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Full-Text Articles in Education

Adult Education, Community Building, Environmental Studies, Special Education, Staff Development, Teachers/ Teaching, Jennifer Whelan Oct 2018

Adult Education, Community Building, Environmental Studies, Special Education, Staff Development, Teachers/ Teaching, Jennifer Whelan

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Language and culture are dynamically connected. The culture of a place refers to its people, traditions, beliefs and products such as music or food. Despite the body of evidence to support the importance of teaching about these cultural aspects, many world language teachers struggle to include cultural study alongside their language instruction. One engaging way to improve students’ linguistic and cultural competence is through read-alouds. Read-alouds are the foundation of early literacy and provide a number of benefits for young learners: they support a solid linguistic foundation for further study of the target language’s grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation; they engage …


Creating Smart Board Activities To Engage Students’ Learning In Chinese Immersion Kindergarten, Wenting Qiang Jul 2018

Creating Smart Board Activities To Engage Students’ Learning In Chinese Immersion Kindergarten, Wenting Qiang

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question addressed in this capstone is How to create SMART Board activities to engage students’ learning in Chinese immersion kindergarten. Through literature review and my personal experience as a Chinese immersion kindergarten, I find that SMART Board offers very interactive activities that can be very beneficial to young children in learning. That to be said, SMART Board has transformed a typical classroom into a stimulating and encouraging learning environment. The project for this research is a website of SMART Board activities that can be used and shared among Chinese immersion teachers, as well as students and parents who …


A Curriculum For Teaching Elementary-Aged Spanish-Speaking Students To Read In Spanish, Kelly Kum Jul 2018

A Curriculum For Teaching Elementary-Aged Spanish-Speaking Students To Read In Spanish, Kelly Kum

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The purpose of this capstone project was to develop a heritage language curriculum that teaches Spanish literacy skills to Spanish-speaking students in second and third grade. This project was based on research that supports the importance of students maintaining their first language and developing reading skills in their first language to help them improve their reading abilities in English and improve their test scores. The creator based the curriculum on WIDA’s Spanish Language Arts Standards and used the Understanding by Design framework to develop the curriculum. The main focus of the curriculum is to teach decoding and phonics skills to …


Best Practices And Culture Change In Two-Way Immersion Through The Use Of An Action Plan, Kimberly Johnson Jul 2018

Best Practices And Culture Change In Two-Way Immersion Through The Use Of An Action Plan, Kimberly Johnson

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

This project consists of an action plan developed for the purpose of guiding planning committees through the process of implementing a two-way immersion program rooted in best practices. The action plan lays out important key components that must be addressed within a two-way immersion program that is in its second year of implementation. It also provides a timeline for project completion, a section for action items to be addressed, sections to determine who is responsible for implementation of the action items and who will monitor the implementation of the items, and research to support the need for the program components …


Building Comprehension Skills With Cognitive Training, Mindy Oakley Apr 2018

Building Comprehension Skills With Cognitive Training, Mindy Oakley

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question addressed in this project was how does explicit instruction in executive functioning skills impact students’ ability to read and comprehend text at a deeper level? The continued rise in difficulties with reading comprehension and executive dysfunction among students was the focus of the author’s capstone question. The capstone paper focused on the topic of executive function in education and documents the author’s creation of a five-week curriculum that focuses on the use of cognitive training strategies. Executive functioning skills are defined, their presence in reading skills is described, and the possible ways to teach executive function skills …


The Type Of Homework Assignment And Its Potential To Influence Student Motivation And Language Learning In A High School Spanish Language Classroom, Sarah Spilde Apr 2018

The Type Of Homework Assignment And Its Potential To Influence Student Motivation And Language Learning In A High School Spanish Language Classroom, Sarah Spilde

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The research question addressed in this study was, how does the type of homework assignment influence student motivation and Spanish language learning in the classroom? It documents one teacher’s implementation of two lessons in a unit of study to evaluate student in- class Spanish language use, homework scores, test scores and student perceptions on motivation and homework. The teacher records student data and identifies research literature to provide meaning and context to the study in the area of Spanish language learning. She defines the areas of success and areas of limitations in conducting an action research study and concludes that …


How Social Studies Curriculum Can Help Spanish Immersion Students To Develop And Improve Their Grammar And Language Skills, Juan Perona Apr 2018

How Social Studies Curriculum Can Help Spanish Immersion Students To Develop And Improve Their Grammar And Language Skills, Juan Perona

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The purpose of the project is to develop examples of activities and lessons within the regular social studies curriculum of Spanish immersion students in middle school that reinforce Spanish language skills that most of these students seen to struggle to master. The rationale of the project came from the observations of the author of the language skills of Spanish immersion students in middle school, in which he notice that, although their communication and understanding skills were very advanced, the students have gaps in language areas like specific grammar concepts, and develop academic Spanish language. The literature review major studies on …


Adapting Tools To Measure Students' Affective Filter For The Elementary Dual-Immersion Context, Megan Frutiger Apr 2018

Adapting Tools To Measure Students' Affective Filter For The Elementary Dual-Immersion Context, Megan Frutiger

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The purpose of this study was to discover what tools were available to educators to measure students’ affective filter; it further sought to adapt current tools for use in the Spanish-English dual-immersion elementary context. Research revealed that R. C. Gardner developed a measure called the Anxiety and Motivation Test Battery (AMTB) in 1985. Another measure, the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) had been developed by Horwitz, Horwitz, and Cope in 1986. For this project, these two measures were synthesized and adapted for the elementary dual- immersion context. Careful attention was given to each survey item to ensure that it …


Increasing Target Language Input For L2 Students: Strategies For Success In Classroom-Based Language Acquisition, Katie Schmidt Apr 2018

Increasing Target Language Input For L2 Students: Strategies For Success In Classroom-Based Language Acquisition, Katie Schmidt

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question investigated in this project was, in what ways can teachers enhance language input for L2 students in classroom-based language acquisition? Generally, students do not get sufficient exposure to the target language in the average classroom setting. This project explores the role of input/exposure on language acquisition and success. The research in this capstone provides evidence for the importance of strong language input as well as other factors that attribute to language acquisition. By closely analyzing the studies completed in the classroom, a clear connection was found between language input and interaction. The curriculum created for this project …