Education Commons^™

Project-Based Learning And Student Engagement In The Interdisciplinary Secondary Classroom, James Carlson

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Research shows that Project-Based Learning has an impact on student engagement in a variety of ways. This capstone project is a unit plan designed to utilize Project-Based Learning as the foundation for a College and Career Readiness course. The main Project-Based Learning system utilized is the GOLD Standard PBL by the Buck Institute which attempts to maintain student engagement through complex tasks on a topic of the student’s choice. The focal point for students centers around STEAM careers in particular, but can be adjusted for use in other classes. The overall goal of this project is to allow secondary students …

Equitable And Inclusive Dance Assessment Resources, Christie Owens

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

This capstone inquires, how can the Minnesota K-12 Dance Standards (revised 2018) lay a practical framework for dance educators to create equitable and inclusive assessments for student success? A dance teacher addresses the need to expand how standards and success are defined in educational dance, noting circumstances where students of dance outside the dominant culture in the United States experience fewer feelings of inclusion and success when dance standards, curriculum, and assessment do not encompass what success looks like for them given their historical and cultural identities, hindering student ability to become self-actualized and wholistically educated artists. Through a review …

Trauma-Informed Mathematics: Using Portfolios To Promote Reflection And Resilience, Ethan Somes

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Mathematics has a reputation for being abstract, complex, and for many, incomprehensible. In schools, it is common for students to dislike math and to feel self-conscious about their abilities or performance. The typical structure of math assessments, namely tests that are time constricted and highly stressful, creates a cycle of poor performance, disengagement, and high anxiety. This suggests that a new way of assessing students is needed, one that shows the fuller picture of students' math capabilities. This leads to the research question: how can the use of portfolios in math class help students begin to heal from trauma or …

Helping High School English Learners Self-Regulate Their Writing Development Through Formative Assessments, Pamela Madsen

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The goal of many educators is to prepare students for lifelong learning, yet something about the U.S. school system is having the opposite effect; while students begin their educational journey with curiosity and excitement, somewhere along the way, their thirst for knowledge is extinguished and replaced with the goal of just getting by. This is especially true for English learners who are often overwhelmed with the simultaneous learning of language and content and whose diverse backgrounds create diverse needs. Through exploring the theory of self-regulated learning, characteristics of effective formative assessment, and how best to meet the cultural and …

Leveling The Playing Field: A Proposal For A Portfolio Summative Assessment For A Task- Based Adult Esl Course To Address The Needs Of Students With Limited Or Interrupted Formal Education (Slife), Joshua Eick

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Research shows that students with limited or interrupted education (SLIFE) are at a distinct disadvantage when taking formalized exams as compared to their more highly educated peers due to factors such as cultural dissonance. The need for an alternative method of summative assessment that rewards SLIFE’s strengths, such as funds of knowledge and collaboration skills, instead of punishing them for their lack of test-tasking skills and background knowledge is the central focus of this project. This project is a proposal for an adult school district to pilot a portfolio summative assessment as an alternative to formalized testing. The rationale for …

The Benefits Of Utilizing Technology In The Physical Education Classroom, Brooke Benecke

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

As a first-year teacher in a school with a high English learner population, I struggled to communicate with my students. As I began creating visuals and short videos for them, I saw both their confidence and their skills improve. This experience led me to my research question: How can technology enhance learning in a physical education classroom? In what ways can it be implemented? Thus, I created a website full of technology tools that will benefit the physical education classroom. During the research process, a lot of valuable information was found about the current trends of technology and how important …

Assessing English Language Learners For Special Education Services, Emily Grams

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The importance of understanding how to assess ELs for special education is a critical topic in the education field. According to Becker & Deris (2019) many school professionals lack the appropriate understanding of testing tools to properly assess and evaluate ELLs; once referred to an assessment team, the student has a greater than 50% chance of being identified as disabled. In order to better assess ELs, evaluation teams need to consider the whole student including their second language acquisition of English, culture, background, and their native language. Over the last decade, the amount of ELs and language minority students in …

Assessment Best Practices: A Review Of Current Best Practices At The Secondary And Local Level, Amanda Reed

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Assessment is a critical component of being an educator. Research has shown that educators put more of their trust in their local assessments’ data, rather than that of state mandated testing. Therefore educators must be well educated on the best practices that surround assessments, in order to ensure that the data in which they are trusting is the most accurate and appropriate measure of their student’s success. This capstone project reviews the current literature surrounding such practices in order to answer the question: Is it possible to extend the knowledge of current research, to educators, through the form of a …

Using Digital Communication Technologies To Record A Student’S Thinking During The Solving Of Physics Problems, John Gaalaas

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The question addressed in this project aims to develop strategies to record student thinking while solving physics problems. Literature pointed to the benefits of conversation as a form of assessment and strategies for developing good physics problems. The project demonstrates two different ways to implement the recording strategy and develops ways to assess these recordings. A slide presentation is developed for use in workshops with other physics teachers demonstrating how to put the strategies into place. Future research might involve quantitative measurement of the effects of these strategies in physics classrooms.

