The purpose of the study was to determine the practicality of the theory that the teacher's highest function is to help each pupil to develop an agreeable, liberated, concordant, dynamic personality. In other words, the writer was interested in finding out whether it is possible, as far as can be determined, to develop an unpopular child to such an extent that he will be more social, more likable, and, in the end, more acceptable by his school group.

The problem of this study is to find the causes for lack of initiative in a group of second grade pupils in the Era School, and to discover, from reading books and magazine articles, what techniques are most successful in developing initiative in the children.

This investigation compared achievement of boys and girls in second grade who were seven years old in June, July, and August of 1983 to the boys and girls in second grade who were eight years old in September, October, and November of 1983. The students were tested using the Iowa Test of Basic Skills using the following areas: reading, total math, and composite scores. The study also looked at the correlation of sex and age of students who had been retained in first grade. A comparison of teacher grades to standardized test scores and ability grouping was also presented. One way analysis of variance was applied to the test results. A chi square test of independence was conducted on students retained in the first grade to determine if interaction between sex and age was indicated. Older children scored higher in all three areas measured, while girls scored higher in reading. This may seem contradictory, but is not. Age was significant beyond the .05 level, while sex was significant beyond the .001 level. This difference is explained by the extremes in means for younger boys and older girls. Since first grade curriculum emphasizes reading, this gave girls a definite advantage over boys. Boys, however, scored significantly higher in math. The results indicate a need for restructuring curriculum to meet the needs of boys and girls. Younger boys in second grade scored the lowest in all areas tested, except math. These scores would have been even more significant if the boys who were not promoted to second grade could have been included in the second grade testing. These findings indicate that total developmental age is the most important factor when considering admission for school. A closer look should be taken at the requirements for school entrance. The factors that must be considered are chronological age, mental age, physical maturity, emotional and social maturity, behavior age, and sex.

In this study, the researcher investigated how computer use functions as an aspect of literacy development within a second-grade classroom. The researcher sought to gather data to help define the role that computer use plays in the literacy development of elementary school students by concentrating on how computers are actually used in the classroom being studied, and by looking for relationships revealed by students' and teacher's beliefs about computer use in the classroom.

This investigation was concerned with the problem of determining the value of selected curiosity tests for predicting academic achievement in first and second-grades.

Interest in children who are diagnosed with expressive language delay has increased over the years. This has resulted in follow-up studies which have suggested that these children would have difficulties in academics during their elementary school years (Hall & Tomblin, 1978; Weiner, 1974) The current study sought to determine if children with a history of and children with continued expressive language delay would have problems with academics once they reached the second grade. The Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT) was used to measure academic performance. It was chosen for it's reliable standardization and use of five different subtest areas to determine overall academic achievement. The purpose of this study was to determine if there are significant differences in academic performance on PIAT between three groups of second grade children with different language histories. The three groups are: 1) children with normal language history 2) children with a history of expressive language delay (HELD) who were identified as late to talk between 20 and 34 months of age, but who received a score at or above the tenth percentile in the second grade on the DSS (Developmental Sentence Scoring, Lee 1974), and 3) children with chronic expressive language delay (ELD) who were identified as late to talkers between 20 and 34 months of age, and received a score below the tenth percentile in the second grade on the DSS. Significant differences were found between the ELD group and the Normal group in the areas of Math and General Information as well as the Total Test Score. The ELD group also performed significantly lower than the HELD group in the areas of Math and the Total Test Score. There were no significant differences found between the HELD group and the Normals or between the ELD and HELD groups on the General Information subtest. These results were consistent with the most recent research article by Whitehurst and Fischel (1994) which looked at three longitudinal studies and found that by five years of age most children diagnosed with specific expressive language delay were performing within the normal range in ·various areas of language development.

General education and special education teachers are expected to provide evidence-based instruction to all students in the classroom. Along with that, they must make sure that their students pass the state mandated tests based on state standards. Meeting the needs of everyone in the classroom is a difficult task especially with 10-20% of those students having special learning needs that require a different approach to assessment and instruction. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role that metacognitive strategies have in second grade students with learning disabilities while they are performing written spelling lists and story generation tasks. One-on-one interviews were conducted with two second grade students with learning disabilities after they had written ten word spelling lists as well as a story based on a photograph of their choice. The interviews were conducted to identify what metacognitive processes they used by asking them to report and reflect on what they wrote, how they knew what to write, and whether or not they could identify what they wrote was correct, as well as being able to independently correct any errors they made. The results indicate that although their metacognitive strategies were emerging, they had difficulty reporting consistently and accurately what spelling strategies they used. They also had difficulty reflecting on whether a word was correct or incorrect and if incorrect, how to correct it. Each student used a different approach to spelling a word, one “Brute Force” and the other “Rule-based.” Neither of these approaches worked effectively for these students as they made many spelling errors and still had difficulty correcting them. The overall findings indicate that these two second grade students with learning disabilities used limited metacognitive strategies of monitoring, regulating and reflecting. What strategies they did employ, were not consistent or effective to help them achieve a level of spelling efficiency needed to be successful in second grade. / Department of Special Education

Thesis (Ed. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, School of Education and Human Development, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--Bowling Green State University, 2008. / Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 98 p. Includes bibliographical references.

The purpose of the current study was to examine how well the Narrative Language Measure (NLM) of Listening predicts the NLM Reading measure and the extent to which brief narrative-based listening and reading comprehension assessments administered to first, second, and third grade students demonstrate symmetry and equity. A total of 1039 first graders, 395 second graders, and 501 third graders participated in this study. The students were administered the NLM Listening and NLM Reading, and their scores were examined to address the research questions. Students with incomplete data sets and students who performed 1.5 standard deviations (7th percentile based on the local dataset norms) below the mean within their respective grade using local norms on a either the first or second winter benchmark reading fluency measure were removed from the participant pool. A correlation and regression analysis indicated that the NLM Listening was weakly predictive of NLM Reading. The means and standard deviations of listening comprehension and reading comprehension were compared, with the expectation that the means from both tasks would not be significantly different. This was examined using repeated measures ANOVA. Results indicated that for the first, second, and third-grade students, while removing those who scored at or below the 7th percentile, there was a statistically significant difference between the means for both the NLM Listening Benchmark 1 and NLM Reading Benchmark 1, as well as the NLM Listening Benchmark 2 and NLM Reading Benchmark 2. An equipercentile analysis determined the first-grade students scored higher in the listening comprehension than reading, and the second and third-grade students scored higher in the reading comprehension. While the data from this study indicate that the NLM Listening is not an adequate proxy for the NLM Reading measure, this study is another step in laying a foundation that a narrative-based assessment with carefully constructed parallel forms that reflect written academic language has the potential to produce scores in listening and reading comprehension that are symmetrical and equitable, in order to justify the use of one measure as proxy for the other.