Education Commons^™

Best Practices To Help English Language Learners Succeed In Community College, Santina Caster

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

After researching various types of support to help English Language Learners (ELLs) succeed in community colleges, the support methods were categorized into four groups: family, peers, faculty and institutions. To share these practices with ELL students and professionals, a website was developed. The intent of the website is to create a community to encourage students to seek out resources and for professionals to implement more support methods, with the ultimate goal of increasing the retention rate of ELL community college students. The website includes a tab with a form asking for feedback on whether the website was helpful and inviting …

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 …

Curriculum For Addressing Potential Linguistic Misconceptions Of Early Elementary Somali- Speaking Learners Of English, Rachel Durkee

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

In this project, I examine common linguistic differences between Somali and English in an effort to answer my research question “How can I create a curriculum that explicitly addresses potential linguistic misconceptions of K-2 Somali learners of English?” This project consists of a document entitled “Somali/English Comparative Tool for ELD Teachers,” that points out common linguistic differences between Somali and English, and a corresponding curriculum that is created to be responsive to areas where students could potentially have challenges acquiring the grammatical form in English. Aspects of the Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theories of comparative and error analysis are used …

Strategies For Educators: Teaching Recently Arrived English Learners Who Have Experienced Trauma, Lisa Carlson

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Immigrants and children of immigrants have been a part of this country’s history for centuries. The number of immigrants entering the United States is increasing, and many of these immigrants have or will experience trauma. Traumatic events can have detrimental effects on the brains and behaviors of children, making school particularly difficult for these students. Educators may not know how to help these students recover and heal. This capstone examines strategies that teachers can use to meet the social emotional needs of recently arrived elementary-aged Latino and Somali English learners (RAELs) who have experienced trauma. It provides information regarding who …

Using Multicultural Literature To Teach Grammar To English Learners, Laura Anderson

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question addressed in this project was, What are the implications for using multicultural literature as mentor texts to teach academic English language grammar structures in an elementary setting? The author describes her past personal and professional experiences as a student and teacher that led her to developing this research question. Then, the author reviews professional literature on the topics of multicultural literature, best practices in teaching ESL, and culturally responsive teaching to connect each topic to the research focus. Next, the author describes the project, which is a curricular unit of ten lessons teaching prepositions to second grade …

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 …

What Do Mainstream Teachers Need To Know About Bilingualism In The Classroom To Support Esl Students?, Sandra Westmoreland

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The central question that is being answered for this project is: What do mainstream teachers need to know about bilingualism in the classroom to support ESL students? This capstone project provides information about language and literacy development, effectiveness of code-switching, discussed the importance of bilingualism in education and in the classroom. The capstone presents information about bilingualism and how bilingualism can help ESL students in the classroom, how code-switching can be a useful tool if used the correct way in the classroom. The information and resources that are provided in the capstone were condensed and put into a website. The …

Creating A Culturally Proficient El Program: An Evaluative Toolkit, Julie Krohn

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Improving achievement of English learners (ELs) requires districts to examine the effectiveness of their EL programs, a measure required by Federal Title III law. This capstone project examines how might an EL program review toolkit, including an analysis of data, policies, practices, and beliefs, shape an EL program? To answer this question, a program evaluation toolkit was created to help leaders of EL programs analyze the effectiveness of their EL programs. Leading a team of teachers through the EL program toolkit, the author and team analyzed qualitative and quantitative data, identified an area of growth, and created a vision and …

Culturally Responsive Teaching And Social Emotional Learning: A Self-Assessment Tool For Educators, Kathleen Kessler

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question addressed in this project was, how can a culturally responsive framework be used to modify a social emotional curriculum so that it is linguistically and culturally relevant for middle school ELs? It documents one educators exploration of a variety of frameworks that could be used to enhance a social emotional curriculum, particularly when working with English Language Learners. Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Mutually Adaptive Learning Paradigm were two of the frameworks chosen to inform the creation of a tool to be used by educators as they plan, prepare and deliver a social emotional curriculum. The author …

Helping The District’S Latino Families Become More Independent In Accessing Online Tools Provided By The School District, Leticia Stabrino

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question addressed in this project was, How can we help the district’s Latino families become more independent in accessing online tools provided by the school district? The author recounts how her personal experience as a teacher in South America and a Liaison in the United States paved her way to create this project. Through reviewing of literature, she exposes characteristics of the Latino culture, common barriers to communication in this community and different methods school districts use to communicate with families. With this information, she creates four instructional videos for Spanish speaking parents and explains how they will …

