Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Education Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 14 of 14

Full-Text Articles in Education

How Interacting With Teacher Feedback Impacts Students’ Writing, Kristen Bankers Saxhaug Oct 2017

How Interacting With Teacher Feedback Impacts Students’ Writing, Kristen Bankers Saxhaug

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The following research question is investigated in this paper: How does purposeful interaction with teacher feedback impact the writing outcomes of high school students? The literature review explored the topics of writing development, feedback, and motivation and self-efficacy in writing. A mixed methods approach was used to investigate whether purposeful, directed interaction with teacher feedback led to improved outcomes in students’ writing. Participants were a cohort of 36 racially diverse, at-risk students who were behind their grade-level peers in the development of age-appropriate literacy skills in a co-taught intervention English class. The data revealed that teaching students how to interpret …


Embedding Self-Regulation Strategy Instruction Into The Genre-Based Writing Curriculum, Peter Hagenson Oct 2017

Embedding Self-Regulation Strategy Instruction Into The Genre-Based Writing Curriculum, Peter Hagenson

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question addressed by this project is: how can teachers embed self-regulation strategies into their writing curriculum for students who struggle to write independently? This project documents the author’s attempt at merging genre-based pedagogy borrowed from Systemic Functional Linguistics with Rebeca Oxford’s Strategic Self-Regulation (S2R) model of learning. The resulting instructional unit, developed with the guidance of Wiggin’s and McTighe’s Understanding by Design framework, teaches secondary students how to write in the genre of persuasion. Additionally, it systematically engages students with opportunities to practice cognitive, affective, and sociocultural-interactive strategies that researchers have found to be characteristic behaviors of effective …


How Self-Regulated Strategy Development In Writing Eases The Transition From Special Education To Regular Education For Students With Learning Disabilities, Charlene K. Irvin-Brown Oct 2017

How Self-Regulated Strategy Development In Writing Eases The Transition From Special Education To Regular Education For Students With Learning Disabilities, Charlene K. Irvin-Brown

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The author’s own and her students’ struggles with writing encouraged her to research best practices in teaching written language in order to ease the transition of students with learning disabilities to the regular education classroom. She found that Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) along with teaching the writing as a recursive process had the highest effect size. She narrowed her research by focusing on the stages of SRSD and best practices for teaching writing. She also reviewed the Minnesota writing standards for third through fifth grade. The author created an eight-lesson curriculum that incorporated the stages of SRSD for teaching narrative …


Teaching The Language Of A Lab Report: A Guide For Science Teachers, Lori A. Ward Oct 2017

Teaching The Language Of A Lab Report: A Guide For Science Teachers, Lori A. Ward

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Academic language in the register of science is often challenging for students to compose, and their science teachers may struggle to support their language development. This project explores the question, what are the language structures science teachers must teach for secondary students to be able to write successful science lab reports? In this paper I report the strong link between language and knowledge in science. Students must develop strong language skills in science not only to communicate scientific ideas but also to gain understanding of scientific concepts. Supporting the development of language in the register of science is a challenging …


Effective And Engaging Online Learning A Research Based Blended Curriculum In The Middle School Language Arts Classroom, Emily Eggers Jul 2017

Effective And Engaging Online Learning A Research Based Blended Curriculum In The Middle School Language Arts Classroom, Emily Eggers

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

As technology becomes more prominent in today’s society, teachers need to be prepared to integrate technology into their classrooms. This capstone was made to answer the question “What is the best method to facilitate student learning in the online environment?” It documents one teacher’s creation of an all encompassing unit of study that incorporates many online learning strategies. Based on the Understanding by Design method of curriculum development, the unit includes learning outcomes, forms of assessment, and daily activities to help deepen students’ understanding of the material with the integrated use of technology. The methods of technological instruction are selected …


How Can The Orton-Gillingham Approach Be Used As An Effective Tool To Receive A Deeper Understanding Of Syllables And Word Spelling For Students Who Are Hard Of Hearing?, James D. Grota Jul 2017

How Can The Orton-Gillingham Approach Be Used As An Effective Tool To Receive A Deeper Understanding Of Syllables And Word Spelling For Students Who Are Hard Of Hearing?, James D. Grota

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Students who are deaf or hard of hearing come to school with limitations to learning that the average student does not have. Being able to hear words and sounds is an important part of learning to spell those words. This paper will identify some characteristics in the development of learning word syllable recognition and phonics, as well as, strategies to help improve learning for students who are deaf and hard of hearing by using the Orton-Gillingham Approach. The OrtonGillingham Approach uses a multisensory strategy that includes audio, visual, and feeling to help solidify word recognition and spelling. Although the approach …


Incorporating Effective Practices Into An Intermediate Classroom To Improve Student Writing, Heidi M. Shannon Jul 2017

Incorporating Effective Practices Into An Intermediate Classroom To Improve Student Writing, Heidi M. Shannon

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The research question addressed in this project was, How can the teaching of effective writing practices support struggling intermediate students? This study documented the experience of an intervention coach working with fifth grade teachers to improve writing instruction using research based practices. The motivating factor for this capstone was to improve student writing. The study documented lessons and resources that were implemented during the teaching of three fifth grade writing standards and how students improved in their writing. Data was collected through the use of proficiency scales, spreadsheets, reflections and surveys. Results of the study showed student growth in writing. …


