During a few hours of a school day, a student might read textbook texts which are highly diversified in terms of abstraction. Abstraction is a central feature of specialized language and the transition from everyday language to specialized language is one of the most important things formal education can offer students. That transition is the focus of this thesis. This study introduces a new three-graded classification of abstraction including the levels of specificity, generalization and abstraction, based on a discussion of the concept of abstraction. The investigations performed, based on this classification, show that texts from different subject areas display distinct patterns of abstraction. The Swedish literary texts had the lowest degree of abstraction, the social science texts had an intermediate degree and the natural science texts were the most generalized and abstract. The results also show that the degree of abstraction in the textbook texts increases in later grade levels. The thesis presents a new way of analyzing shifts between levels of abstraction and their functions. Interestingly, the texts with a medium degree of abstraction, the social science texts, are the ones with the greatest variety in shifts. The functions of the shifts differ with respect to cultural domains. The shifts in the Swedish literary texts in general belong to the everyday domain while the shifts in the natural science texts belong to a specialized domain. The shifts in the social science texts had features of both domains. A secondary aim of the thesis is to develop the understanding of the relationship between author and reader in the texts. The results from my investigation of modality in the Swedish textbook texts confirm the earlier findings from English and Spanish textbooks. In comparison to other text types, textbook texts present knowledge in a more authoritative and less modalized way. From time to time, abstraction is described as a feature that hinders students accessing texts. Some researchers even suggest a removal of features of specialized language in textbook texts, in order to increase students’ understanding. However, in a society where specialized knowledge is necessary, the access to specialized texts is important. A democratic view of education and school mandates that children and adolescents have the opportunity to encounter and learn to encounter specialized language in school. In analyzing the texts special attention is paid to the relationship between the texts, the contexts of use and the student readers.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Proficient reading is a necessary skill for a quality life. While educators would like to believe that most students master the art of reading and can understand what they read, national reports indicate that learning to read and becoming a skilled reader is not mastered by all (No Child Left Behind Act, 2001 ; NICHD, 2000a). One component of successful reading is the ability to read a text with appropriate speed, accuracy, and prosody. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (Pinnell et al., 1995) reported that 44% of the nation's fourth grade students were not able to read at an acceptable level of fluency that was considered necessary for comprehension. Since the publication of that report, research has shown that with direct instruction and remediation of fluency, students in the elementary grades can increase their reading rate. One of the most common fluency intervention techniques is repeated readings (Samuels,1979). However, most of the studies completed include ele mentary students and were focused on increasing their reading rate. Some students are arriving at the secondary level with reading problems which include fluency and comprehension. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine the effect of repeated readings on the rate, accuracy, and comprehension of students with disabilities at the secondary level. This study involved a total of 35 students with learning disabilities in grades 6-9. A quasi-experimental design was used for this study. The treatment group received a total of 20 sessions of repeated reading with immediate feedback., goal setting, and independent practice with graphing of reading rate. The comparison group continued their reading instruction with no fluency intervention.The results indicate that this combination of repeated readings had a significant influence on reading rate only. / The other two variables, accuracy and comprehension, did not improve significantly in the treatment group when compared to the comparison group. / by Janice M. Russell. / Thesis (D.Ed.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2012. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2012. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

At the high school level teachers are often departmentalized by their content area and do not teach subjects outside of their specialties. Common Core State Standards (CCSS) introduced literacy standards across the curriculum requiring reading and writing instruction in all courses. The adoption not only affected traditional literacy teachers but also science, math, social studies, and career and technical education teachers who may have had little or no training or experience in teaching literacy to adolescents. These teachers, because of little training or experience in teaching literacy, may feel unprepared for the CCSS literacy shifts or inadequate in delivering literacy instruction. This study was designed to explore teacher perceived self-efficacy after the implementation of new literacy standards in Tennessee. The purpose of this study was to evaluate high school teachers’ perceptions with regard to self-efficacy and literacy instruction across the curriculum. Data were collected through online, voluntary surveys using Likert scaling and one open-ended response question. The sample included Tennessee high school teachers from 3 counties in Tennessee First Core Region 1 high schools who had taught math, science, social studies, career and technical education, or ELA. This study found no significant difference based on self-efficacy and content area, level of teaching experience, or gender. There was also no significant difference based on literacy efficacy and level of teaching experience or gender. There was a significant difference based on literacy efficacy and content area. ELA teachers were more significantly confident in teaching literacy than nonELA teachers.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

Since in our educational system a great deal of learning is supposedly dependant upon a child's ability to read and assimilate information from textbooks, this study investigated what reading skills are required by a second language reader of English to read textbooks with comprehension and understanding in relation to the reading skills of a competent reader and how Ciskeian Standard 6 pupils perform in relation to a Geography text prescribed at that level. A test, designed to measure eight reading comprehension skills, was given to a sample of 250 children from four schools in Zwelitsha, Ciskei, to establish whether the subjects are able to: a) give the literal meaning of words; b) derive the appropriate meaning of an ambiguous word from the context in which it appears; c) find answers to questions by making direct reference to the text; d) identify the major points and details in a text; e) use the information in the text to predict what the writer is going to talk about next; f) find the referent for anaphoric terms; g) use discourse markers to predict information/meaning to come, and see the relationships between what they have just read and what they are about to read; h) activate and use the background knowledge and schemata that they have to understand the text topic.The results of this study indicate that these children are: a) unfamiliar with the structure of expository texts; b) linguistically bound to a text and that they fail to use linguistic and contextual clues even when they are explicit in the text. The study also shows that the ability to make inferences and predictions is determined to a large extent by the prior knowledge and background experience that a pupil brings with him to the text and by his ability to activate that background knowledge. The findings suggest that in the English classroom, in an English as a second language (L2) medium situation, the L2 teacher has a responsibility to prepare the child for the study, which includes reading, writing, listening and speaking, of all subjects across the curriculum through the second language, which is the medium of instruction

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The purpose of this project is to provide a useful model, the Concept Attainment Model in Mathematics, which implicates the concept attainment teaching method based on adjunct content-based instruction by using visuals and manipulatives in order to help ESL students be successful for both substantive content areas.

In Grades 3 to 5 at a suburban southeastern elementary school, the percentage of students with disabilities (SWDs) who do not meet state standards in science and social studies is greater than that of their nondisabled peers. To address this disparity, district administrators required that proficiency ratings increase for SWDs without providing general education (GE) teachers with training. A qualitative bounded case study was used to understand how GE teachers constructed their knowledge of and met SWDs instructional needs and to understand GE teachers' needs as they worked toward meeting the district goals. Piaget's constructivist learning theory served as the conceptual framework for this study. A purposeful sample of 6 GE teachers, 2 each from Grades 3-5 whose classrooms included SWDs, volunteered to participate in open-ended interviews. Qualitative data were analyzed using provisional coding and pattern coding. A primary finding was that the participants identified teacher collaboration and professional development necessary to accommodate SWDs in the GE setting. This finding led to a recommendation that school leaders provide ongoing professional development for GE teachers as well as ongoing opportunities for collaboration between GE and special education teachers. These endeavors may contribute to positive social change by providing GE teachers instructional strategies and accommodations for meeting the learning needs of SWDs to increase the number and percentage of SWDs who meet the state standards and district goals in science and social studies.

This investigation was designed to determine if teaching vocabulary through integrating English and Social Studies curricula would provide tenth grade students who are poor readers with strategies to improve their reading comprehension. The strategies used were designed to support struggling readers and English language development students to connect denotative and connotative meanings of words found in the novel Animal Farm to their social studies class' content.