Education Commons^™

The Effect Of Instruction (Rapid Automatic Naming Versus Repeated Read Aloud) On Vocabulary Building For Preschool Children, Alison Bendickson

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

STUDY ABSTRACT

Title

The Effect of Instruction (Rapid Automatic Naming Versus Repeated Read Aloud) on Vocabulary Building for Preschool Children

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this research was to determine whether using the strategy of rapid automatic naming or repeated read aloud would increase children’s vocabulary development. The study assessed children in an inclusive classroom. The participants were 3 year old students who required specialized instruction and have Individual Education Programs and students who were typically developing. The students were assessed using Individual Growth and Development Indicators (picture naming) to assess which intervention strategy produced more growth in …

Breaking Through The Echo Chamber: Teaching Students To Use Technology For College Research And Global Citizenry, Kaitlin Drake

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Preparing high school students for college level courses is vital to their success in higher education. Information literacy and digital literacy are necessary skills for college students in order to conduct their research for their classes. My own research was a compilation of scholarly articles and books focused on digital literacy, information literacy, and the issues surrounding these terms to understand what today’s students need in the classroom to succeed as young researchers. Search engines like Google operate under a facade of being an unbiased source. In reality, they are a for profit company whose search results go through an …

Children's Play, Early Literacy, And Educational (In)Equities., Jane E. Andris

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study is about the inclusion of play in early childhood school settings, the contested nature of curricula that are not strictly quantifiable, and the ways that institutional inequity influences children’s access to school-based play. It is situated in a public elementary school kindergarten that centered play in the curriculum with varying degrees of support from a range of stakeholders. This ethnographic phenomenological case study depended on data collection methods of observational field notes and participant interviews, and grounded theory methods were employed for analysis. Findings were that teachers and administrators need clearer understandings of play and its integral connection …

The Universal Language Of Music: Why Music Is Important In Education, Carron Prudhon

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This capstone project focused on the need for increasing music opportunities in schools and the ways in which it increases literacy, particularly in an English Language Learners (ELL) classroom, where increasing English literacy is so vital. After interviewing a district music director, a high school English language development director, and a high school ELL teacher, three action options emerged as ways to provide more music in high school ELL classrooms. Based on the findings, an action was undertaken to help secondary teachers incorporate more music into their daily curriculum.

Route-Finding: Developing Curricular Knowledge And Impacting Practice Through A Collaborative Curriculum Mapping Process, Laura J. Reina

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Research indicates curriculum mapping is beneficial for teachers and students. However, it is not effectively implemented because there are barriers in time, support, and knowledge. This research sought to remove those barriers and study the impact on teachers’ practice when they were able to work together to develop a curriculum map. The focus of the teachers’ map was the Kindergarten through third grade English Language Arts curriculum.

This work included a series of professional development sessions where teachers worked collaboratively to gain a greater understanding of the curriculum and develop a sequence from kindergarten through third grade. Teachers’ worked collaboratively …

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 …

Writing To Learn Across Content Areas, Melissa Bertsch

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Writing has predominantly been the relegated to literacy blocks at the elementary level and English language arts classes at the secondary level. Research shows that students need to write more, not only to improve their writing skills, but to improve their learning in all disciplines. This capstone traces the development of the write to learn movement, examines the connection between writing and the psychological processes of cognition and metacognition, as well as highlighting the sociocultural aspects of writing. This research shows that writing improves learning. The research then proceeds to highlight research­based best practices in relation to write to learn …

Movement And Mindfulness In The Kindergarten Classroom, Kylie Rosenthal

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question addressed in this project was: How will intentional movement and mindfulness opportunities in a kindergarten classroom impact the classroom environment, student behavior, and student achievement? The stress, emotional and behavioral management, self-regulation skills, and mental health of the students in her classroom led the author to research topics of the brain and movement, classroom environment and student wellbeing, the effects movement has on student achievement, examples of schools implementing movement and mindfulness, and yoga and mindfulness programs and curriculums. The research showed that movement and mindfulness provide many benefits to students’ emotional wellbeing, behavior, regulation, and academic …

Strategies To Build The Academic Language Of English Language Students, Jill Wilsey

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The demographics of classrooms all around the United States are steadily changing. Thus, educational practices must shift to meet the increasingly diverse needs of students entering the classroom. English Learners (ELs) require additional language support in mainstream classrooms to meet the rigorous Common Core standards, but many teachers feel ill-equipped to meet these needs. A review of the current literature concludes that strategies such as total physical response, accountable talk, think, pair and share, revoicing, sentence frames, reciprocal teaching, and thinking maps will increase ELs ability to use academic language effectively. This capstone provides lesson plans using the Making Meaning …

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 …

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 Does The Language Used In Literacy Coaching Conversations Impact Teacher Self-Efficacy?, Nicole Cahill

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

This action research study explored the language used by the researcher during literacy coaching sessions with six elementary school teachers. The research question addressed in this capstone is, how does the language used in literacy coaching conversations impact teacher self-efficacy? The author reviewed relevant research regarding self-efficacy, the components of effective coaching conversations, and a social constructivist view of language. Key findings from the literature review were used to develop a list of language prompts in order to increase teacher self-efficacy during coaching dialogues. Each research participant engaged in an individual coaching cycle that included a modeling session, two sessions …

Discovering Discourse: Utilizing Peer Mediation In Middle School To Achieve Literacy, Stephanie Van Hassel

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the impact of implementing a peer mediation program in a middle school setting through an action research framework, presented as a series of case studies. The group of students receiving the intervention are on one “team” in the middle school, sharing the same group of teachers. The team is on a lower academic track, and are marginalized due to this placement. The intervention’s impact on the participants’ Discourse will be explored.

