Education Commons^™

Five Instructional Practices To Optimize Peer Feedback Activities Among Adult Learners, Regina C. Rodriguez, Laurie A. Sharp

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

There is a significant need for adult learners to improve their writing proficiency within a variety of contexts. Thus, postsecondary instructors require effective research-based teaching strategies to support adult learners hone their writing skills. While studies on peer feedback abound, little has been done to date to consider ways in which postsecondary instructors design quality peer feedback activities within their courses. The purpose of this article was to describe five instructional practices to optimize peer feedback activities among adult learners.

Finding And Making Home: Poems And Reflections Of Undergraduate Children Of Immigrants, Gladys Perez

Master's Theses

The number of children of immigrants within the United States has grown over the past few decades and more so we are seeing a greater number of these children pursuing a higher education. With a growing number of undergraduate children of immigrants growing, there is a need to understand how they see themselves as a part of the United States. Previous studies take into consideration how these students navigate higher education, however, there is a lack of research on these students’ larger understanding of belonging within the overall nation. Poetry as data and a process was the grounding methodology that …

Final Ma Portfolio, Angela Geiger-Fields

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

This is a final portfolio reflecting my writing and research for the Master of Arts in English with a specialization in English Teaching program. In this portfolio, I have included four essays or projects that focus on the topics of authentic audiences; argumentative, research, and technical writing; postcolonial film and literature; and linguistics. The portfolio begins with a personal narrative of my time in the program as well as the revisions and research I completed to make the finalized portfolio.

Writing Development Of Emerget Bilinguals: School-Wide Contextual Factors, Alma Rosa Martinez

Theses and Dissertations

The State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR) measures Texas public school students’ knowledge and skills in many areas, including fourth grade writing. This system requires that students meet a certain performance standard score in writing to be successful. This state mandate impacts many Texas districts, teachers, and students. Districts must be prepared with necessary resources and tools to meet the writing needs of all students, including emergent bilinguals.

This case study focused on investigating how a bilingual teacher in a bilingual campus taught writing to her emergent bilinguals. Using the writer’s workshop approach, which many districts implement to …

Scottish National Assessments: National Report For Academic Year 2017 To 2018, Australian Council For Educational Research (Acer)

Assessment and Reporting

This report has been developed to provide a summary of outcomes at a national level on the newly established system of national standardised assessments, which has since been termed ‘Scottish National Standardised Assessments’ (SNSA) in the 2017 to 2018 academic year, the first year of the programme. A central aim of SNSA is also to provide information on the outcomes of Scottish children and young people in literacy and numeracy over time. The assessments have been available for use in publicly funded schools in Scotland since August 2017. They are administered to children and young people in Primary 1, Primary …

Latinx Children’S Push And Pull Of Spanish Literacy And Translanguaging, Kathy M. Bussert-Webb Dr., Hannah M. Masso Ms., Karin A. Lewis Dr.

The Qualitative Report

We explored 19 Latinx children’s literacies in Spanish and translanguaging by asking, “What are Latinx children’s experiences and beliefs regarding Spanish and translanguaging reading and writing? How do tutorial staff and teacher candidates (TCs) help the youth to resist hegemonic and bracketing practices of English-only?” This study took place in a South Texas tutorial agency, where children voluntarily attended for after-school homework help. Data sources consisted of questionnaires, interviews, focus groups, hobby essays, and newsletter articles. Most children reported negative school-related language experiences and expressed dislike and unease regarding Spanish and translanguaging reading and writing, although they lived less than …

Rewriting Disciplines: Stem Students’ Longitudinal Approaches To Writing In (And Across) The Disciplines, Anna Ruggles Gere, Anna V. Knutson, Ryan Mccarty

ETSU Faculty Works

Drawing on three cases from a larger (N=169) longitudinal study of student writing development, this article shows how STEM students “rewrote” disciplines to suit their writerly purposes as they moved through their undergraduate years. Students made it clear that the institutional dimensions of disciplines, visible in administrative units or departments that control resources and records, remained visible in their mental landscapes, but they had a much more flexible view of the epistemological dimensions of disciplines. Rather than entering a field as novices aiming to emulate the writing of its experts, they drew on the intellectual resources of multiple disciplines in …

Teaching Tools And Communication Solutions, Jennifer Wilson, Ms, Els, Anthony Frisby, Phd

Program Directors Retreat

No abstract provided.

