Elementary teachers can help students develop a critical literacy lens and learn how to question, analyze, and challenge assumptions. In turn, this can develop an inclusive classroom. My teacher action research looks at how critical literacy impacts both me, the teacher, and my fifth-grade students, in a predominantly White suburban public school over a school year. I was interested in analyzing how my students experience the critical literacy curriculum. The research was guided by the following research questions: (1) On what topics did I and my students focus? (2) What was the nature of my students’ engagement? (3) What positions did my students take up? Data consist of my reflective journal entries, classroom discussions, student work, student surveys, semistructured interviews with students, and discussions with two teacher colleagues. The data was analyzed using three lenses: student and teacher focus, student nature of engagement, and student positionality. A high level of student engagement with the critical literacy work was seen throughout the year and community building was an important part of this work. The reading and writing workshop approach supported the critical literacy work in many ways, including allowing for text selection by students and teachers and giving students time to collaborate, question, research, and take action. Finally, there is a messiness to this work, for teachers and students, that needs to be acknowledged, as well as an expectation to learn from mistakes and to listen to and learn from each other. Developing a critical literacy lens is a lifelong endeavor. / Educational Leadership

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the potential of Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) pedagogy to support English language learners (ELLs) in enhancing their meaning making potential as they engage in persuasive writing practices within academic contexts. The dissertation results from a teacher action research project in which the teacher researcher (the author) constructed qualitative case studies focusing on the teaching practice of a veteran ESL teacher (the researcher) and the persuasive writing practices of three middle school beginning level ELLs. Through data analysis methods drawing on SFL and intertextuality, the study illuminates connections between the SFL based teaching practice and the expanding linguistic repertoire of ELLs as they enact the genre of persuasive argument in the context of producing persuasive music reviews. Research methods are qualitative in nature and designed to attend to both the sociocultural context of teaching and learning as well as a linguistic analysis of written texts. Through a qualitative case study approach focusing on the literacy practices of three emergent bilingual middle school students and the reflective teaching practices of their veteran ESL teacher, the teacher researcher highlights how SFL pedagogy created space for urban middle school ELLs to participate in high interest language learning activities designed to increase their control over the semiotic resources needed to construct persuasive texts. The subsequent SFL and genre analysis of students' texts analyzes changes in the schematic structure and register variables of student texts aims to explore the intertextual connections between these changes and the SFL pedagogical practices described in the study. Data derive from multiple sources including student texts, videotaped interactions among classroom community members, field notes, lesson plans and instructional materials. The study offers important new directions in language teaching and learning as it demonstrates how SFL-based pedagogy can draw on the cultural and linguistic resources of ELLs to create a culturally relevant (Ladson-Billings, 1995) and permeable curriculum (Dyson, 2003) that both challenges the conceptualization of ELLs as students with a "deficit" and repositions them as skillful language users and text analysts.

Outdoor education in the UK has been growing in popularity and with it a further understanding of its benefits. Research shows that many young people still don’t access natural environments and many educators still struggle with how to provide them. This is particularly prevalent in urban environments where spatial inequality has been linked to a decline in health, well-being and personal development. Community mapping involves a community coming together to create a map of their locality and share local knowledge. This can take many forms. Sometimes it might be a traditional cartographic map while other times it may be stories, sculptures or poems. In this research I explore how community mapping can be used as a pedagogical tool, looking particularly at how it can help educators approach outdoor education in an urban environment. I take a teacher action research approach, inspired by previous art-based approaches to educational inquiry. Through doing a community mapping project with two groups of 8 to 10 year olds on an urban farm in central London I share the visable and often invisible components of our pedagogies, including children’s voices and work as well as the voice of myself and another educators, reflecting on the realities of outdoor education in an urban environment. I discover the cross curricular possibilities that such a project brings, the spaces it opens up for us to learn from children’s voices and the many ways in which community mapping can be used to address aims and goals of the UK primary curriculum. Community mapping can help educators overcome a lack of confidence in how to approach outdoor learning. The child-led nature of projects can allow children and educators to work together to co-create their understanding of the locality, noticing the small details they hadn’t seen before. It can provide a space for educators to learn more about how the young people they work with see the world around them while also providing authentic experiences that can be utilized in wider classroom learning. This research allows other educators to take away what resonates with them, with their experiences and pedagogies, and use these new understandings to enhance their own educational practices in their own settings.

The topic of my Diplome Thesis is Personal Education and its influence on the class climate at Primary School. In the theoretical part i describe the class climate, its participants, types, approaches and methods of its research. Thereafter, I explore how to optimize class climate. In the second part I describe the Personal and Social Edusation. I analyse the benefits of this croos- curricular topic, I split its contents on the topics and in conclusion, I analyse methodology principles and scheme of work with the aktivity of the Personal and Social Education. In the practical part I do the initial diagnosis of the climate in my class. It builds long- term interventions implemented activities of the Personal and Social Education, which is topped off with the final diagnosis. The comparison of both of the diagnostics, where it is showed a very positive shift, it illustrates the influence of Personal and Social Education in the class climate. Key words Primary school, class climate, diagnostics, Personal and Social Education, method, teacher action research

This thesis describes a level of communication among a class teacher, her pupils and the pupils themselves in a master class at a first stage, where the author works. The aim of the class teacher is to develop communicative competences that will lead to more effective communication in the class among the class teacher, her pupils and pupils themselves. The theoretical part gives a support to the practical part based on theoretical knowledge. It formulates specifics of pedagogical communication, features verbal communication, observes effective ways and barriers in communication. It submits tools by Personal and social education defining. The tools can reach expected outputs in communication defined in the National Curriculum and the Minimum Preventive Programme. The author introduces the teacher's personality and his skills as possible factors that affect the pupil's development. The practical part monitors the initial situation in the classroom. On the basis of a teacher action research the teacher wants to enhance communication efficiency. She uses the particular method of observation, reflection, Personal and social education techniques, audio and video recordings analysis and additionally verbal evaluation. She also relies on the application of the preventive programme. Data collection and the...