Education Commons^™

Best Practices To Help English Language Learners Succeed In Community College, Santina Caster

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

After researching various types of support to help English Language Learners (ELLs) succeed in community colleges, the support methods were categorized into four groups: family, peers, faculty and institutions. To share these practices with ELL students and professionals, a website was developed. The intent of the website is to create a community to encourage students to seek out resources and for professionals to implement more support methods, with the ultimate goal of increasing the retention rate of ELL community college students. The website includes a tab with a form asking for feedback on whether the website was helpful and inviting …

Decoding A New Age Of Informal Learning: Describing Public Pedagogy For The Web, Alison Holland

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The everyday, informal, out-of-school learning adults participate in has drastically changed in the past two decades as information and interaction online has grown and evolved (Blaschke, 2012; Skyrme, 2001). Instead of attending in-person workshops and noncredit courses, sending away for fact sheets and the like, much informal learning today occurs online, often beginning with a search engine or social network. However, long-standing, nonprofit, and governmental institutions have largely failed to understand and capitalize on the new information and education ecosystem, while nimble start-ups (e.g., Wikipedia) have thrived (Fuad-Luke, 2009; Skyrme, 2001). This dissertation aims to provide a model for a …

Snow Science: Curricular Units For High School Outdoor Winter Inquiry, Elizabeth Wagner

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Winter is typically viewed as a “dead” season in the midwestern United States, where temperatures are often below freezing and snow blankets the ground for much of the year. Teachers cite weather as a barrier to meeting proposed curriculum standards and point to cold climate as a barrier to outdoor learning. Outdoor education provides many social and emotional benefits to students. When we consider these benefits, we must ask ourselves why we allow the learning opportunities of winter to be wasted. One reason that few high school classrooms venture outside in the snow is due to the lack of lesson …

Strategies For Educators: Teaching Recently Arrived English Learners Who Have Experienced Trauma, Lisa Carlson

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Immigrants and children of immigrants have been a part of this country’s history for centuries. The number of immigrants entering the United States is increasing, and many of these immigrants have or will experience trauma. Traumatic events can have detrimental effects on the brains and behaviors of children, making school particularly difficult for these students. Educators may not know how to help these students recover and heal. This capstone examines strategies that teachers can use to meet the social emotional needs of recently arrived elementary-aged Latino and Somali English learners (RAELs) who have experienced trauma. It provides information regarding who …

A Study On The Use Of Rubrics To Guide Writing And Self-Assessment In The L2 Elementary Classroom, Matthew Hoerr

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The use of rubrics in the classroom to guide writing or as a means of self-assessment are not new concepts but ones that have received little study at the primary level. This study took the

form of a classroom-based action research project, over a seven-week period, in a fourth- grade elementary school classroom, at an international school in Ecuador. Data was collected

through responses to narrative writing prompts scored by the teacher and self-assessed by the students using the 6-Traits Writing Rubric. The students received direct instruction on writing traits as well as training on how to use the rubric. …

Getting More Young Children Outdoors By Supporting And Encouraging Their Teachers, April Greibrok

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

This capstone thesis used an Explanatory Sequential Mixed Methods (ESMM) research design to answer the question, How do we support and encourage teachers to take their early childhood classes outdoors? While anecdotally, and through literature review, there appear to be barriers to outdoor activities, e.g., policies and regulations, or lack of safe clothing or equipment, there also is an abundance of research on the benefits of having children spend time in nature, or with natural elements. In the early childhood setting the mixed method survey research identified actual-stated common barriers to spending time outside with a class. An initial quantitative …

Recycling Influences: Exposure To Childhood Environmental Education, Janet Hollinger

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The research question addressed was what do people who participate or do not participate in a neighborhood recycling program report regarding their exposure to childhood environmental education? It focuses on 2 communities in the southwestern United States. The author documents details of a qualitative survey as well as presents data from 2 seven-week-long observations. While the survey was minimal, the observation results show that only a small change can markedly affect the participation in recycling programs.