How Can Mentor Texts Be Used To Teach Students In A Second Grade Classroom?, Caroline Thorvig

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Mentor texts is a popular term in the education world right now. This capstone defines mentor texts, how experts suggest selecting them, and how using mentor texts fits into best practices in literacy education. The use of mentor texts in reading, writing, and content areas is discussed. This capstone project gives examples of four mini-lessons taught with different mentor texts at a second grade level. Other possible mini-lessons are suggested to show the reader how one text can be used to teach many concepts.

Secondary Teachers Should Expose Rural Readers To Books That Are Culturally Different Than The Student's Personal Choice, Sarah Roiger

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

This capstone addresses the research question, “How can secondary teachers expose rural readers to books that are culturally different than the student’s personal choice?” It documents one teacher’s creation of a book club that allows students a chance to read various novels that portray cultures that differ from the rural culture. It integrates differentiation of choice novels, reflections, and character comparisons. The author documents research from the literature review based on rural influence and motivation, classroom culture, and censorship by schools, parents, and librarians. This project includes the lists of books to use, the step-by-step layout, and the character comparison …

Writing To Learn Across Content Areas, Melissa Bertsch

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Writing has predominantly been the relegated to literacy blocks at the elementary level and English language arts classes at the secondary level. Research shows that students need to write more, not only to improve their writing skills, but to improve their learning in all disciplines. This capstone traces the development of the write to learn movement, examines the connection between writing and the psychological processes of cognition and metacognition, as well as highlighting the sociocultural aspects of writing. This research shows that writing improves learning. The research then proceeds to highlight research­based best practices in relation to write to learn …

Using Self-Regulated Strategy Development To Teach Middle School Writing, Julia Breen

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Being able to write well is a skill critical to students’ success in higher education. Yet standardized test scores reveal that many students are moving into high school and college without these writing skills. Writing is a complex task; in addition to content knowledge, students must use self-regulation skills (including staying focused on the task, working through frustrations) to see success. This capstone project sought to answer the question: How can the teaching of self-regulated skills be integrated into lessons focused on developing the expository writing of middle school students? The result is a series of lesson plans that seek …

“Partnering To Understand Undergraduate Research And Writing Longitudinally”, Donna Scheidt, Cara Kozma, Holly Middleton, Kathy Shields

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

In her longitudinal case study of a single undergraduate, College Writing and Beyond (2007), Anne Beaufort investigates several knowledge domains contributing to students’ development as writers. As a team of librarians and writing faculty in research and teaching partnership, we hope to build on Beaufort’s work by examining and elaborating the role of research with respect to writing development by sharing findings from our own longitudinal study of undergraduates’ development as writer-researchers. Specifically, we are interested in the ways in which undergraduates’ research interfaces with their writing practices as they advance through their general education coursework and various disciplines. How …

Four Glos Walk Into A Classroom: The Challenge Of Supporting Critical Skill Growth, Megan O'Neill, Grace Kaletski

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

In this presentation, we outline the challenges faced when we adopted a LEAP-inspired general education curriculum with several critical skills as outcomes but created no support structure to deliver and foster them. Our General Learning Outcomes (GLOs) include writing, information literacy, speaking, and critical thinking; however, we had faculty leadership, expertise, and tutoring support only for writing. While writing assessment showed strong results and ultimately created curriculum change, the outsourced assessments of info lit, critical thinking, and speaking gave us widely divergent and unsatisfactory results. As one consequence, assessment efforts stalled in those areas. Looking at the successful development model …

“Is Sarah A Bully Or A Friend?”: Examining Students’ Text-Based Written Expressions Of Bullying, Elizabeth M. Hughes, Sandra Quiñones

