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Sacred Heart University

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Full-Text Articles in Language and Literacy Education

Spotlight On Using Mentor Texts In Writing Instruction: Turning To Books For Ideas, Dana Sudhoff May 2019

Spotlight On Using Mentor Texts In Writing Instruction: Turning To Books For Ideas, Dana Sudhoff

Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) in Literacy

Researchers have found a connection between reading and writing instruction and the benefits the instruction has on students’ reading comprehension and writing expression. The purpose of this action research study was to explore the effectiveness of the use of mentor texts on the writing of 22 students in grade 3. Curricular methodology consisted of selected trade books used as mentor texts to represent the various genres and natural language structures inherent within children’s books so that students had consistent models of good writing as they attempted to emulate various authors’ styles of writing. Data collection consisted of a teacher-made questionnaire …

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The Role Of Discourse And Its Effects On Reading Comprehension In The Ela Classroom, Laurie Coville Apr 2018

The Role Of Discourse And Its Effects On Reading Comprehension In The Ela Classroom, Laurie Coville

Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) in Literacy

Researchers have consistently found a link between quality classroom discourse and the increase in student reading comprehension. Classroom discussions help students make sense of fiction and nonfiction texts while deepening their understanding. Incorporating the principles of Vygotsky’s social constructivism as the theoretical framework, the aim of this study was to examine the relationship between the use of accountable talk sentence stems and the quality of discussion using the fishbowl discussion strategy as a means of increasing student comprehension of a text. Observation of the effects of student discourse of 18 students over the duration of six weeks yielded measurable differences …

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Engaging The Disengaged: Using Every Trick In The Book, Brooke Prusaczyk Apr 2018

Engaging The Disengaged: Using Every Trick In The Book, Brooke Prusaczyk

Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) in Literacy

Researchers have affirmed a connection between students’ engagement in reading to their academic achievement. Struggling readers in particular are generally not engaged or motivated to read. While the construct of reading engagement is difficult to measure, a student’s motivation seems to be the driving force behind reading development. Additionally, today’s students are involved in and more motivated by the many different activities outside of school, which poses challenges for both teachers and parents. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of instructional techniques on student engagement in reading. To measure the academic progress of 21 fifth grade …

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Fluency: What Does It Really Mean?, Jacquelyn E. Depierro Apr 2018

Fluency: What Does It Really Mean?, Jacquelyn E. Depierro

Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) in Literacy

Shared and repeated readings are assumed to reflect influence on increasing oral reading fluency abilities through accuracy, rate, expression, and phrasing. The purpose of the study was to examine how repeated reading increased students’ oral reading scores across the six-dimensions of fluency transferring phonics instruction to oral reading. Specifically, we tested the repeated reading process that focused on improving early fluency skills on 6-7-year-old students in a first grade classroom who were reading at or below grade level expectations and received a score of 2 or below in terms of their oral reading fluency as measured by the Fountas and …

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The Mania Of Morphemic Analysis: Multisyllabic, Meaningful, Magical, Jennifer Fritz Apr 2018

The Mania Of Morphemic Analysis: Multisyllabic, Meaningful, Magical, Jennifer Fritz

Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) in Literacy

As academic expectations have increased in recent years due to the rigors of the Common Core State Standards, students are encountering a greater rate of multisyllabic words earlier in their schooling. Proficiency in reading has not paralleled this upward trend. Students are not receiving sufficient instruction to enable them to successfully decode and derive meaning from the multisyllabic words in their texts. To ascertain the effects of multisyllabic instruction on student performance in upper elementary students, we formulated an instructional model to teach syllabication and word morphology to determine if explicit instruction in syllabication and structural analysis had an effect …

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Discourse In The Elementary Classroom, Kathryn Hardy Apr 2018

Discourse In The Elementary Classroom, Kathryn Hardy

Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) in Literacy

As literacy standards across the country grow more rigorous, literacy practices need to follow suit. With the implementation of the Common Core Speaking and Listening Standards in 2010, classroom instruction in the facilitation of student discourse has become not only beneficial, but required. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of an instructional framework for student discourse called Statement Stem Discourse/Accountable Talk (SSD/AT). This instructional frame included discussion stems, teacher prompts, and guidelines for student responses. This study observed the impacts of discourse on 19 students over the course of six weeks. With a focus on questions …

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Employing Engagement To Enhance Literacy Learning, Kerry Zrenda Apr 2018

Employing Engagement To Enhance Literacy Learning, Kerry Zrenda

Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) in Literacy

Numerous studies have identified a symbiotic relationship between student engagement and academic achievement. However, over the last three years, nearly half of Connecticut’s students have failed to meet the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts. Social constructivism and metacognitive theories frame this study, which aimed to examine instructional techniques that positively impacted student engagement. Specifically, we used engagement inventories to record student behaviors before, during, and after a six-week instructional period, throughout which we implemented several different engagement techniques. We coded student behaviors in order to analyze the effects that heightened student choice, structured peer discourse tools, and …

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Foreword To Visual Imagery, Metadata, And Multimodal Literacies Across The Curriculum, Jonas Zdanys Jan 2018

Foreword To Visual Imagery, Metadata, And Multimodal Literacies Across The Curriculum, Jonas Zdanys

English Faculty Publications

As one of those educated to consider the primacy of the word – written and spoken – as the vehicle for creating and transferring knowledge, I am often surprised by the evidence around me that we live in a world inwhich technological devices of variousshapes and sizes have blunted the reliance on the layerings of words to define and engage in favor of various shortcuts to knowledge. Complexity of expression in the textures of language has given way, because of those devices and their applications, to abbreviations, neologisms, emojis, deliberate misspellings, instagrams, tweets, and other avenues of expression that focus …

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The Other Stares Back: Why “Visual Rupture” Is Essential To Gendered And Raced Bodies In Networked Knowledge Communities, Anita August Jan 2018

The Other Stares Back: Why “Visual Rupture” Is Essential To Gendered And Raced Bodies In Networked Knowledge Communities, Anita August

English Faculty Publications

This chapter addresses the Other’s Stare of gendered and raced bodies who visually rupture and resist their discursive formation in Networked Knowledge Communities (NKCs). New multimodal texts described as “texts that exceed the alphabetic and may include still and moving images, animations, color, words, music and sound” (Takayoshi & Selfe, 2007, p. 1), contribute greatly to the situated nature of knowledge production by NKCs in the postmodern “network society” (Castells, 1996). NKCs are learning communities that “proactively participate in building and advancing knowledges” (Gurung, 2014, p. 2). While NKCs are idealized as sites for progressive socio-political transformation, this chapter argues …

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A Terrible Beauty Is Born! Cultivating Critical Consciousness Using Trauma As Visual Metadata In Yeats’S Poetry Of Resistance, “Easter, 1916”, Anita August Jan 2018

A Terrible Beauty Is Born! Cultivating Critical Consciousness Using Trauma As Visual Metadata In Yeats’S Poetry Of Resistance, “Easter, 1916”, Anita August

English Faculty Publications

The aim of this chapter is to examine William Butler Yeats’s use of trauma as visual metadata during the Easter Rebellion in 1916 to raise critical consciousness for future rebellions in Ireland. Previous examinations of Yeats’s “Easter, 1916” focus almost exclusively on the call for rebellion. This appeal however overlooks Yeats’s challenge to preserve the spirit of resistance by focalizing on the unseen liberation within him and Ireland that remained despite the failed rebellion. With 2016 marking 100 years of “Easter, 1916,” as the most popular of Yeats’s political poems, the rhetorical appeal in this chapter will take a cognitive …

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