Teaching Word Stress: A Curricular Resource For Adult English Language Learners At The High Beginner/Low Intermediate Levels, Ellen M. Clore-Patron

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The purpose of this study was to determine what materials were needed to inform the development of a curricular resource contributing to adult English language learners’ awareness and improved pronunciation of North American English word stress. A review of contemporary literature revealed that pronunciation instruction is key to adults’ acquisition of intelligible speech, and that instruction needs to focus foremost on prosodic features that are global to the needs of learners,

such as word stress. The author’s curricular resource includes a series of lesson plans and student- centered activities. To guide the development of the resource, the author employed a …

A Lesson Unit On Aurally Differentiating Between The Phonologies Of English & Arabic: /P/ And /B/, Iten Ezz

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

This project analyzes one of the common English pronunciation errors experienced by Arab learners of English which is /p/ and /b/. Such error is systematic, not accidental. The most important factors leading to this error are the interference of the first language and the difference in the sound systems between Arabic and English. A specific curriculum was developed to help Arab learners of English overcome their pronunciation error. The curriculum started with controlled activities, then practiced in authentic speech using interactive learning activities to ensure learners exposure to the target sounds.

Professional Development For Educators In Order To Support English Learner Students From Oral Cultures, Xue Xiong

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

This capstone project addresses the question, How can I create professional development for educators in order to support English Learner (EL) students from oral cultures? This project uses a series of frameworks and theories to provide the best comprehensive two-part professional development for educators supporting EL students from oral cultures. It is tailored to educators by recognizing their unique needs as adult learners who receive ongoing training in their field. By catering to adult learners and drawing from both EL best practices and culturally responsive teaching, this professional development offers educators insight and tools to implement when working with EL …

Informing Educators On Best Practices For Former Refugee English Language Learners, Sarah Kiiskila

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Teachers need to be able to teach all their students, including students who have been in refugee situations and have experienced trauma due to fleeing their home countries.There are many people leaving their home countries for a variety of reasons and many are experiencing gaps in their literacy i.e., SLIFE students. In order to address the question How can I inform educators about best practices for teaching former refugee English Language Learners? research was done and four professional development sessions were made to inform educators on best practices for students who have been in refugee situations. To teach these students …

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 …

The Special Education Referral And Evaluation Process For English Language Learners, Celeste Norlander

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Research shows that there is a disproportionate number of English Language Learners (ELLs) in special education. The over and under representation of this population in special education can be linked back to issues within the referral and evaluation process. This project looks to answer the question: What accommodations need to be made to the special education process to ensure that English Language Learners are appropriately referred and evaluated? This project resulted

in a flowchart for each step in the special education referral and evaluation process. Research- based practices are presented for each step of the process. The flowchart was created …

Preparing 9th Grade English Learners For Critical Thinking And Advanced Discussion Skills: Curriculum For Paideia Seminar, Sonia Nunez-Gibbs

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Participation in academic conversation and disagreement with peers is a key vehicle in development of critical thinking and academic language. Ninth-grade English Learners and mainstream students often have difficulty building on each others’ thoughts during discussions, rather than sharing their ideas developed in isolation. Students need multiple experiences of direct instruction of content-embedded language and content coaching to develop these advanced discussion interactions. In order to answer the question How to prepare mid-level ELs to demonstrate critical thinking and advanced discussion skills?this project designs curriculum for a structured debate Paideia seminar questioning the role of borders. This two-week long curriculum …

Best Practices And Culture Change In Two-Way Immersion Through The Use Of An Action Plan, Kimberly Johnson

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

This project consists of an action plan developed for the purpose of guiding planning committees through the process of implementing a two-way immersion program rooted in best practices. The action plan lays out important key components that must be addressed within a two-way immersion program that is in its second year of implementation. It also provides a timeline for project completion, a section for action items to be addressed, sections to determine who is responsible for implementation of the action items and who will monitor the implementation of the items, and research to support the need for the program components …

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 …

Engaging, Supporting, And Scaffolding Instruction For Students With Limited Or Interrupted Formal Education (Slife), Frances Christensen

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The central research question of this capstone project was How can English learners with limited or interrupted formal education best be supported at the secondary level? Students with limited or interrupted formal education (SLIFE) have unique needs that differ from other English learners. As more English learners with limited or interrupted formal education enter U.S. middle and high schools, it has become increasingly important to consider how to best serve this student population. The author conducted a review of the literature on SLIFE and examined best practices for teaching SLIFE. Although SLIFE have needs that differ from other English learners, …

Equitable Access To Education For Adult English Language Learners, Colleen Schmitt

