Education Commons^™

Are You Listening? How Listening Skills Help Students Become Informed And Engaged Citizens In A Culturally Diverse World, Nicole Schwaben

Honors Projects

The ability to listen is vital for good communication to exist and flourish. Without properly developed listening skills, one may unintentionally create roadblocks when communicating with others. Good communication will allow for the spread of differing ideas and perspectives. The social studies classroom is a place in which students have the opportunity to develop skills to become good citizens. These skills include the ability to make reasoned and informed decisions and interact with a culturally diverse and interdependent world. In order to achieve these skills, students must engage in discussion with their peers. While there is a focus on the …

Teaching Gender In Early Childhood Education: A Non-Binary Approach, Sarah Hodson

Honors Projects

The focus of this document is to provide professionals in the field of education an overview of gender development in early childhood education and how to teach students about gender in early childhood settings. The current research on gender development supports the notion that gender is socially constructed from birth, but not directly linked to biological sex. Next, a list of high-quality children’s literature is included; the literature addresses concepts surrounding gender development, identity, and expression in developmentally-appropriate ways. Lastly, several of the children’s books are utilized in sample lesson plans and materials for educators to use as they teach …

Early Childhood Special Education Professional Development Workshop, Amanda Sandstrom

Honors Projects

The initial steps to creating the proposed event, a professional development workshop for Inclusive Early Childhood (IEC) Education majors, included determining the needs of current students. To achieve this, an online survey was sent out to all current undergraduate IEC students. The aim of this survey was to determine in which areas current students would like further instruction or training. The survey focused on three areas significant areas of education: teaching students with disabilities and disorders, communicating with colleagues, mentors, and paraprofessionals, and integrating specialist therapy strategies into the classroom environment.

This data, once collected and analyzed, identified two target …

Integrating The Fine Arts, Cole Alexander

Honors Projects

This project seeks to understand and apply research to a lesson plan unit regarding the integration of the fine arts (art and music) into the general education classroom.

Action Research: Effective Ways To Group Students In A Middle School Classroom, Shawna Russell

Honors Projects

Effectively grouping students based on the lesson, activity, interests or ability is one of the most challenging things to do in a middle school classroom. This Action Research explores the effectiveness of flexible grouping students in a fifth- grade science classroom, and the impact on the students’ learning and engagement. Students were grouped four ways: mixed readiness, same readiness, learner profile, and interest. Six focus students were selected to be interviewed before and after implementing each method for grouping. Formative assessments and learner profile and interest surveys were used to flexibly group the students and create appropriate and engaging lessons. …

Music And Its Application In The Classroom, Christian Mcknight

Honors Projects

The purpose of this action research project is to determine if background music can be used to improve student test scores using the Mozart Effect. The participants were twenty-eight juniors and seniors from two Algebra II classes at Sylvania Southview High School. Each student in the study was given a control quiz, taken with no background music, followed by the experimental quiz, taken with classical music, specifically Mozart’s “Sonata for Two Pianos in D, K. 448”, playing in the background. The mean average of the students’ first quiz was 2.7% higher than the mean average of the second quiz taken …

Formative Assessment As A Method To Improve Student Performance In The Sciences, Natalie Miller

Honors Projects

This study focused on utilizing formative assessment to shape student understanding and teaching practices in a junior high science classroom. Students were given a pre-test as a method of formative assessment and their results on the pre-assessment before instruction were compared to their performance on a modified post-test. Students received direct instruction, completed an independent project, and responded to daily “bellringer” questions as a form of additional formative assessment before taking the post-test. Students showed marked improvement on the post-test as average scores increased from a 35.7 percent to a 94.4 percent.

Action Research: Self-Regulation Journaling Within Fifth Grade Classroom, Brianna Karas

Honors Projects

Self-Regulation is vital to a student's academic success. This paper discusses how self-regulation has been shown to be integral to the learning process and academic success. This paper details an action research project which externalizes self-regulation in a written manner for students to reflect upon. Specifically, students answered prompts to activate their self-regulatory processes. Students’ self-regulation was monitored throughout the semester to evaluate any changes.

"This Is N.Y.C. Not Little Rock": The Battle To Integrate New York City's Public Schools, Anne Fraser Gregory

Honors Projects

The landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision of 1954, and its subsequent implementation, offer an essential question: Are segregated schools inherently evil, and is integration the only solution to unequal education? The statistics that illustrate the effects of segregated schooling are indeed staggering. According to a 2016 Government Accountability Office study, the number of schools segregated along racial and economic lines doubled between 2000 and 2013. In New York City, the achievement gap between Black and white students has continued to grow. In 2018, the National Assessment of Achievement Progress reported that 48 percent of white fourth-graders were …

Using Stories To Teach, Julianna Cajka

Honors Projects

By nature, human beings are drawn to stories. Even from a young age, a good story can capture our attention, engage our emotions, and build a sense of community. The contextualizing function of stories is an essential tool for making sense of information and events, and we tend to remember stories better than information communicated in other ways. These are all reasons why stories can and should have a place in classroom teaching. My project contains a portfolio of lesson plans written to be used in middle or high school language arts classrooms. These lesson plans (and other instructional materials) …