Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education Commons^™

Authentic Low-Stakes Practice To Make Meaning Lasting For Ells: Creating Vocabulary Chants And Songs To Enhance The Word Generation Curriculum, Lori Cohen

Masters Theses/Capstone Projects

This curriculum creation is designed to supplement the Word Generation (WordGen) vocabulary program for middle school students. It adds songs and chants of the weekly focus words for use as a mnemonic device to remember and synthesize word meaning. The WordGen curriculum is heavily based on reading and writing and English Language Learners (ELLs) are at a disadvantage when tasked with learning and understanding academic vocabulary due to the short length of time for mastery (Cummins, 1999; Collier, 1987; Thompson, 2017). This curriculum is inspired by the desire to appeal to ELLs who would respond favorably to music or kinesthetic …

The Howl - Fall 2021, Gwendolyn Derosa, Sabra Shariani, Danny Huy, Shamim Bibi, Reigh Lee, Frank Fu, Gabriel Atteh

The Howl

The Howl is a magazine that is planned, researched, written, photographed and designed by Otterbein University’s ESL and international students. The magazine serves to give them a safe space in which to use their voice to share their cultures, experiences and lives. If you are interested in submitting to the Howl, please e-mail your writing or photography to gderosa@otterbein.edu. Enjoy Otterbein ESL’s contribution to the Otterbein community’s literary scene.

A Curriculum Creation For Revolutionary Change: Using Diverse Mentor Text To Teach Literary Elements Through A Social Justice Lens, Sara Barkley

Masters Theses/Capstone Projects

The purpose of this study is to present a literacy curriculum designed specifically for fifth grade students. The curriculum utilizes Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (1995) and Learning for Justice (2018) social justice standards and domains, in order to provide best practices for all students to achieve academic success, celebrate diversity, and take action against injustices in the world. The following question framed the literature research that was conducted to develop this curriculum: How can we create a literacy based curriculum through a social justice lens that utilizes diverse children’s mentor text in order to create equitable school experiences? The question was …

Best Practices: Promoting Parent-School Relationship To Increase Hispanic Parental Participation In Schools, Marlene R. Torrez-Graham

Masters Theses/Capstone Projects

The purpose of this research was to find the factors that affect Hispanic parents’ decision to engage in their children’s education, while they attend public schools in the United States. At the same time, I wanted to find model practices and programs that encourage parental engagement and compile this information to create a manual that can be used for professional development and as a reference for parents. I found that most of the researchers used Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler’s theoretical model of parent engagement as a framework. I used the Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler’s theoretical model to organize the factors that affect …

The Howl - Spring 2020, Gwendolyn Derosa, Jerusa Cadorin Rovai, Andrea Pac, Kai Iwasaki, Tong Yu

The Howl

The Howl is a magazine that is planned, researched, written, photographed and designed by Otterbein University’s ESL and international students. The magazine serves to give them a safe space in which to use their voice to share their cultures, experiences and lives. If you are interested in submitting to the Howl, please e-mail your writing or photography to gderosa@otterbein.edu. Enjoy Otterbein ESL’s contribution to the Otterbein community’s literary scene.

The Howl - Fall 2019, Hyun Jin Cho, Rongrong Yan, Tris Xu, Jerusa Cadorin Rovai, Gwendolyn Derosa

The Howl

Hyun Jin Cho, Gloria Kang, Saori Ishio, Ali Al-Damin, Apple Tsai, Reo Taniguchi, Jerusa Cadorin Rovai, Vivian Chen, Taki Migdady, and Gwendolyn DeRosa

The Howl is a magazine that is planned, researched, written, photographed and designed by Otterbein University’s ESL and international students. The magazine serves to give them a safe space in which to use their voice to share their cultures, experiences and lives. If you are interested in submitting to the Howl, please e-mail your writing or photography to gderosa@otterbein.edu. Enjoy Otterbein ESL’s contribution to the Otterbein community’s literary scene.

Designing A Curriculum To Engage Heritage Speakers In A Spanish Classroom., Fabiola Milla Kimble

Masters Theses/Capstone Projects

The number of Heritage language learners (HLL's) is growing steadily in the United States. These students are not challenged by the foreign language curriculum. These students provide unique challenges that a Spanish foreign language (FL) classroom is not prepared for. The aim of this research is to provide tools to teachers who will have to teach HLL's to help develop a curriculum specifically designed to meet these unique needs.

A Curriculum Design For Emergent English Language Learners In Middle School Science, Allison Simpson

Masters Theses/Capstone Projects

The purpose of this Capstone project is to design a curriculum for emergent English Language Learners (ELLs). This subgroup of students typically comes from a different educational background and speaks a different native language than native English-speaking students. This presents a challenge for educators to include modifications to their current curriculum. While most curricula include modifications for educators to use, they are usually not at the level Emergent ELLs need to be successful in the classroom. This curriculum focuses on emergent level students in the middle school science classroom. The research question is How do we meet emergent ELL students …

Best Practices: Supporting Refugee Students In The Classroom, Naima Ali

Masters Theses/Capstone Projects

This curriculum project explores best instructional practices that support refugee students in the classrooms. The questions that guided this project were: What are effective ways for classroom teachers to engage refugee students in learning? How can teachers foster a sense of belonging and demonstrate cultural competence when working with refugee students in the classroom? What research-based best practices provide academic support for refugee students in the K-12 classroom? The literature review provides background knowledge about the best practices that support of the existing literature on the best practices that support the education of refugee students in the United States (U.S). …

Exploring Effective Reading Strategies That Promote Higher Level Thinking And Comprehension For A Chinese-Speaking College Student, Panyang Wu

Masters Theses/Capstone Projects

The purpose of the case study was to explore some effective literacy strategies that prompt higher-level thinking abilities to help one Chinese English as Foreign Language (EFL) student who struggles with academic reading in college classes at a small, liberal arts college. Only one participant named Cathy was involved in the study. Cathy is a Chinese student who studied at college as a regular undergraduate student and had poor performance in her college level literacy class, as indicated by her professors and Cathy herself. Cathy was expected to improve reading comprehension by receiving an intensive one-month reading development intervention, which …