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Implementing Outdoor Education Curriculum: The Benefits Of, Barriers To, And Materials Required For Successful Outdoor Education
Get PDFExamining research shows that outdoor education has a number of benefits for students. These benefits range from academic to social emotional to physical (Fagerstam and Blom, 2012; Mygind, 2007; Pretty et al., 2009). Research also shows that many teachers report a variety of barriers to successful outdoor education implementation (Ernst, 2007; Powers, 2004), and that teachers need to understand how to use outdoor spaces to teach effectively (Eick, 2012; House, 2008). As a result, outdoor education is not being implemented widely by teachers and the benefits that come with the outdoor exposure are not being utilized. This project seeks to answer the question: How can outdoor education be used successfully to improve the success and well-being of children? The curriculum designed for this project provides an opportunity for teachers to experiment with outdoor education in a structured manner, while also offering opportunities for teachers to blend in more familiar indoor lessons to ease into the use of outdoor education. The curriculum was also designed with commonly cited barriers to outdoor education in mind. The lessons are short, meet state science standards, and offer low-cost activities to be completed by students. If used properly, the curriculum will offer teachers an opportunity to engage students in outdoor learning to see for themselves the benefits that the outdoor exposure can have on the students, not just academically, but socially, emotionally, and physically. The expected outcome from using this curriculum is that teachers will feel empowered to take learning outside of the classroom more often as a result of seeing the benefits of outdoor education for their students first-hand
Guided Reading Adaptations For Multilingual Learners
Get PDFElementary educators continue to face the challenge of providing an equitable education for all students. As more multilingual students are seated in the classroom, the challenge to support literacy and language development becomes increasingly important. This capstone seeks to answer the question: How can elementary educators improve guided reading instruction, and what adaptations support multilingual learners? The research concludes that guided reading modifications should be made through the additive approach to language, translanguaging, teacher and student participation, corrective feedback, and assessment. Using these modifications during guided reading can have many positive benefits on a student’s academic achievement and linguistic identity
Research Based Strategies in Reading and Writing for Content Area Teachers: A Website to Support Growth in Academic Language
Get PDFThe population of English language learners in general education classrooms is growing every year and teachers are finding that they need strategies to support these learners in reading and writing along with helping them adapt to school in another culture. Without classroom support, it becomes more difficult for these students to acquire the academic language needed to be successful and the opportunity gap continues to widen. This website designed for this project focuses on research based reading and writing strategies for content area teachers at the secondary level, specifically grades six through 12. Strategies for skills such as comprehension, vocabulary development, summarizing, and writing are featured on this website. This project also involved creating additional resources for teachers to include information about language levels, challenges English learners at different levels face, and what English learners can do at different levels of language development when given classroom assignments. The goal of this project is to give content area teachers a place to go for information and strategies so they can support the English learners that are placed in their classes
Teaching Primary Aged Students Impacted By Trauma Through Interactive Read Alouds
Get PDFThe research question investigated in this project was: How can read-alouds support the learning of primary-aged students who have been affected by early childhood trauma? The experiences of teaching students affected by trauma without a social-emotional curriculum led the author to research how interactive read alouds help students become familiar with social-emotional skills. The research showed how social-emotional learning linked with interactive read alouds can be successful in assisting students in regulating their emotions. The author created ten interactive read-aloud lessons that introduce key social-emotional skills. The topics included in the lessons are self-awareness and self-management. There are six subskills under these two topics: identifying emotions, recognizing strengths, self-confidence, impulse control, stress management, and self-motivation. The author used Understanding by Design to create the curriculum. This curriculum aims to provide teachers with social-emotional lessons to teach during literacy to expose students to these important skills. Word Count
Toxic Math-masculinity: Changing Harmful Lay Theories of Mathematics to Improve Student Achievement
Get PDFStudents often come into the secondary math classroom with an implicit understanding of mathematics that negatively affects their performance in the classroom. These lay theories often reinforce an entity theory of mathematical ability that views ability as fixed and unchangeable. In turn, this view of mathematical ability influences students’ goal orientations. Research shows the positive benefits of an incremental theory of mathematical ability and a mastery goal orientation on mathematics student achievement. Much of the research literature focuses on describing or quantifying the connection between incremental theories of mathematical ability and student achievement rather than describing effective strategies for changing students’ lay theories. The curriculum designed for this project is designed to address students’ lay theories of mathematics, their lay theories of mathematical ability, and their goal orientation in the early secondary mathematics classroom. The goal of this project is to provide a unit of lessons that can be delivered once a week during the first ten weeks of school to empower students to change their mathematical lay theories and understand the mathematics classroom as a place to pursue mastery goals, improving their achievement and enjoyment in mathematics
Factors Influencing the Adoption of Institutional Repository Systems by Academic and Research Library Leadership
