Copyright (c) 2013 Grand Valley State University All rights reserved. http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/coeawardwinners Recent documents in Award Winners en-us Fri, 25 Jan 2013 22:21:34 PST 3600 http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/coeawardwinners/2 http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/coeawardwinners/2 Mon, 30 Jan 2012 06:25:42 PST Statistics from the United States Department of Education reveal that over half of the students in the United States lack foreign language proficiency. While immersion programs at the elementary level are the most successful model in helping students become proficient in a foreign language, they must have a clearly articulated curriculum. West Ottawa Public Schools recently began a Spanish immersion program, but lacks a Spanish reading curriculum. An evaluation of research reveals that the curriculum created for West Ottawa must capitalize on the fact that Spanish naturally divides into syllables and is an orthographically regular language. However, reading in Spanish still must be taught through a whole language approach that moves from whole-to-part and that is meaningful, integrated, and standards-based.

]]> Lisa Marie Domke http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/coeawardwinners/1 http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/coeawardwinners/1 Mon, 30 Jan 2012 06:25:40 PST English language learners (ELLs) must take the mathematics portion of state standardized tests regardless of their time spent in U.S. schools. This practice follows the misconception that mathematics is a ‘universal language’ and less language dependant, however, a significant performance gap between non-ELLs and ELLs on high stakes mathematics tests persists and must be addressed. In order to investigate the impact of language proficiency on high stakes test performance a cross-sectional study was conducted. The study included item performance data, by group, for 24,693 seventh and eighth grade students who took the 2007 and/or the 2008 mathematics Michigan Education Assessment Program (MEAP) assessment, and a questionnaire completed by 16 seventh and eighth grade participants for triangulation. The item performance data set was analyzed using a logistic regression model to determine the interaction effects between ELLs and non-ELLs based on item type, item language, and item strand. Cross tabulation, content, descriptive, and frequency analyses were conducted on the questionnaire responses. Findings from the logistic regression analyses show that the ratio in the odds of passing an item for ELLs and non-ELLs is affected by both whether that item was a computation or word problem, and also if a non-linguistic feature was present with p

]]> Deborah Elizabeth Schuitema