A Hmong American Esl Teacher’S Struggles With Quietness And Its Effect On Oral Acquisition Of English: An Autoethnography, Nou Ly

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The research question addressed in this project was: What factors, whether internally or externally, contributed to my quiet behavior as an English learner (EL) and did these factors affect my own English language acquisition, and if so, to what extent? The purpose of this autoethnography was to reflect on my personal experience as an English learner (EL) in order to explore and make an attempt to identify some of the factors that may have caused me to be a quiet learner. Understanding what these factors are can help me and other educators understand why the majority of our Hmong English …

Why Is Invasive Species Education Important, Alexandra Crofts

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

This research question addressed the importance of invasive species education in the Midwest Great Lakes Regions. Invasive species threaten most ecosystems around the world and can lead to decreasing biodiversity and even the extinction of native species. Humans are one of the largest vectors responsible for the transportation of invasive species. This research focused on providing evidence of the negative impact aquatic invasive species can have on native fish populations. Fish population data was collected using gill nets in the East Metro Area of the Twin Cities in Minnesota in the 2018 field season. This data was compared to Minnesota’s …

Movement Activities For Classroom Teachers, David Fischlowitz

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

This Capstone Project examines the connections between students’ use of various digital media, accompanying sedentary behavior, and the associated detrimental effects. Research has shown that excessive screen time and sedentary behavior can have a range of negative impacts on student development and progress. In a qualitative research method, the literature review shows physical activity as a mitigating factor to the negative effects of excessive screen time. This project grew from the research question: how can teachers use part of their instructional time in movement activities in order to improve student performance? Based on research that is beginning to suggest learning-skill …

Electronic Portfolios: Best Practices To Help Increase Student Ownership And Engagement In The Third-Grade Classroom, Bridget Farrell

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

This project was created to explore the question: what are the best practices related to implementing electronic portfolios that will help increase my third-grade students’ sense of ownership and engagement? The project presents a synthesis of the research related to electronic portfolios; including a definition of electronic portfolio, the various types of electronic portfolios, best implementation practices, and how best practices can help increase students’ sense of ownership and engagement. The project includes the creation of a professional development session aimed at building and improving other educators’ knowledge and practice with electronic portfolio implementation, to positively impact students' learning.

Social And Emotional Learning Strategies In The Elementary Classroom And Their Impact On Student Success, Megan Williams

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

During the course of my project, I explored social and emotional learning strategies that can be easily implemented into the elementary classroom, specifically my fourth grade classroom. These students attend an elementary school in a first ring suburb of a large metropolitan area in the upper midwest. My intention was to develop strategies that were easy to implement and promoted a positive learning environment that allowed students to increase their academic success. The successful implementation of these strategies helped students develop and use conflict resolution skills and therefore promoted a positive classroom climate. This project was the first step in …

What Do Mainstream Teachers Need To Know About Bilingualism In The Classroom To Support Esl Students?, Sandra Westmoreland

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The central question that is being answered for this project is: What do mainstream teachers need to know about bilingualism in the classroom to support ESL students? This capstone project provides information about language and literacy development, effectiveness of code-switching, discussed the importance of bilingualism in education and in the classroom. The capstone presents information about bilingualism and how bilingualism can help ESL students in the classroom, how code-switching can be a useful tool if used the correct way in the classroom. The information and resources that are provided in the capstone were condensed and put into a website. The …

How Environmental Education Based Camps Can Create An Inclusive Opportunity To Ensure Children With Autism Have A Positive And Meaningful Experience, Emma Leslie

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

In a world that is becoming increasingly disconnected, environmental education has the ability to reach diverse audiences and create an environmentally literate community capable of making decisions that support sustainable practices. Diversity implies inclusion of all individuals, including those with autism. Autism is one of the most prevalent developmental learning disabilities in the United States and those with the neurobiological disorder experience challenges in areas such as social reasoning, language, cognition, sensory sensitivities and emotional regulation. Environmental education often occurs in informal learning environments, including day camp programs. While day camps provide the ideal setting for addressing deficits in peer …

What Are The Parental Beliefs On The Relationship Between Poverty And Low-Grade Achievement?, Selamawit Ayalkebet

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

This project addresses the question: What are the parental beliefs on the relationship between poverty and low-grade achievement? It documented a well-written essay of the correlation between poverty and low-grade achievement. For my Literature Review chapter, I used sources that researchers conducted on studies related to my research question and I talked about how to understand low-grade achievement with the following lens: socioeconomics status of children and their families, socio-cultural status, family background and how these concepts are connected to low-grade achievement and what schools and teachers can do to best help students who come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds to …