Middle Grades Review

Bullying has been recognized as a complex phenomenon with potential for serious negative outcomes. Activities that address complex social situations of bullying, such as reading and writing to a pen pal about fictional literature, provide space for students to think and share about personal issues that they encounter and how characters deal with similar issues in productive ways. For this research, we used a critical literacy lens to explore bullying within the context of language, power and context. This research shares qualitative analysis of letters students wrote to adult pen pals after reading a fictional book with a plot addressing …

Infographic: High Frequency Words Used By Young Students In Australia, Dominique Russell

Teacher infographics

New research explores the words most frequently written by students in Australia in their first three years of schooling. Today’s infographic looks at the words that were written at a high frequency, unique to each year level.

Correlates Among Teachers’ Anxieties, Demographics, And Telecomputing Activity, Judith B. Harris, Neal Grandgenett

Judith Harris

Are educators' anxiety levels or demographics related to their voluntary use of networked resources? In this study, one year of logins and online time for 189 randomly selected educators with accounts on Tenet (Texas Education Network) were correlated with six interval-level subject attribute variables: (a) writing apprehension, (b) oral communication apprehension, (c) computer anxiety, (d) age, (e) teaching experience, and (f) telecomputing experience. The usage data were also correlated with three nominal-level subject attribute variables: (a) gender, (b) professional specialty, and (c) teaching level. Results indicated that writing apprehension was significantly and negatively correlated with network use, and that telecomputing …

The Writer's Workbook Intervention: Promoting Writing Achievement, Cassandra O'Sullivan Sachar

Journal of Research Initiatives

Research demonstrates that American high school students are not writing with proficiency, and teachers are not providing adequate writing instruction. This study examined the effectiveness of a writing intervention on achievement using pre- and post-intervention data. The instructional intervention combined self-regulated strategy development, peer and teacher feedback, reflection, and flexible writing practice to strengthen persuasive and argumentative writing in high school students. 95 ninth- and tenth-grade Delaware public school students in higher and lower-level classes participated in the instructional intervention, and twenty-five students’ writings were scored before and after the intervention to assess growth. Pre/post mean ratings of writing quality …

Remedial Reading: Teacher Input Student Output: The Impact Of Teacher Education On Post-Secondary Remedial Reading Students, Deb Davis

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Despite evidence that enhanced teacher education provides enhanced learning opportunities, there is little research on the impact for remedial college students. This study addresses this issue. Reviewing students assigned to remedial reading based on placement test scores, a series of t-tests compared students after one term based on COMPASS scores and compared between the courses provided with teachers of bachelor’s or master’s degrees grouped by gender. This study used a non-experimental, causal-comparative quantitative ex post facto design to study the difference between the education level of the teaching staff and the student achievement at completing the prescribed remediation course within …

Teaching Information Literacy And Writing Studies: Volume 1, First Year Composition Courses, Grace Veach

Purdue University Press Book Previews

This volume, edited by Grace Veach, explores leading approaches to foregrounding information literacy in first-year college writing courses. Chapters describe cross-disciplinary efforts underway across higher education, as well as innovative approaches of both writing professors and librarians in the classroom. This seminal work unpacks the disciplinary implications for information literacy and writing studies as they encounter one another in theory and practice, in the post-information age. Topics include: reading and writing through the lens of information literacy, curriculum design, specific writing tasks, transfer, and assessment.

Share Your Expertise: Write For The Colorado Mathematics Teacher, Heather L. Johnson

Colorado Mathematics Teacher

What are you writing today? In this editorial, I invite you to contribute to the community and conversation by submitting an article to the new Colorado Mathematics Teacher.