Middle Level Literacy: Individual Skills Screener And Plan For Response To Student Data, Emily Margaret Olson

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The guiding question addressed in this project is “What is the most effective way to identify areas of need for struggling middle school readers and how can teachers intentionally target those areas of need once identified?”. Research into key literacy skills, effective literacy skill screeners, and intervention resources are presented in this project. This ultimately culminates in the presentation of a literacy skill screener complete with guide book and recommendations of methods for responding to student data based on the results of the literacy screener. This literacy screener can be easily used by classroom teachers, literacy coaches, and reading interventionists …

How Can Educators Make Use Of Feedback Types And Process To Optimize Student Performance?, Trang Nguyen

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Feedback is one of the most common educational tools, which is frequently used in classrooms among multiple fields and grades. Although teachers use it to improve students’ learning, not all feedback would impact students positively. Instead, some feedback can be ineffective or damaging to learners, leading to a decrease in educators’ teaching productivity. This paper strives to answer the question, How can educators make use of feedback types and process to optimize student performance? It addresses research surrounding feedback and categorizes it based on four factors: positivity, levels, language used, and forms of feedback. From the research findings, this paper …

Implementation Of Standards-Based Grading In Secondary Settings, David Schreiner

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Current grading methods in secondary settings lack a basis in research and deserve to be scrutinized for their accuracy and fairness. The current literature points to a problem of accuracy and a lack of sound measurement theory principles concerning the grading of students. The problem of accuracy and fairness is not one of miscalculations by computer software, but rather of misrepresenting the level of content mastery that students have attained. Standards-Based Instruction and Grading seeks to be the answer to this problem of practice. Standards-Based Instruction is defined as tailoring and aligned classroom content to align with standards while Standards-Based …

Framework For Purposeful Technology Integration In Environmental Education Using Inquiry Based Learning, Jonathan Massung

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question addressed in this project was, how do you incorporate technology to facilitate raw exploration of the natural world that reinforces inquiry-based learning in Environmental Education? The concept of the project was to create a framing guide to allow traditional and non-traditional educators to purposefully incorporate technology into a program with emphasis on environmental education standards. The primary focus of the format of the program is intended for K-12 lessons. The idea behind creating the program is to not simply add technology to a program, but to include the technology tool as a central piece with standards that …

Re-Assessing Assessment: Implementing Constructivist Testing With New And Existing Curriculum, Joey Kretchman-Grande

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question at the focal point of this research was: How best can educators implement constructivist assessment in a way that benefits all students? This project was heavily influenced by the theories of Lev Vygotsky and Jean Piaget and discovering how to share their information with educators in a way that will help them

revise their own assessments. The final result of the project is a website detailing step- by-step instructions of how to create or adapt assessments to fit this newer, non- traditional style. The resulting website was published online through Google Sites and is now accessible by …

The Special Education Referral And Evaluation Process For English Language Learners, Celeste Norlander

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Research shows that there is a disproportionate number of English Language Learners (ELLs) in special education. The over and under representation of this population in special education can be linked back to issues within the referral and evaluation process. This project looks to answer the question: What accommodations need to be made to the special education process to ensure that English Language Learners are appropriately referred and evaluated? This project resulted

in a flowchart for each step in the special education referral and evaluation process. Research- based practices are presented for each step of the process. The flowchart was created …

The Benefits And Challenges Of Integrating Self-Assessed Grading Into A 7th Grade Math Classroom, Michael Schramm

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

This project documents one teacher’s exploration of self-assessment as a strategy for teaching and learning in middle school math, addressing the research question, “What are the benefits and challenges of integrating self-assessed grading into a 7th grade pre-algebra curriculum?” It explores research relevant to the idea of self-assessment in middle school, focusing on constructivism, self-regulated learning and self-efficacy. It also includes a review of research about the implementation of self-assessment strategies. The author concludes with a curriculum aimed at helping teachers implement self-assessment in their own classrooms. The centerpiece of the curriculum is an outline of a structure and materials …

How Can Art Educators Promote A Choice-Based Program While Supporting And Maintaining Standards-Based Instruction And Assessment?, Jessica Frisco

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

In order for art educators to uphold best practices, we must recognize the shifting and overlapping philosophies in the art education world. We must reflect and adjust to the needs of our students and communities, as well as embrace the research and practices of previous scholars and art educators to help us grow in our own practice. The guiding question to address this challenge was: “How can art educators promote a choice-based program while supporting and maintaining standards-based instruction and assessment?” The literature review includes an examination of standards based instruction, 21st century learning, Teaching for Artistic Behavior, choice based …

Closing The Gap In Urban Summer School Programs, Crystal Nelson

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Alternative learning and assessment methods have transformed secondary education to better equip students for the future. The author set out to explore how problem-based learning (PBL) can be implemented into urban summer school programs. The literature review revealed the rationale for embedding PBL strategies into curriculum as the evidence that PBL improves the student classroom experience. The process of writing curriculum using PBL strategies showed the author PBL’s ability for students to develop 21st century skills, create student action in the community, and reduce the summer learning gap. This capstone supports the idea that PBL can be connected to the …