Curriculum and Instruction Commons^™

The Impact Of Reading Intervention On Retained Elementary-Age Students, Elizabeth Lazar

Dissertations

Due to historically high rates of retained students, one low-performing school needed to fix the endless cycle of student failure. After implementation of a close reading program, participating students made growth on the state reading test. My main goal was to examine which key elements of this program supported retained third grade students resulting in learning gains. My data showed t-test findings with a statistically significant difference in both scale scores and achievement levels on the state reading assessment.

My recommended policy change provides elementary students with a district-wide close reading program to teach comprehension strategies. Through policy measures, I …

The Relationship Between The Next Generation Content Area Reading Professional Development Program On The Effectiveness Of Teaching Literacy Strategies In High School Biology Classes, Tia Pridgen Brown

Dissertations

The need for effective content area reading teachers have continued to increase since the introduction of one public school districts’ Content Area Reading Professional Development (CAR-PD) in 2006. In 2011, modifications were made to improve the program, and it became known as the Next Generation Content Area Reading Professional Development (NGCAR-PD). The purpose of this program evaluation is to investigate the relationship between NGCAR-PD certified Biology teachers and their ability to implement reading strategies with science content effectively. The context of this inquiry is a mid-sized public school district that has implemented the program since 2006 at the middle and …

Engaging Middle School Emergent Bilinguals In Language Awareness: A Practitioner Researcher Study, Carol Lickenbrock

Dissertations

This practitioner research study (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009) traced the journey toward critical literacy of a group of seven emergent bilinguals and me, their teacher, over the course of a four-month unit on argument as part of our English for Speakers of Other Languages 3 (ESOL3) class. Many of these students, like many emergent bilinguals in the United States, had been disempowered because they had not had access to the academic texts of school. As part of this research, students worked with tools of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to analyze the interpersonal, ideational and textual metafunctions of argumentation in lessons …

Student Perceptions Regarding The Use Of Purposive English In A Spanish As A Foreign Language Classroom, Kacey Booth

Dissertations

In modern American society, diversity is both challenged and celebrated, and inclusion is imperative. This ideology begins in the classroom. Oftentimes, this celebration of diversity, more specifically linguistic diversity, is most visible in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) classes and similar bilingual educational programs. In TESOL programs, students’ international identities are highlighted and students are often instructed using multilingual educational resources to scaffold their acquisition of English. Historically, foreign language teaching also utilized dual-language instructional methodologies. Such archaic teaching methodologies have since been replaced by more modern and immersive sociopsycholinguistic approaches such as Communicative Language Teaching. Such …