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question addressed in this project was, How can adult education programs provide more equitable access to education for adult English Learners? To answer this question, the author researched the historical expansion of language access rights for English Language Learners (ELLs) in federally-assisted education programs, including nondiscrimination provisions for adult ELLs in adult basic education programs. These standards of equitability were then used to examine gaps in policy and practice related to equal educational opportunity for adult ELLs in programs governed by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (2014). The author then developed an advocacy project in the form …

Best Teaching Practices For English Language Learners Who Have Experienced Trauma: A Book Of Trauma-Informed, English Language Mini-Lessons For Ell Teachers, Anna Klompien

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The purpose of this capstone project is to explore the available resources and research on teaching English to elementary students who have experienced traumatic situations or events. The guiding research questions for this project are: How do traumas and adverse experiences in English Language Learning (ELL) elementary students affect English language acquisition and general academic functioning, and how can I create mini-lessons, based on best practices, for elementary ELL teachers to teach ELL students with previous or ongoing traumatic or adverse experiences? Through the review of the literature on this subject, this capstone paper shows the glaring insufficiency of the …

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 …

Strategies Teachers And Families Can Use To Support Home Language Maintenance For Early Elementary Students, Anastasia Redemann

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The primary research question for this project is: What are strategies teachers and families can use to support home language maintenance for early elementary students? This capstone project presents literature about the benefits of multilingualism, the impact of language loss, factors that support home language maintenance or loss, and strategies for teachers and families to support home language maintenance. The project following the research is two resources: one for teachers and one for families. The resource for teachers has two learning targets: teachers will be able to describe why home language maintenance is important and teachers will be able to …

Promoting Effective Language Development In English Language Learners Through A School Garden-Based Curriculum, Krista Steffen

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question for this project was, how does interacting with a school garden-based curriculum promote more effective language development for English Language Learner (ELL) students? The goal of this project was to design a language-focused curriculum for ELL students to be delivered through the hands-on learning that happens in a school garden. Bringing research from experts in ELL together with studies focused on science and outdoor education, eight best practices were unearthed from the research that guided the development of the project. The best practices included: using additional instructional supports, combining strategies for maximum impact, embedding language instruction and …

A Curriculum And Instruction Resource For Teachers Of Low-Literacy Adult English Language Learners: Incorporating Reading Standards Foundational Skills For Low-Literacy Esl, Mya Shaftel

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question addressed in this project was, how does a teacher of non-literate and low-literacy adult English language learners align instruction with college and career-readiness standards? The author analyzed the Reading Standards Foundational Skills from the College and Career Readiness Standards (USDE, 2013). Through the lens of SLA theory, the author took into consideration how native language literacy, age, and trauma factor into learning for non-literate and low-literacy adult ESL learners. Similarly, the author relied on existing research in instructional strategies for low-literacy adults to inform curriculum and instruction. This project implements systematic and sequential classroom activities around the …

Improving Reading Comprehension And Oral Proficiency Through The Use Of Literature Circles, Glorimar Rodriguez

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question addressed is, how can literature circles be used to improve fluency and reading comprehension while allowing students to actively communicate in the target language? Oral practice of English in Puerto Rico is a topic of struggle for most who learn English since infancy but are not provided opportunities for oral practice outside of the language classroom. English learners need an environment where they can practice the language, skills and tools learned in the classroom. Literature circles provide students with an environment conducive to oral communication and active participation. Students take ownership of their learning and integrate themselves …

Traumatized Refugee Students In Our Classroom, Ayan Mohamed

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The paper seeks to research the question, what are some best practices to implement in the classroom to support refugee students who endure trauma? It explores the research on adverse childhood trauma, its effect on brain development and impact on refugee students. Furthermore, the paper highlights some best teaching practices for those who work with traumatized refugee students in schools. The information from the resources is presented in brochure format to address the needs for teacher to support traumatized refugee students. The informational brochures are resources developed for classroom teachers to have in their classroom.

Thematic, Interdisciplinary Curricular Unit Developed For Fourth Grade On ‘The Science And Engineering Of Slime, Laura Johnston

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Teaching literacy units based on language arts standards alone can leave some students lacking background knowledge and vocabulary that is necessary to deeply comprehend what they read. This reality led to the asking of the research question What is the impact of thematic, interdisciplinary teaching on students’ reading engagement and achievement in a language immersion setting? A review of pertinent literature was conducted regarding thematic, interdisciplinary instructional methodology, content area literacy, research-based practices for multilingual learners, and student engagement. In response, a thematic, interdisciplinary curricular unit capstone project was developed to provide students a learning context for literacy tasks. The …