Malp® In The Classroom With A Focus On New Activities For Learning To Improve Linguistic Complexity In Writing For English Learners Seventh-Grade Students, Jehan Hanna Rehayem Jul 2017

Malp® In The Classroom With A Focus On New Activities For Learning To Improve Linguistic Complexity In Writing For English Learners Seventh-Grade Students, Jehan Hanna Rehayem

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

This study was conducted to answer the following question: Can MALP® help raise the ELP of our EL students in writing by focusing on new activities for learning to improve linguistic complexity? Based on the existing literature, I designed my study to incorporate tried strategies pertaining to the implementation of MALP® in Writing with a focus on linguistic complexity in the classroom. I carefully documented my students’ progress using established assessments. At the end of five months, more than fifty percent of my students rose to the next level on the ELP rubric for Writing, a much more promising progress …


How Reading Through Literary Lenses Impacts The Quality Of High School Students’ Arguments, Craig D. Zimanske Jul 2017

How Reading Through Literary Lenses Impacts The Quality Of High School Students’ Arguments, Craig D. Zimanske

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The research question addressed in this study was: how does teaching high school students to analyze text through literary lenses impact the quality of students’ arguments? Topics explored in the review of the literature include the context of struggling readers, literary theory and literary lenses, teaching literary theory to secondary students, and argument writing. A cohort of 18 struggling readers in a co-taught high school English class were instructed to shift their reading focus from finding meaning to constructing meaning. To accomplish this, students were familiarized with the tenets of three literary lenses (social-class, gender/feminist, and psychological) and guided through …


Teaching Writing To English Learners: Professional Development For Content Teachers By Ell Teachers, Elizabeth D. Gillaspey Jul 2017

Teaching Writing To English Learners: Professional Development For Content Teachers By Ell Teachers, Elizabeth D. Gillaspey

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question for this project was: what is the best format and content for a professional development class designed to help middle school content teachers improve their skill-set for teaching ELL writing? After presenting literature on different types of professional development as well as best practices for teaching ELL writing, a modified version of train-thetrainer was used to develop four professional development sessions. The sessions were designed to be presented in a school by that school's ELL teachers and they each have a separate focus: background information, pre-writing strategies, during writing strategies, and post-writing strategies. The project contains slides …


Culturally Responsive Grammar: Utilizing Contrastive Grammar Analysis To Support Knowledge Of Modern Dialects In The High School Classroom, Katie Corrigan Apr 2017

Culturally Responsive Grammar: Utilizing Contrastive Grammar Analysis To Support Knowledge Of Modern Dialects In The High School Classroom, Katie Corrigan

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

Varying dialects are spoken depending on the speaker’s location and community. While each one of these dialects has very clear patterns and rules, only one dialect, Standard American English, is regarded as “correct grammar” according to academic and professional associations. For this reason, students learn the rules of Standard American English in school. However, this practice leaves students who speak other dialects at a significant disadvantage. This capstone addresses this dichotomy by providing curriculum that includes grammar instruction using a contrastive approach. Students are simultaneously taught grammatical rules in both Standard American English and African American Vernacular English in order …


Sfl In The Secondary Classroom: Writing Procedural Recounts To Describe Thinking When Solving Algebraic Equations, Theresa Brunker Apr 2017

Sfl In The Secondary Classroom: Writing Procedural Recounts To Describe Thinking When Solving Algebraic Equations, Theresa Brunker

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The research questions addressed in this classroom study were, after explicit instruction, do students choose language structures inherent to procedural recounts, such as technical verb processes, precise nouns, sequence words and causal phrases to describe their mathematical thinking? Additionally, do student self-perceptions of their mathematical abilities change after learning to write procedural recounts to describe their thinking processes? This study examined the use of these language structures prior to explicit instruction in writing procedural recounts and compared it to post-intervention writing samples. The author documents the use of these writing structures by participants before and after intervention and finds relational …


Using Social Interaction To Elevate And Enrich Student Expressive Vocabulary In Writing, Elizabeth Swenson Apr 2017

Using Social Interaction To Elevate And Enrich Student Expressive Vocabulary In Writing, Elizabeth Swenson

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

How does social interaction in vocabulary instruction impact students writing? This action research project explores the impact of using social interaction in vocabulary learning to increase the accurate usage of new vocabulary in student writing. This mixed-methods approach utilized pre and post surveys on student attitudes toward word learning, a vocabulary pre-assessment, four vocabulary unit assessments and analysis of student writing. Four different vocabulary instructional treatments were applied over the course of three vocabulary units. Findings suggest that utilizing discussion in word learning can have a positive impact on student writing and enjoyment in word learning.


An Integrated Social Studies And Writing Curriculum Guide For Primary Grade English Language Learners, Gayle E. Hammer Apr 2017

An Integrated Social Studies And Writing Curriculum Guide For Primary Grade English Language Learners, Gayle E. Hammer

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

Two guiding questions are addressed in this project. The first is: How can primary teachers of English Language Learners (ELLs) use a Comprehensive Curriculum Integration Guide (CCIG) to integrate the teaching of social studies content and standards with ELD? The second questions: How can using Student Learning Experiences for Engagement (SLEE) provide support for English Language Development (ELD) in the domains of speaking and writing for ELLs in the primary grades? It provides the research and rationale for creating a guide, which includes instructions, templates and resources for unit planning, weekly lesson planning, SLEE and suggested scaffolds and supports for …