Date Approved

5-4-2026

Graduate Degree Type

Project

Degree Name

Education-Literacy Studies: Reading (M.Ed.)

Degree Program

Education Leadership & Counseling

First Advisor

Elizabeth Stolle

Academic Year

2025/2026

Abstract

Classrooms across the globe contain immensely diverse populations of students, many of which are not well represented in the texts that they interact with inside of the classroom. This becomes especially noticeable in the intervention setting, when students are already reading below the proficiency level for their grade and may already have doubts about their ability to fit in within the learning space. Read-alouds and repeated rereading are often heralded for their impact on literacy development, they can be utilized in the intervention setting using texts that help to foster student identity, empathy and belonging. This project is grounded heavily in the frameworks of Rosenblatt’s Reader Response theory and Ladson-Billings and Muhammad’s Culturally Relevant Pedagogy,  bringing to the forefront the impact that students’ culturally experiences and perspectives bring to their active relationship with the texts that they read and learn from.

Research has shown that intervention materials are not set up to allow students from minorities and different backgrounds to thrive. To address this gap, this project presents a curriculum unit employing diverse texts as the mentors in an intervention setting. These texts are used as a mentor for students to practice rereading to build fluency and practice one comprehension skill over the course of a week-long intervention. Additionally, it includes planning tools, a book list and graphic organizers that students can use inside and outside of the intervention setting to practice the skill in their reading.

Download

Share

COinS