The evaluation of the effectiveness of new writing and problem-solving classes and their impact on fourth grade New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge Test scores

The purpose of this study was to determine whether or not two new programs created for Bellmawr Park School would be effective in raising scores in the New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge (NJ ASK) test for fourth grade students. This research provided a pre and posttest for 62 fourth grade students in the 2003-04 academic school year. The tests included a brief open-ended Language Arts writing picture prompt and a Math problem-solving open-ended question. Both tests were scored using rubrics created by the New Jersey Department of Education, and the results were compared based on means, medians and modes to obtain individual class scores for each area, as well as all of the fourth grade students. Based on the findings, each individual class improved in both the Language Arts and Math tests, and had their average rubric score raised at least one point. This indicated that progress was made and the writing and problem-solving classes impacted on test performance

Design and analysis of visual programming language for microcontroller systems

Conventional methods of programming microcontrollers using textual languages are hard to learn and are daunting to novice programmers seeking to learn microcontroller programming. Visual languages have always been regarded as a useful tool in helping non-programmers and novice-programmers to write programs. However there have been limited attempts at creating a visual language for microcontroller systems and there isn't a visual language for microcontrollers that is flexible and easy to use. This thesis presents a way of addressing the issue by creating a low level visual programming language for microcontroller systems. The low level visual programming language aims to alleviate the problem by using a fine grained language to improved flexibility and providing an integrated visual language environment in which users can focus on writing programs and solving problems. A visual language environment called CoreChart was developed for this purpose. CoreChart aims to simplify the process of programming microcontrollers by providing users with a tool to construct assembly programs visually. The visual language will utilize flow chart diagramming techniques to present users with a more meaningful view of the program. This allows users to focus on writing programs to solve problems, rather than on the rules and syntax of the language. The procedure of programming micro controllers is further simplified by automating the task of compiling the program and downloading the program into the microcontroller. A survey was conducted on university and high school students to evaluate the effectiveness of CoreChart.Thesis (M.Eng.Sc.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, 200

Literacy Competence Formation of the Modern School

In 2006  45 countries carried out  the international literacy survey which revealed  that the majority of 9-10 years children have not proper basic reading skills. Georgian children also took part in the survey. The fact that I work with futureteachers, who have to teach children to read and write, led me to become interested in this issue.Literacy is the basis in the formation of multi-educated personality. The national curriculum puts important tasks for school by foreseeing the aims of general education and public requirements, in order to develop students’ literacy competence. Literacy includes different kind of skills such as reading, writing, processing the information, ideas and opinions, decision-making and problem-solving. Students' writing and reading skills development is becoming an important part of modern school education. Native language program is beyond the scope of these skills, therefore it joins to subject departments responsibility. This includes enrichment of training programs with the new methods and a wide variety of reading materials. Any subject teacher should use the methods, strategies and activities that develop reading and writing skills and can provide with literacy-oriented environment. Keywords: literacy, modern school, competence, reading strategies, text comprehensio

Using a Repeated Measures ANOVA Design to Analyze the Effect Writing in Mathematics Has on the Mathematics Achievement of Third Grade English Language Learners and English Speakers

The gap that exists between English language learners and English speaking students’ achievement in mathematics continues to grow. Moreover, students are now required to show evidence of their mathematics knowledge through writing in standardized assessments and class assignments. The purpose of this study was to analyze students’ writing in mathematics and the metacognitive behaviors they portrayed through their writing as they solved mathematics problems. The instruments included a pretest, two biweekly tests, and a posttest. The writing instruction encompassed students learning to solve problems by using Polya’s four phases of problem solving which was completed in 12 sessions over a period of 6 weeks. Garofalo and Lester’s framework which renamed Polya’s phases into orientation, organization, execution, and verification, was used to look at the metacognitive behaviors students used. The participants included 67 students enrolled in four third grade classes, who were English language learners and English speakers. This research followed a quasi-experimental design, with a treatment group and a control group. A one-way repeated ANOVA was used to analyze the data. The findings showed no significant difference between the mathematics achievement scores of treatment and control. However, growth trends in achievement scores revealed that the treatment group scores were increasing faster than the control group scores across the four tests during the 6-week study. Moreover, significant differences were found between the treatment and the control groups when the problem solving with metacognitive behaviors scores were analyzed. Descriptive statistics showed the frequency of occurrence of each of the problem solving phases increased steadily across the four tests for the students in the treatment group. During the posttest, 100% of treatment group students wrote about metacognitive behaviors they used during the orientation and organization phases, 91.4% wrote about their metacognition for executing the solution, and 80% wrote about the verification process they followed. These findings are useful to education professionals who are interested in creating programs for teaching mathematics at the elementary level that include effective problem solving practices. This evidence-based method may be adopted in school districts with large populations of ELLs in order to assist these students when solving problems in mathematics

