Education Commons^™

Seeing Reading In First-Year Composition, Matthew Felumlee

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on a study of reading-into-writing strategies employed by students in two sections of first-year-composition (FYC) that were paired with a support course as part of an accelerated learning program (ALP) at a community college. Each FYC course was comprised of 11 students whom the college had deemed college-ready without the ALP course, and 11 students who were deemed at remedial levels in reading and / or writing and who were subsequently required to enroll in the ALP course. The study employs grounded theory methodology to identify and consider the many factors that influenced how reading was portrayed, …

Using Small Group Reading Instruction To Improve Reading Fluency In First Grade, Michaela Kolness

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

This paper explores the effect of teaching evidence-based fluency strategies in a small group setting to improve first grade students’ reading fluency. Students for this study were chosen based on an aimswebPlus fluency assessment. Students that scored below grade level in the area of reading fluency were chosen to participate. Four of these students were put into a small reading group. They received targeted fluency instruction twenty minutes a day, four days a week for five weeks. The fluency instruction they receive included practice with reading high frequency words, poetry practice, repeated readings, decoding practice and read alouds. The remaining …

How Teachers May Influence The Impact Of Computer Adaptive Instruction: A Mixed-Methods Analysis Of Implementing Lexia Core5 In Second-Grade Classrooms, Scott G. Woolstenhulme

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

School districts across the country have been adopting computer adaptive instructional programs as early reading interventions. It is imperative to learn whether CAI has an effect on student reading gains and what other factors may influence its effect. This mixed methods study employed an explanatory sequential design to first evaluate the reading gains of 2^nd grade students. An independent samples t test showed that 2^nd grade students in 2017 who participated in the Lexia Core5 reading intervention program for at least 30 hours had significantly higher gains than their peers in the 2014, 2015, and 2016 school years. …

Unmasking Whiteness: Progressing Toward Cultural Responsiveness Within A Rti Framework, Melinda F. Scheetz

Dissertations

Response to Intervention (RTI) developed out of educational policies and practices that comprise NCLB and IDEA. RTI is a system to ensure all students receive high-quality instruction that meets their needs, increases opportunities to learn, and prevents reading failure. A culturally relevant RTI framework offers the most promising pedagogical approach to quality instruction and educational equity. The purpose of this study was to understand, describe, and explore the intersection of culturally relevant practices and RTI. The research questions that guided this study were: What can be learned about a culturally responsive approach to RTI by listening to teachers’ perspectives and …

Teachers Experience With Latino Academic Underperformance: A Qualitative Case Study, Aissatou C. Clesca-Cajuste

CUP Ed.D. Dissertations

Teachers who instruct Latino students face many instructional challenges. Latino students must learn a new language as well as grasp grade level content. Along with learning a new language, they struggle with not having enough background knowledge, not being sufficiently exposed to cultural content, low self-confidence, and lack of parental involvement. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to gain an understanding of Latino students’ academic struggles from the perspective of their teachers. This study was guided by the following research question: What experiences do educators teaching non-performing Latino students in reading encounter at elementary schools located in the …

How Can Mentor Texts Be Used To Teach Students In A Second Grade Classroom?, Caroline Thorvig

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Mentor texts is a popular term in the education world right now. This capstone defines mentor texts, how experts suggest selecting them, and how using mentor texts fits into best practices in literacy education. The use of mentor texts in reading, writing, and content areas is discussed. This capstone project gives examples of four mini-lessons taught with different mentor texts at a second grade level. Other possible mini-lessons are suggested to show the reader how one text can be used to teach many concepts.

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 …

Building Comprehension In Fifth Grade Students Using Guided Reading, Erica Schiebel

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Guided reading is a strategy used in reading instruction. This project aims to answer the question, what is the impact of comprehension strategies when they are incorporated into a guided reading lesson plan in fifth grade? The author describes their personal and professional experience that led them to this question. The research literature on guided reading, comprehension, metacognition and assessment explain the importance of each and how they can be implemented in a classroom. Then the curriculum project is explained. The curriculum includes guided reading lesson plans and assessments by using the Understanding by Design framework. This curriculum is intended …

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 …

An Exploration Of Portfolios As An Alternative Assessment To Standardized Testing, Carolyn Schmitz

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question addressed in this project was, How can portfolios be used as an assessment of Common Core reading standards in an eighth grade middle school classroom? As standardized testing continues to drive educational policy and decision-making, the author questions if traditional standardized tests are what is best for students, educators, or families. Researching through the lenses of attitudes toward standardized testing as well as the effectiveness of standardized testing, the author ultimately pursues the research of the use of portfolios as an alternative means of formally assessing students. An examination of the existing literature reveals that portfolios hold …

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, …

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 …

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, …

Visualization Techniques To Support Students’ Reading Comprehension, Jessica Will

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question addressed in this project was, how do students respond to the integration of visualization techniques integrated into their reading/literacy instruction? It documents one teacher’s creation of ten lessons that instruct students on visualization techniques. It integrated lessons that increased with visualization and verbalization skills. The author documents the details of the lessons and uses research literature to show validity of the study. She describes how to implement the lesson with success and struggles and how the results show that visualization plays a large role in helping students learn how to increase their reading comprehension.