Curriculum For Addressing Potential Linguistic Misconceptions Of Early Elementary Somali- Speaking Learners Of English, Rachel Durkee

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

In this project, I examine common linguistic differences between Somali and English in an effort to answer my research question “How can I create a curriculum that explicitly addresses potential linguistic misconceptions of K-2 Somali learners of English?” This project consists of a document entitled “Somali/English Comparative Tool for ELD Teachers,” that points out common linguistic differences between Somali and English, and a corresponding curriculum that is created to be responsive to areas where students could potentially have challenges acquiring the grammatical form in English. Aspects of the Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theories of comparative and error analysis are used …

Culturally Responsive Teaching And Social Emotional Learning: A Self-Assessment Tool For Educators, Kathleen Kessler

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question addressed in this project was, how can a culturally responsive framework be used to modify a social emotional curriculum so that it is linguistically and culturally relevant for middle school ELs? It documents one educators exploration of a variety of frameworks that could be used to enhance a social emotional curriculum, particularly when working with English Language Learners. Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Mutually Adaptive Learning Paradigm were two of the frameworks chosen to inform the creation of a tool to be used by educators as they plan, prepare and deliver a social emotional curriculum. The author …

Effective Environmental Education Practices For Designing Urban Watershed Curriculum For An Elementary Classroom, Stephanie Davidson-Hatzenbihler

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

As human consumption of water increases the strain on the world’s water resources, the need for watershed education becomes more important to ensure water stewardship for future generations. Past studies have researched utilizing environmental education best practices, specifically water education best practices, to measure for program effectiveness and increases in knowledge and skill building of school-age children. Through the development of a place-based watershed curriculum for the elementary classrooms of Rochester, Minnesota, this capstone project puts into practice the findings from these studies to help answer the research question, what are the most effective environmental education practices for designing urban …

Teaching English Language Learners In The Regular Education Classroom: A Professional Development Plan, Beth Hartokolis

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The Minnesota Legislature LEAPS Act in 2014 mandates professional development for all teachers of English Language Learners (ELL). Many regular education teachers feel inadequate to successfully meet the needs of ELL students who are in their classrooms for most of the day. This project shares the research of best practices strategies for teaching ELL students based on WIDA standards. It provides a year long professional development (PD) plan based on research that states teacher learning needs to be interactive and ongoing to be implemented successfully. The PD gives specific strategies with time to discuss and implement these strategies with coaching …

Implementing Tier I And Ii Fluency Based Interventions In An Elementary Classroom, Shelley Rhein

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question addressed in this project was, how do regular education classroom teachers best use fluency based interventions in the classroom to accelerate fluency skills and improve comprehension? The project is a reference guide that includes a compilation of fluency based strategies for elementary teachers to use when creating an intervention plan for students to address reading fluency needs. The project integrates learnings from the research of reading behaviors, definitions and examples, fluency strategies, and assessments. The author based the information in her project on the most heavily researched, proven strategies for effective fluency instruction specifically by Rasinski, Allington, …

How To Assist Teachers And Students In The Creation And Use Of Learner Profiles To Support Struggling Readers At The Middle School Level, Kendra Willaby

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question addressed in this project was, how to assist teachers and students in the creation and use of learner profiles to support struggling readers at the middle school level? It covers the topics of personalized learning, learner profiles and struggling readers. The project discusses components and elements of personalized learning as laid out by The Institute for Personalized Learning, while connecting the information to support for struggling readers. The core of the project is centered around learner profiles; what they are, information to include, as well as how to go about creating them. The project involves three parts, …

The Norms And Procedures Needed For Successful One-To-One Device Implementation In An Upper Elementary, Katie Coulson

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

This capstone project focuses on answering the question, what are the impacts on digital citizenship when creating the norms and procedures for integrating one-to-one iPads into an upper elementary classroom? It documents one educator’s experience and research that led them to gathering and adapting six mini lessons that teach digital footprints, healthy media choices, digital citizenship, credible sources, private vs personal information, and setting up expectations for home and school. This project resulted in four major findings. First, collaborating within your school and district is essential for providing the support needed for 1:1 implementation. Second, having a strong classroom and …

Movement For Learners: Physical Activity Impacting The Academic Performance Of Elementary Students, Kristen Bark

