Education Commons^™

The Study Of Morphological Awareness For English Learners, Jane Beeninga

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

English Learner (EL) students in American schools are becoming increasingly common, but there does not seem to be enough support for these students. This is causing EL students to fall behind in content areas such as reading (Richards-Tutor et al., 2016). The purpose of this study was to investigate what barriers are keeping EL students from succeeding in reading. After identifying a need for vocabulary instruction, the researcher will be conducting a morphological awareness intervention to improve EL students’ ability to figure out unknown words. Morphological awareness is the understanding of a word’s smaller units such as prefixes, suffixes, and …

Kindergarten Teachers' Perceptions About The Language And Literacy Skills Of Their Students, Toni Gohman

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

In the United States, 68 percent of four-year-old children and 86 percent of five-year-old children were enrolled in a preprimary program in 2017 (Institute of Education Sciences [IES], 2019). Preprimary programs are defined as programs that provide educational instruction and childcare, which includes both preschool and kindergarten. Because children entering kindergarten have a diverse array of experiences due to their home environments and previous experience in childcare, they have varying abilities when it comes to skills in language and literacy. Language can be defined as the words that are used to share information and how they are used to communicate, …

Developing A Curriculum For Tefl 107: American Childhood Classics, Kendra Hansen

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

In the last few decades, schools have begun to teach culture concurrently with language. Many teachers see value in teaching culture along with language. However, there are few guidelines on what to teach and what materials to use when incorporating culture into a language class. The purpose of this study is to examine the cultural experiences of native English speakers in the United States to develop a curriculum for the TEFL 107 American Childhood Classics course at Minnesota State University Moorhead. A survey was administered to the student body and the results analyzed with descriptive statistics to discover the most …

Placement Testing Instruments For Modality Streams In An English Language Program, Aimee Hilgers

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

The purpose of this study was to determine placement testing instruments for the modality streams in the English Language Program (ELP) at Minnesota State University Moorhead (MSUM). The study involved research into and consideration of types and purposes of tests. A placement test was determined to be the appropriate test type for the program’s current student placement needs. An investigation was performed regarding characteristics placement tests need to possess for our program. With these characteristics guiding research, placement test options for the modality streams were reviewed, including standardized tests and in-house assessments. This project determined that in-house placement testing instruments …

Effects Of An Elementary Immersion Program On Academic Achievement In Core Subject Areas, Marlee Schmidt

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

This study sought to find out if students who became bilingual score

higher, lower, or the same on standardized tests as their monolingual peers across

multiple disciplines. An answer was obtained by comparing the Minnesota

Comprehensive Assessment scores of Spanish language immersion students to

scores of non-immersion students for the following subject areas: reading in

grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 10; math in grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 11; and science

in 5, 8, and high school. The scores used came from a graduating class of 2018

with approximately 342 students. Data was analyzed …