Mathematical literacy: A case study of pre-service teachers

This study addresses the question of whether or not pre-service teachers are ready and prepared to use and teach the highly-specialized language of each discipline. The disciplinary languages present teaching and learning challenges due to their lack of parallels in the daily language (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008). Additionally, the languages of the disciplines are rarely taught and are commonly acquired through an isolated representation of words without a situated meaning within the theory (Gee, 2002). The knowledge of the particular ways of reading, writing, listening to, and talking in the content areas provides opportunities for students’ apprenticeship within the disciplines required for success in higher education contexts (Dobbs, Ippolito, and Charner, 2017). Moreover, this study addresses the question of how future teachers develop disciplinary knowledge and skills. The purpose of this case study was to investigate how mathematical literacy is shaped and defined by the experiences, language, and disciplinary practices of pre-service teachers and experts in mathematics. This overall aim was unfolded by three guiding research questions: 1) What do the Experiences of Pre-Service Teachers and Experts in Mathematics Reveal about their Understanding of Mathematical Literacy? 2) RQ 2. How do pre-service teachers and experts in mathematics use language when solving mathematical problems? and 3) What literacy practices do pre-service teachers and experts in mathematics utilize when presented with modules that require mathematics problem-solving? To structure the elements of analysis for the participants’ responses, I adopted the theoretical support from the emerging disciplinary literacy framework, the novice-expert paradigm, and the tenets of M. K. Halliday’s functional linguistic theory (i.e., Systemic Functional Linguistics; [SFL]). Four faculty in the Department of Mathematics and four pre-service teachers in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at a large Midwest university agreed to participate in this case study. For the data collection, I asked the participants to participate in two sessions. In the first sessions, the participants responded to a semi-structured interview. Afterward, in a second session, the participants solved modules of mathematical problems following three protocols: a think-aloud, a silent-solving, and an oral-explanatory. The results of the participants’ responses to the semi-structured interview and the three protocols indicated that their experiences as learners and teachers of mathematics are tied to their definitions of literacy and disciplinary literacy. The SFL analysis showed that for the experts of mathematics, mathematical problem-solving is a more abstract and cognitive practice. The pre-service teachers’ registers indicated that mathematical problem-solving is experienced as more concrete and real practice. The unique literacy practices that these participants displayed showed the strong connection between language, literacy, and mathematical thought.The implications of this study are discussed in terms of the importance of language and disciplinary literacy in preparation for future teachers as they progress in their course of study within their teaching education programs

em Where do I begin? A problem solving approach to teaching functional programming

This paper introduces a problem solving method for teaching functional programming, based on Polya's `How To Solve It', an introductory investigation of mathematical method. We first present the language independent version, and then show in particular how it applies to the development of programs in Haskell. The method is illustrated by a sequence of examples and a larger case study

Teaching programming with computational and informational thinking

Computers are the dominant technology of the early 21st century: pretty well all aspects of economic, social and personal life are now unthinkable without them. In turn, computer hardware is controlled by software, that is, codes written in programming languages. Programming, the construction of software, is thus a fundamental activity, in which millions of people are engaged worldwide, and the teaching of programming is long established in international secondary and higher education. Yet, going on 70 years after the first computers were built, there is no well-established pedagogy for teaching programming. There has certainly been no shortage of approaches. However, these have often been driven by fashion, an enthusiastic amateurism or a wish to follow best industrial practice, which, while appropriate for mature professionals, is poorly suited to novice programmers. Much of the difficulty lies in the very close relationship between problem solving and programming. Once a problem is well characterised it is relatively straightforward to realise a solution in software. However, teaching problem solving is, if anything, less well understood than teaching programming. Problem solving seems to be a creative, holistic, dialectical, multi-dimensional, iterative process. While there are well established techniques for analysing problems, arbitrary problems cannot be solved by rote, by mechanically applying techniques in some prescribed linear order. Furthermore, historically, approaches to teaching programming have failed to account for this complexity in problem solving, focusing strongly on programming itself and, if at all, only partially and superficially exploring problem solving. Recently, an integrated approach to problem solving and programming called Computational Thinking (CT) (Wing, 2006) has gained considerable currency. CT has the enormous advantage over prior approaches of strongly emphasising problem solving and of making explicit core techniques. Nonetheless, there is still a tendency to view CT as prescriptive rather than creative, engendering scholastic arguments about the nature and status of CT techniques. Programming at heart is concerned with processing information but many accounts of CT emphasise processing over information rather than seeing then as intimately related. In this paper, while acknowledging and building on the strengths of CT, I argue that understanding the form and structure of information should be primary in any pedagogy of programming