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Physical activity is essential for developing youth to help build their muscles and develop their brains. Though research verifies the importance of movement for health, school systems require very little activity. This capstone uses a compilation of studies from doctors and scientists on physical activity and brain development. The study also incorporates real experiences of teachers adding physical activity in their own curriculum. The collection of this research helps to answer the question, How does physical activity impact academic performance of elementary students? Research concludes that physical activity does have a positive impact on the academic performance of elementary students. …

Crt And Educational Equity: Professional Development At The High School Level, Jessica Carlson

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question addressed in this project was, how can I create professional development designed to help teachers implement culturally responsive pedagogy in the classroom? It documents one teacher’s creation of a 20 week, 10 module, professional development surrounding the topic of culturally responsive teaching. The project and paper integrate combined knowledge of culturally responsive teaching, best practices for teaching adults, best practices for enacting effective professional development, as well as instructions for deep and thoughtful reflection. The author documents the details of the creation of the professional development sessions as well as the literature and research methods involved. She …

How Might I Increase And Maintain Student Engagement Through Culturally Responsive Practices, Kristen Hitchens

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Many school communities are beginning to change and the student achievement gap is growing larger and larger for children in minority groups. As the student population changes, teachers may want to consider facilitating a Culturally Responsive framework for the benefit of all diverse learners in their classrooms to increase their engagement. Thus, moving many steps closer to closing the achievement gap. As I initiated a Culturally Responsive Practices into my third grade classroom, I found there was more student engagement because they were given choice and voice and were held to high classroom expectations and educational standards. This capstone encompasses …

Helping The District’S Latino Families Become More Independent In Accessing Online Tools Provided By The School District, Leticia Stabrino

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question addressed in this project was, How can we help the district’s Latino families become more independent in accessing online tools provided by the school district? The author recounts how her personal experience as a teacher in South America and a Liaison in the United States paved her way to create this project. Through reviewing of literature, she exposes characteristics of the Latino culture, common barriers to communication in this community and different methods school districts use to communicate with families. With this information, she creates four instructional videos for Spanish speaking parents and explains how they will …

Secondary Teachers Should Expose Rural Readers To Books That Are Culturally Different Than The Student's Personal Choice, Sarah Roiger

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

This capstone addresses the research question, “How can secondary teachers expose rural readers to books that are culturally different than the student’s personal choice?” It documents one teacher’s creation of a book club that allows students a chance to read various novels that portray cultures that differ from the rural culture. It integrates differentiation of choice novels, reflections, and character comparisons. The author documents research from the literature review based on rural influence and motivation, classroom culture, and censorship by schools, parents, and librarians. This project includes the lists of books to use, the step-by-step layout, and the character comparison …

Implementing The Math Workshop Model: Techniques And Benefits, Nicole Middendorf

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question investigated in this Capstone Project was: what are the necessary components of professional development to support second grade teachers in implementing math workshop? Many instructional techniques that have been incorporated into math classrooms in the past have led to lower levels of understanding and decreased abilities for students to reach higher levels of thinking. When using The Math Workshop model, it provides a framework that allows educators to meet the individual needs of every student through multiple methods and activities. The information provided in the literature review outlines the goals and components of implementation steps for a …

Supporting The Development Of Ecoliteracy In Middle School Students Through The Use Of Phenology, Amy Hamernick

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question for this project was, how does knowledge of local phenology impact the development of ecoliteracy?It documents a science teacher’s development of a unit of lesson plans, and an accompanying website, to develop observation skills and strategies that will allow students to collect data in their local ecosystem. Phenology, the study and documentation of natural systems over time, is supported by the understanding of observation skills, use of field identification guides, and formats for recording and sharing data which are developed through the lesson plans. The website provides details for two observation sites, models how to collect and …

How Teachers Can Integrate Absent Narratives Into Their Manifest Destiny Curriculum To Better Understand The Experiences Of People Of Color, Daniel Gerber

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question addressed in this project was, how can teachers integrate absent narratives into their Manifest Destiny curriculum to better understand the experiences of people of color? It documents one teacher’s reasons for modifying a Manifest Destiny and Pre- Civil War unit in a mainstream, high school-level curriculum, that incorporates absent narratives of people of color negatively affected by American expansion. The author documents through research that many curriculum textbooks and standards do not adequately mention what happens to people of color when the U.S. takes over territory through expansion. The author includes research related to why absent narratives …