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 Effect Of Book Provision On Family Shared Reading Patterns Among Women Participating In The Nurse-Family Partnership, Susan Marie Knutsen

Education Dissertations

This study sought to determine whether a book provision intervention delivered to low-income mothers participating in the Nurse-Family Partnership had an effect on family shared book reading patterns and family attitudes toward shared book reading. The 25 participants in this study were low-income, first-time mothers, aged 18-25 with infants, newborn to 12 months of age at recruitment (13 male, 12 female, M = 6.7 months of age) currently participating in one of three Nurse-Family Partnership agencies in Washington State.

A pretest-posttest experimental design with random assignment was conducted. A mixed factorial analysis of variance found that the book provision intervention …

Literacy And Identity Investment In Secondary Drama Courses: Using Narrative Inquiry To Investigate Teacher Perceptions Of The Affordances Of Secondary Drama Courses In Ontario, Megan Johnston

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study investigated the teacher perceptions in regard to the literacy learning and identity investment opportunities within their own Drama classrooms in Ontario. This study also addresses the challenges that were present within Drama classes when teachers tried to celebrate and incorporate cultural, linguistic, and semiotic diversity.

The theoretical tools of the study include theories on multiliteracies and identity investment. Data presented in this paper emerged from semi-structured interviews with five teacher participants.

Findings of this study show that teachers perceived that their Drama classes offered a variety of multimodal opportunities for literacy and identity investment. These opportunities did not …

Beyond Replicative Technology: The Digital Practices Of Students With Literacy-Related Learning Difficulties Engaged In Productive Technologies, Aimee Frier

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I present the findings from a qualitative case study of the digital literacy integration of a teacher and the digital literacy practices of three students with literacy-related learning difficulties within her classroom. As a researcher, I was interested in the ways students with literacy- related learning difficulties navigated digital tools in a technology-infused environment created by a teacher who has experience using digital tools for instructional and student-learning purposes. My research was guided by the following questions: (1) What was the context, content, and structure of the teacher’s technology instruction? (2) In what ways did the students …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.

Adapting Project-Based Learning For English-Language Learners In Middle-School Social Studies, Maria May

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

This research project addresses the question, how can Project-Based Learning (PBL) be adapted to enhance middle school social studies lessons and learning outcomes for English Language Learners and other struggling students? It reviews theory and practice for middle-school social studies teachers to invite ELLs and others reading below grade level into authentic PBL. Supports for PBL should include effective language acquisition scaffolds like Guided Language Acquisition Design (GLAD) and content engagement through non-text, multimedia strategies like Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) to invite students into deeper critical thinking and rigorous collaborative projects. Research connections are made to constructivist theories of Dewey …

Teaching Social Studies Content Vocabulary Words To Middle-School English Learners: Vocabulary Strategies For Sheltered Instruction And Mainstream Classroom, Bradley Storm

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Research on reading indicates that vocabulary knowledge plays a significant role in comprehension and content learning. Textbooks remain the primary instructional medium in most social studies classrooms, but are rarely written with supports that allow struggling readers to comprehend the text independently. Because typical textbooks do not contain adequate guidance or materials for effective vocabulary instruction, social studies teachers must incorporate these features into their curriculum. This is especially important for teachers of English learners. In order to learn grade-level content, English learners who lack a sufficient background in content vocabulary require rigorous vocabulary instruction that draws on established best …

Pre-Service Teacher Micro-Hegemonic Construction Of Literacy Teacher Identity, Brian M. Flores

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents findings from a qualitative discourse analysis study of three pre-service teachers enrolled in the Urban Teacher Residency Partnership Program (UTRPP); a clinical teacher preparation setting at a major southeastern university. UTRPP is a full-time teacher preparation program that focuses on university student achievement through embedded coursework and provides preservice teachers (PSTs) with the opportunity to work with a content coach. Through coaching cycles, these PSTs work one-on-one with a literacy content coaches to enrich their teaching experiences and connect theory to practice through content coaching cycles. A content coaching cycle consists of a pre-conference, video-recorded observation of …

Sharing Our Stories: A Personal Narrative Literacy Curriculum For Grades 3-5, Casey Adler

Graduate Student Independent Studies

This thesis began out of my curiosity about the ways to set up a classroom to best support growing readers and writers. As my exploration into literacy continued, I decided to create a personal narrative unit with several foundational literacy skills, strategies, and practices for students to develop. With variety, authenticity, and modeling as the key pillars in planning, alignment to skills and standards will be embedded in genuine literacy experiences. The choice to engage in a genre study of personal narrative was due to its developmental appropriateness, potential for community building, and opportunity to share a range of stories. …

Using Pictorial Action Instructions To Train Low-Literacy Adults To Construct A Basic Humanitarian Engineering Project, Kathleen Paco Cadman

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are often disproportionately faced with environmental hazards, which can cause adverse health outcomes. Although humanitarian engineering projects have been created to mitigate these hazards, LMICs are also frequently impacted by literacy deficits, creating a barrier in training low-literacy individuals to construct these projects. The purpose of this dissertation was to develop, refine, and test the usability of pictorial action instructions (PAI) in training low-literacy individuals to construct a humanitarian engineering project. A concept analysis was completed, including the creation of an operational definition, for “lay worker health literacy.” This analysis and definition set a foundation …