Visual Thinking Tools To Enhance Nonfiction Reading Comprehension In The Middle School, Anna Lund

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

This capstone explores the question; How can visual thinking tools be used as a foundation for middle school student’s critical approach to understanding nonfiction texts? Although adolescent learners in the U.S. have greater literacy demands placed on them in the 21st century than ever before, some remain poorly prepared for the rigor of post-secondary education and many content area specific teachers lack instructional techniques to support student literacy in their field. As such, I was drawn towards visual learning tools as avenues to get my students thinking more critically about nonfiction text. Through these understandings, I have assembled a visual …

The Effects Of Explicitly Teaching Summarization Skills On The Reading Comprehension Of Students With Specific Learning Disabilities, Sally A. Brown

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Secondary students who struggle with reading often have deficits in the area of reading comprehension. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of explicit main idea and summarization instruction on reading comprehension of expository text for alternative high school students. The lead researcher explicitly taught participants how to summarize expository passages. Participants were taught to generate a big idea topic of a passage, identify key words and phrases, locate or generate main ideas, and generate an oral summary. The three participants increased their performance on the researcher-developed oral summary measure and the summarization guide after receiving the …

The Power Of One Good Book: Creating An Independent Reading Program In An Alternative School To Help Promote Literacy, John Forestell

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question addressed in this project was, how can a self-selected reading or sustained, silent reading (SSR) program be implemented to improve its effectiveness and positively create a culture of independent readers? By looking at years of research surrounding SSR, and pragmatic practices, it outlines one teacher’s approach to revitalizing a stagnating independent reading program in a small alternative school setting. By using the foundational work of Pilgreen, Krashen, and others, he layed out a professional development series that called for systemic changes in the SSR initiative. This professional development is further carried into the school year through a …

How Teachers Can Best Use E-Books To Help Ell Students: A Web-Design Project, Paul Davis

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question addressed in this project is, How can teachers best use independent reading with E-Books to benefit elementary English language learner students? The author describes how hearing Stephen Krashen speak about the importance of independent reading made him curious about using E-Books with ELLs. In his review of literature, he describes how E-Books can best provide comprehensible input to help ELLs learn language, how E-Books can best meet the needs of emergent readers, how they can best use special text-tools, and how teachers can make sure independent reading is successful in their classrooms. With this information he makes …

Flexible Reading Groups And Social Emotional Needs In A First Grade Classroom, Miranda Pogulis

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this curriculum design project is to design and integrate new lessons in my current first grade reading program that will enable students the opportunity to grow as a reader at the same time they are also strengthening their social emotional skills. Research from Michael Optiz and others demonstrates that students benefit from working with peers of varying ability levels through flexible groups. Joseph Zins, Roger Weissberg, Margaret Wang, and Herbert Walberg also have research that explains how integrating social emotional learning into the curriculum can be an important factor contributing to students success. Using this research as …

Timing Is Everything: Adapting Rewards Intermediate For 4th And 5th Grade Striving Readers, Ruth Kerl

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The research question addressed in this study was “Does REWARDS Intermediate remain an effective intervention for striving readers when adapted for a 30-minute time frame?” This research emerged from a concern for upper elementary aged students who are striving to catch up with their peers when it comes to phonics and decoding skills. The study explored students’ and teachers’ mindsets, as well as the effectiveness of the REWARDS curriculum when adapted for 30-minute rather than 50-minute lessons. Effectiveness was measured in terms of: 1) multisyllabic word part and whole word fluency growth, 2) mindset and attitude changes, and 3) connected …

Planning And Implementing An Effective Summer Reading Program, Kelsey Cullen

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

This project was created to guide educators in answering the question, How can a summer reading program be implemented in order to most effectively close the achievement gap and allow students to maintain literacy skills over the summer months? It synthesizes current research related to summer reading loss, the achievement gap, and the relationship between the two. This project also explores the topics of book selection, student engagement, and parent involvement. Suggestions for addressing these elements within the design and implementation of a summer reading program are also provided.

