influential educational policies aimed at improving school effectiveness and students' academic performance both in the United States and abroad. Initiatives that promote a transfer of authority from higher levels of the school system to local schools, such as the charter school movement and School-Based Management (SBM), have become increasingly popular in the last two decades. These initiatives operate under the premise that local stakeholders (principals, teachers, and parents) understand their students' needs better than higher-level administrators, which enables them to make better educational decisions regarding students' academic success. However, despite the prominence of …

A Comparison Of Vocabulary Learning From Joint Reading Of Narrative And Informational Books With Dual Language Learner Children, Deborah Bergman Deitcher

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A Comparison of Vocabulary Learning From Joint Reading of

Narrative and Informational Books With Dual Language Learner Children

By: Deborah Bergman Deitcher

Advisor: Professor Helen L. Johnson

This study examined joint reading of narrative and informational texts in the home setting, between parents and their English-Hebrew dual language learning preschool children. Parent-child dyads were video-recorded while reading two sets of books; each set contained one narrative and one informational text on the same theme. Children's target word learning of 48 target words (12 words per book) of varying difficulty levels was measured from pretest to posttest. Results showed that children …

Impact Of An Extended-Day Kindergarten Intervention On School-Related Variables : A Longitudinal Study, Catherine Bauer

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Increased awareness regarding the effectiveness of educational programs has been generated from recent legislative mandates. Given the significance of kindergarten as the foundation for academic learning, it is critical to evaluate whether district-created programs for entering students who are identified as at-risk are effectively meeting their needs. The current program evaluation study investigated the immediate and long-term effects of an extended-day intervention for kindergarten students identified as at-risk in one school district. Through archival data analysis, students who participated in the extended-day kindergarten (EDK; n=26) intervention beginning in the fall of 2000 and 2001 were compared with a control group …

Implications Of Napping Into And Beyond Kindergarten On Sleep, Diet, And The Awakening Cortisol Response, Alyssa Anne Cairns

Dissertations

This study is an examination of sleep distribution, dietary intake, and endocrine function of caregiver-reported Nap and Non-Nap Groups of children before and after they transition to an all-day kindergarten where napping is reduced or eliminated. Measures were assessed the summer prior to kindergarten, within two weeks, and after a month of the transition to kindergarten. The study revealed that the transition to kindergarten was associated with changes in sleep and dietary intake. Endocrine function remained stable as children transitioned to kindergarten. On average, Nap and Non-Nap Groups equally lost total sleep time as they transitioned to kindergarten. However, the …

A Study Assessing Changes Occurring In Kindergarten Children At Central School, Hoquiam, Washington, During The School Year 1967-1968 In Terms Of Readiness And Academic Growth, Elizabeth Pinkley Morris

All Master's Theses

A group of fifty-one kindergarten children (23 boys and 28 girls) from Central School in Hoquiam, Washington, were studied for the purpose of evaluating changes occurring during the school year in terms of readiness and academic growth. A series of tests were given in October and November as an inventory of the child's background of skills and readiness in the fall, and the tests were repeated in May to measure any change occurring during the school year.