The purpose of the study was to determine whether or not The Basic Communication Skills Program, a consultant developed and staff determined writing program, still had an impact on all program participants two years after its completion. The secondary aim of the study was to describe the strengths and weaknesses of the consultant developed and staff determined approach. The approach involved a consultant training teams of principals and teachers from sixteen elementary schools in the writing and writing instructional processes. The teams then determined a program for their staffs.There were four components of the study: team teacher surveys, principal surveys, interviews of school teams and professional consultants' surveys on inservice methods. Responses on surveys were tallied, percentages calculated, and interviewees responses categorized to verify assumptionsFindings1. More than half of the team teachers frequently or sometimes continued to use the writing program's ideas in their classrooms.2. Approximately half of the teachers affected by the team used the program ideas frequently or sometimes in their classrooms in the judgment of the team members.3. Sixty-three percent of the team teachers responded that their staff could not have developed a writing program without the assistance of a consultant, and eighty-six percent of the principals agreed.4. Professional consultants did not agree with team teachers and principals on the necessity of a consultant in helping a school to develop a writing program.Conclusions1. The use of a consultant to inform teachers and principals before they design their writing programs is beneficial.2. The consultant developed and staff determined approach can have a continuing impact on school teams and nearly half of their staffs.3. More than a team of a principal and two teachers from a school needs to participate in training sessions conducted by a consultant in order to have a continuing impact on the entire staff.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2000. / Bibliography: leaves 27-30.

The participants in this qualitative study were parents of children in grades 1-3 who attended an elementary school in a low-income, predominantly Latino urban neighborhood. The children were identified as struggling readers through teacher nomination and standardized assessments, and they received reading and writing intervention through an in-school pullout program and through a once-a-week, afterschool University-sponsored tutoring program. The purpose of this study was to gather the views of parents about their children's experiences in literacy learning and intervention, parents’ perspective of their role in their child’s literacy learning, as well as the ways parents described their child as a literacy learner. Fourteen parents were interviewed regarding literacy practices in their homes, views of school literacy instruction, need for information on helping their children at home, and suggestions for improving home-school connections. Follow-up / text

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There is no abstract available for this dissertation.

The purpose of this study was to compare two methods of spelling instruction, the test-study method and study-test method, with the spelling achievement of selected fourth grade students. The effects of gender and spelling ability level on the spelling method were also studied. The participants were 80 fourth grade students from four intact classrooms in two elementary schools in a small suburban midwestern school district.Third grade standardized test scores were collected from students' permanent record cards and used for grouping students into spelling ability levels. A Spelling Criterion-Referenced Test was used as a pretest (covariate) and a posttest (dependent variable). An analysis of covariance was used to test three null hypotheses at the .05 level of significance. The three null hypotheses were not rejected. The following results were suggested:1. Both fourth grade boys and girls achieve equally well in spelling whether they use the test-study method or the study-test method of spelling instruction.2. Fourth grade students achieve equally well in spelling whether they use the test-study method or the study-test method of spelling instruction.3. Fourth grade girls and boys achieve equally well in spelling.Teachers should consider integrating spelling into all areas of the language arts by supplementing the spelling textbook with words the children are using in their writing. / Department of Elementary Education

The purpose of this study was to determine if direct instruction in comprehension strategies taught through listening had an effect on the reading comprehension of fourth grade students.The study sample consisted of seventy-four students in fourth grade classrooms in a metropolitan school district in central Indiana. The two experimental classes received eight listening lessons, taught by the regular classroom teachers, at the rate of one per week. The two control classes did not receive the listening instruction.The students in the experimental and control groups were classified into three ability groups based upon the results of Shipman-Warncke Assessment Profile. The measure of reading comprehension was the Metropolitan Reading Diagnostic Test.FindingsThe data from this study indicated:Both groups, experimental and control, showed significantly improved comprehension over the length of the study.Analysis by level, "successful", "average", and "ineffective", revealed no statistically-significant difference in the comprehension growth.Both the control and experimental "successful" and "average" ability level students' scores gained at nearly the same rate from pretest to posttest.4) There were no pre- posttest differences between any of the three ability levels on the six question types.ConclusionsBased on the findings of this study the following conclusions were drawn:1) The comprehension strategies taught through the listening lessons did not significantly affect the reading comprehension of the students involved in the study.2) All students showed significant gains in reading comprehension over the course of the study.3) Students with reading abilities categorized as "ineffective" showed a tendency to respond better to the listening lessons than the other two ability groups.Listening and reading are important language communication skills for children, both in school and in daily life. This study has attempted to add to the body of knowledge related to ways that these two lifetime skills may be taught in the elementary school. / Department of Elementary Education

The purpose of this investigation was to develop instructional methods to affect the visual perceptual abilities of young children.Eleanor Gibson has described visual perception as the process by which we obtain firsthand information about the world around us. According to Gibson visual perception is a complex process of handling a multitude of visual bits of information or cues, so that a response to the information can be made. With these ideas in mind a series of language tasks were developed to encourage children to attend and respond to visual stimuli in order to investigate the extent to which language may modify or enhance visual perceptual ability.The sample for this study was comprised of ninety-four fourth grade students in four intact classes in the Eastbrook Community School Corporation, Marion, Indiana. Three groups were randomly assigned to the experimental treatments and one to the control condition. One group received in-process language training while viewing and discussing color slides of paintings; a second group received language training by exposure to semantic differential scales while viewing the same paintings; a third group received a condensed and integrated version of the treatment received by the other two experimental treatment groups;while a fourth group served as a control section and received traditional art instruction, primarily working with common art materials without specific language instruction and without viewing color slides of paintings. The subjects in all four groups were pre and post tested using the Children's Embedded Figures Test (CEFT), the MotorFree Visual Perception Test (IrwPT) and the vocabulary subtest of the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test (SDRT).Data collected during this investigation was subjected to analysis of covariance techniques and, when significant ratios were obtained, follow-up t-tests were conducted. In addition, correlation coefficients were obtained to evaluate possible relationships between the three sets of measures. The confidence level for testing the null hypotheses was set at an alpha of .05. Review of the data led to the following conclusions:(A) Subjects receiving a condensed and integrated version of the language treatment including in-process verbalization and exposure to semantic differential scales while viewing color slides of paintings achieved significantly higher Children's Embedded Figures Test scores than subjects in the Control Group. The resulting data indicated that treatment incorporating language training tasks was more successful in affecting perceptual performance than traditional art activities.(B) Data analysis of treatment effects on subject performance as measured by the Motor-Free Visual Perception Test was found to be inconclusive. The statistical evidence indicates that although scores achieved by the three experimental groups on the WPT did increase they were not significantly improved.(C) Group performance on the vocabulary subtest of the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test remained virtually unchanged. The abundance of verbal stimulation had no apparent effect upon language skills as measured by this instrument.This investigation made no attempt to prescribe how subjects should respond to visual stimuli, nor did it infer that these responses were either desirable or inalterable. At the same time this investigation made no attempt to assess the aesthetic effects of languagethat the inclusion of language tasks may stimulate and increase perceptual activity and ability thereby aiding children in developing perceptual skills.The most important general finding in this investigation is the facilitating effect of the combination of semantic differential scales and auditory verbal in-process response as a mode of instruction to increase visual perceptual ability. This combination of language factors evidently influenced the subjects to process pictorial information more effectively, perhaps by directing their attention to the distinctive features of the paintings.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.