This study examined reading programs in 68 Texas elementary schools that were identified as successful by their scores on TAAS assessment results in the 1999-2000 school year. These schools’ student populations had a high proportion of culturally diverse and low-SES students. The purposes of this study were: (1) to determine if and how teaching methods and collaboration (intervention/support teams) were used by effective schools to foster reading success in all students; (2) to identify cohesive patterns (clusters) or models in schools’ use of collaboration and teaching methods; (3) to examine these clusters of similar schools and see if the patterns differed based on the school/community demography (urban, suburban, or rural). The study was conducted in 68 schools in 33 school districts that represented various demographic settings from 12 different Education Service Centers across Texas. From these original 332 variables, 26 variables were selected that were of medium frequency and strongly correlated with high TAAS scores over a 4- year period. These 26 variables were used to examine the 68 high-performing Texas elementary schools for clusters. K-means analysis and HCA were both applied to the 26 response variables, using them as complementary techniques to arrive at a five cluster solution. Results from correlations of individual characteristics and from identifying school clusters suggested that school community type could possibly be moderately predictive of student performance on the TAAS/TAKS over time.

Syftet med mitt examensarbete är att få svar på hur en grupp elever i årskurs 9 i tyska funderar över sin språkinlärning i tyska. Utgångspunkten för min kvalitativa undersökning i klassrummet är två texter från Skolverket (2022a) som kartläggningsmaterial i tyska i årskurs 9 för att utmana elevernas läsförståelse genom textläsning och textrelaterade frågor som är införda i det digitala verktyget Wordwall. Det är i grunden ett gratis digitalt verktyg och enkelt att använda i språkundervisningen. Som lärare skapar man innehåll i form av en eller flera Wordwall-aktiviteter kring det valda materialet. Målet med undersökningen är att eleverna ökar sitt ordförråd i samband med dessa texter och på det sättet får kännedom om vanligt förekommande uttryck i texterna. Genom textläsning kan eleverna lära sig nya ord i ett sammanhang som säkert upplevs mer meningsfullt än att endast plugga med hjälp av ordlistor. Huvudresultatet som framkommit i min studie är att eleverna uttryckte sig skriftligt om sina uppfattningar kring sin språkinlärning och Wordwallprojektet. Insikterna dokumenteras med hjälp av en kvalitativ utvärdering av elevernas enkätsvar för att belysa deras uppfattningar. / The purpose of my degree project is to get answers to how a group of Swedish students in grade 9 think about their language learning in German. The starting point för my qualitative investigation in the classroom are two texts from the Swedish National Agency for Education (2022a) as mapping material in German in grade 9 to challenge the students’ reading comprehension through text reading and text-related questions that are introduced in the digital tool Wordwall. It is basically a free digital tool and easy to use in language teaching. As a teacher, you create content in the form of one or more Wordwall activities around the selected material. The goal of the survey is for the students to increase their vocabulary in connection with these texts and in that way gain knowledge of commonly occurring expressions in the texts. By reading texts, students can learn new words in a context that is certainly perceived to be more meaningful than studying only with the help of word lists. The main result that emerged from my study is that the students expressed themselves in writing about their perceptions regarding their language learning and the Wordwall project. The insights are documented using a qualitative evaluation of the students’ survey responses to illuminate their perceptions.