Speakup: The Power Of Writing And Turning Toward Trouble With Young People, James E. Fredricksen, Amanda Micheletty, Nicholas Darlinton

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

When a group of rural teens meet regularly out-of-school to write for social change in their communities, they inquire into those recent moments when they did or did not choose to speak up. This article describes some of the conceptual tools and practical classroom implications for three teachers who participate with SpeakUP. In particular, this piece argues that when young people turn toward trouble together, specifically when they do or do not decide to speak up, they can identify their assumptions and expectations, notice how power is working in both visible and invisible ways, and consider multiple possibilities for future …

Making Feedback Stick: The Effects Of Targeted, Verbal Formative Feedback Strategies On Writing Skill Acquisition For Secondary English Students, Sean Kern

Masters of Arts in Education Action Research Papers

Providing feedback to developing writers that creates lasting changes in their writing presents a challenge for educators. This study investigates the use of a formative feedback system in which students write in staggered groups while receiving targeted, specific verbal feedback on their writing. Participants include thirty-one 10th grade general English students in a suburban high school. Data collection methods include a Google Form data gathering tool, an observation log, teacher-generated journal, and comparison of essay scores using a writing rubric. Results showed an increase in student writing performance, a mindset shift from an external to internal locus-of control, and a …

The Importance Of Communication, Robin Bowdish

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

When we teach students to effectively communicate and to collaborate, we are building a foundation for their successful futures.

Identifying Elements Of Voice And Fostering Voice Development In First-Grade Science Writing, Mckenna Lucille Maguet

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this multi case study was to better understand voice in first grade science writing. Voice is the ability for individuals to synchronize specific narrative elements to express themselves with greater confidence and individuality. Three first-grade participants were chosen and their use of voice in science writing was examined across 8 weeks. Specific elements of voice were identified within atypical informational texts for primary grade learners in science. The 7 elements include descriptive words, placement of text and picture, creative punctuation, conversational tone, comparisons, imagery, and repeated text. The 7 voice elements were taught to a class of …

Learning Moo-Re About The Dairy: Publishing A Middle Level Place-Based Informational Text, Stephanie M. Lemley

MLET: The Journal of Middle Level Education in Texas

This manuscript describes the creation of an middle level informational text about the local university dairy. The place-based assignment introduced the elementary education teacher candidates to the everyday workings of the university dairy. The preservice teachers engaged in the writing process throughout the creation of the informational text.

Beyond Replicative Technology: The Digital Practices Of Students With Literacy-Related Learning Difficulties Engaged In Productive Technologies, Aimee Frier

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I present the findings from a qualitative case study of the digital literacy integration of a teacher and the digital literacy practices of three students with literacy-related learning difficulties within her classroom. As a researcher, I was interested in the ways students with literacy- related learning difficulties navigated digital tools in a technology-infused environment created by a teacher who has experience using digital tools for instructional and student-learning purposes. My research was guided by the following questions: (1) What was the context, content, and structure of the teacher’s technology instruction? (2) In what ways did the students …

A Word From The Writing Team (July 2018), Jennifer Wilson, Ms, Els, Pam Walter, Mfa

A Word From the Writing Team (Newsletter)

This issue includes:

• From Thesis to Journal Article
• Open All Summer
• Sign Up for Our Fall Writing Retreat
• Writing Café

A Sentence Construction Intervention For Elementary-Aged Spanish-Speaking Language-Minority Students With Writing Difficulties, Tim Andress

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The present replication study used a multiple probe across participant single-case experimental design to measure the effect of a sentence construction intervention on Spanish-speaking language-minority students with writing difficulties. Participants were two males and one female, aged eight to ten. Dependent variables tracked were frequency of correct word sequences, incorrect word sequences, complete sentences, and incomplete sentences written in one-minute sentence construction probes. A pre-and post-test five-minute paragraph probe served as a secondary measure to determine whether sentence-level instruction improved paragraph-level writing. Results were an increase in frequency of correct word sequence and complete sentences for all participants, as well …

Re-Assessing Assessment: Implementing Constructivist Testing With New And Existing Curriculum, Joey Kretchman-Grande

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question at the focal point of this research was: How best can educators implement constructivist assessment in a way that benefits all students? This project was heavily influenced by the theories of Lev Vygotsky and Jean Piaget and discovering how to share their information with educators in a way that will help them

revise their own assessments. The final result of the project is a website detailing step- by-step instructions of how to create or adapt assessments to fit this newer, non- traditional style. The resulting website was published online through Google Sites and is now accessible by …