Education Commons^™

Transitioning From Students To Professionals: Using A Writing Across The Curriculum Model To Scaffold Portfolio Development, Lori Elliott, Nancy Daily, Lori Fredricks, Meadow Graham

Lori Elliott

Teacher educators have found portfolios to be a valuable way to judge readiness for student-teaching and initial certification as well as an effective means of examining and validating teacher preparation programs. Tension exists between using the portfolio as a product for evaluation and maintaining its focus as a personal examination, synthesis, and reflection on becoming a teacher. This qualitative action research study was designed to explore the effects of incorporating writing workshops built on Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) principles into the initial portfolio process required of students during their first semester in an undergraduate middle-grades teacher-education pro- gram. Findings …

Struggling Reader To Struggling Reader: High School Students' Responses To A Cross-Age Tutoring Program, Patricia Paterson, Lori Elliott

Lori Elliott

This qualitative study examines the perceptions and responses of struggling ninth-grade readers who are teaching reading to struggling second- and third-grade students in a cross-age tutoring program. The program was designed to overcome the entrenched, negative affective barriers that older students often bring to the required reading class by placing them in a leadership role. It also intended simultaneously to improve their vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension.

Results indicate that the older students developed strong mirroring relationships with their younger counterparts based on shared community strengths and norms, shifted their perspective to see themselves as increasingly competent role models, and applied …