Thinking Outside The Box: Incorporating Critical Thinking Strategies In Esl Reading & Writing Instruction, Johanna Carranza

Master's Projects and Capstones

ABSTRACT

ESL students in the United States avail the resources of community college to achieve their goal of academic excellence. However, many community colleges struggle to prepare their students for mainstream four-year institutions. Aside from reading, writing, and speaking, learning a second language requires the development of critical thinking skills which are not emphasized enough for many ESL students in contemporary American academia.

As such, there are two major problems that this project aims to address. The first is that English as a Second Language (ESL) and English instructors have different expectations for ESL students. ESL instructors do not focus …

Picture Cues And Reading Comprehension: The Impact Of Picture Cues On The Reading Comprehension Of First Grade Students With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Brittany Rae

Education Masters

This action research project investigates the effects of picture cues on the reading comprehension abilities of first grade students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Data was collected through lesson data, anecdotal notes, student interviews, and parent perceptions surveys. Findings revealed that: picture cues can increase student engagement and comprehension by measure of their ability to answer “wh” questions. Parents perceived an increase in their child’s comprehension with the use of picture cues. Participants reported a preference for reading with picture cues. Implications suggest that picture cues can support reading comprehension in learners with ASD and their ability to accurately answer …

Tcap Assessment In Correlation With And As Compared By Star Assessment, Brooke Sampson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the study was twofold. The first purpose of the study was to determine if a correlation existed between the Standardized Test for the Assessment of Reading (STAR), created and distributed by Renaissance, and the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) Achievement Test in Math and Reading for grade 3, grade 4, and grade 5. The second purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between the percentile category of the STAR test and the TCAP test. The factor variable, identified as the percentile category, included three levels: Urgent Intervention, Intervention, and At/Beyond Benchmark. The dependent variable was …

Impact Of Literacy On Student Readiness In Math And Science Classroom, Mackenzie Alexandra Rittner

Honors Projects

Lack of literacy, specifically disciplinary literacy, is an epidemic in education today. Here, I will illustrate how this problem presents itself in our student’s reading every day in every class. Within a literature review, many accounts are detailed about the impact literacy has on a student’s educational career. From the outset, literacy is a key factor in a student’s success in school. A research study was conducted that asked students to give varied definitions of the word ‘volume’ based on prior experience. These results showed that direct instruction in how a word can change based on its context had an …

Ninth Grade Student Reaction To Using Summarization And Annotation, Teresa Day

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

This capstone uses a qualitative research approach to address how a group of ninth grade students who struggle with reading describe their reactions to two reading strategies, summarization and annotation. In order for students to meet the rigors of the Common Core Standards, students must be able to read and comprehend complex texts independently. This capstone seeks to understand how students felt about the strategies and how well they felt they used them. In the literature review the topics explored include the new reading expectations of high school graduates, students not meeting those standards, and the theory and application behind …

The Most Effective Methods Of Small Group Reading Instruction In Upper Elementary Grades, Nicole Snoberger

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The research question addressed in this thesis was, what is the most effective way to group students for reading instruction in the upper elementary classroom? This work documents one teacher's experience of grouping students in two main ways, trying to determine if one way is more effective than another. Students were grouped based on reading level using a common text during part of the research. Students were also grouped based on their reading strategy need, using self-selected books during the remaining research time. The goal was to determine if one grouping method was more effective. While the research and data …

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 …

How Can Fluency Instruction Using Readers' Theater And Paired Reading Impact Reading Comprehension In The Third Grade Classroom?, Angela Koski

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The research question addressed in this capstone was, how can fluency instruction using readers’ theater and paired reading impact reading comprehension in the third grade classroom? It documents one teacher’s experience of implementing Readers’ Theater and Paired Reading in an attempt to increase fluency which can impact comprehension. The project integrates whole group, small group, and partner activities with a third grade class. The author details her review of best practices in reading instruction, implementation of Readers’ Theater and Paired Reading for fluency instruction, and the results seen from adding explicit fluency instruction. She describes the successes seen in teacher …

Instructional Techniques For Improving Students’ Poetry Comprehension And Interpretation In Advanced Placement (Ap) English Literature & Composition, Sheila Stormont

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

This capstone seeks to answer the question: “What instructional techniques improve comprehension and interpretation of poetry for students in Advanced Placement (AP) English Literature & Composition?” Instructional techniques for both literacy and poetry were investigated, as was the role of poetry in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and classrooms, and course expectations set by The College Board. Research culminated in a two-week introductory unit for students in AP English Literature & Composition using Wiggins & McTighe’s Understanding by Design (UbD) framework. This unit is intended to provide a foundation for poetry study, which should continue throughout the rest of …