Get PDFAcademic and research libraries are dependent on a wide range of technology and systems to manage access and storage of digital research materials and collections. Given the high level of costs and staff needed to support these systems, the factors that influence library leadership in their decision making process to support or adopt new technologies is important. In order to understand the various dynamics involved with this decision making process, this study specifically examined influencing factors that academic library leaders use in their decisions to support or adopt institutional repository (IR) systems. This mixed method research study used both a quantitative research survey instrument that was adapted from the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), which was followed by semi-structured interviews to address the research questions presented in this study. The overarching research question of this study was, do the factors of usefulness, ease of use, need, cost effectiveness, and reliability influence academic library leaders\u27 decision making process regarding the adoption and ongoing support of technology initiatives, in this case IR systems? The data collected from this research reveal that library leaders place a significant emphasis on the factors of the perceived need, reliability, and perceived usefulness of an IR system. Building on these factors, interviews with senior library leaders revealed that the influencing factor of costs or ability to fund a system was a constant presence in their decision-making rubric
Systems Thinking Teaching Strategies Using the UN Sustainable Development Goals to Help Best Prepare Students to be Future Ready
Get PDFThe United Nations has outlined seventeen sustainable development goals that high school students will have to tackle to have a sustainable future. Schools must take meaningful action in teaching their students systems thinking strategies to best prepare them to be empathic, self-aware, innovative, resilient communicators that are equipped to be sustainable global citizens. This capstone project takes ninth grade students through a student-choice inquiry project to tackle the challenges of how their school’s sustainable initiatives can become more sustainable in order to answer the question, How can I best integrate the United Nation Sustainable Development Goals into my Understanding By Design and C-3 Inquiry frameworks, Compass Systems Thinking models, and student profile attributes to best prepare our high school students for meaningful action in a rapidly changing world? Through the unit the students work through research, interviewing experts of the school, systems thinking exercises, feedback from experts, and project proposals and creations. Thus putting real changemaking practice into action
Framework For Implementing Metacognitive Reflection Tools To Facilitate Student Learning
Get PDFEducators of all disciplines are finding themselves providing endless engaging content and working long hours to give feedback, yet they are still witnessing their students struggle to master content objectives. Students need to be empowered and provided the tools to take ownership of the learning process. Through intentional metacognitive reflection, the interrogation and reconstruction of learning, teachers will find increased retention, comprehension, critical thinking, knowledge transfer, accountability, and motivation in their students. This professional development framework is intended to improve high school student mastery through metacognitive reflection and to provide tools for teachers of all disciplines to set students up with metacognitive reflection skills and experiences within their own classrooms. Included in this framework are three sessions of professional development presentations and a set of reflection devices for teachers to be used with instructional coaches or teams that are developed to answer the question: How can educators use reflection tools with students to increase student understanding of their own level of course mastery? Using the 5E instructional approach that encompasses the phases of engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate, each session of this professional development framework models a metacognitive learning experience. Sessions are focused on presenting the importance of metacognitive reflection in the classroom and modeling several different systems that can be used in the classroom to elicit it. Throughout all sessions, teachers are provided the opportunities to explore different reflection tools. The final portion of the framework is focused on the elaboration and evaluation of teachers’ learning. Done with their instructional coaches or other peer support, they will guide themselves through metacognitive reflection exercises on their implementation of devices throughout their units to ensure they are providing effective reflection experiences for their students. Through the completion of this professional development framework, teachers should have investment in metacognitive reflection and have confidence in using metacognitive reflection tools in their own classrooms
Increasing Student Motivation In English Language Arts Through Student Choice
Get PDFThe purpose of this capstone project was to design and implement a digital website where resources are readily available for teachers and students in order to increase motivation in reading. This project sought to answer the question Can providing student choice improve student motivation in a middle school English Language Arts class? My love of reading happened early in my life and it has made me a lifelong reader, and this inspired me to instill that love in middle school students. The research conducted in this capstone indicates that increasing student engagement in reading is highly dependent upon building student motivation, including allowing student choice, presenting students with literature relevant to them, and student interest. This increase could in fact lead to an increase in student reading success. The website provides several ways to do this: literature circles, independent reading, and encouragement options (book brochures, book trailers, and first chapter Fridays). Therefore, this project was designed to provide sixth, seventh, and eight grade ELA teachers with digital resources that will allow students to grow as readers, improve student academic achievement, and save teachers prep-time. With the nation continuing to score below average in reading proficiency, it is imperative that educators increase student motivation in reading in order to increase their reading proficiency and this project will help with that goal
The Importance Of Math Fact Automaticity
Get PDFThe retention of math facts is a critical step when it comes to solving mathematical equations. The website I designed for my project addresses this topic. It focuses on giving students, teachers and parents the research, tips and resources they need to be successful. Research shows that automaticity with math facts can lessen the academic load of students and also be a predictor of future math success. Using strategies such as interleaving, engaging with manipulatives and learning mnemonic devices has been shown to positively affect one’s recall of basic facts. However, drilling and mindless repetition has a much more negative effect. I took this research and more and displayed it on a website, for my three different audiences to interact with and benefit from. The goal of my project is to give tangible support to students, teachers and parents as they play their role in the fact memorization process