A Teacher in the Living Room? Educational Media for Babies, Toddlers, and Preschoolers

Examines available research, and arguments by proponents and critics, of electronic educational media use by young children. Examines educational claims in marketing and provides recommendations for developing research and product standards

Driving forces in free visual search : An ethology

Peer reviewedPostprin

Texts and Tasks in Elementary Project-Based Science

Standards-based reforms in K-12 literacy and disciplinary education call for engaging students in meaningful uses of literacy tools of reading, writing, and oral language in service of participating in disciplinary practices and building disciplinary knowledge. Despite calls for educational reform and the introduction of new academic standards, such as the Common Core State Standards (CCSSO, 2010) and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013), too few K-12 classrooms have meaningfully taken up these ideas in curriculum and instruction. For example, literacy instruction has long been divorced from knowledge building. Further, limited instructional time for disciplinary instruction in elementary classrooms poses challenges to achieving the objectives outlined in rigorous standards-based reforms. One approach to addressing these problems is the thoughtful integration of literacy and science instruction in the elementary grades. In this dissertation study, I investigated the design and enactment of texts and tasks in an elementary project-based science curriculum. The following research questions guided this study: (1) How do texts and related tasks, designed for – and enacted in – project-based science instruction, support or constrain third-graders’ knowledge building and development of foundational and disciplinary literacies? (2) How might modifications to texts and tasks within the designed curriculum better support third-graders’ knowledge building and literacy development? This study took place in one third-grade classroom with 31 students and their teacher across a full year of project-based science instruction. The focal curriculum, Multiple Literacies in Project-based Learning (MLs), integrates science, English language arts, and mathematics, and addresses the three-dimensional learning goals of the NGSS and select CCSS. Within and across MLs units, students had multiple opportunities to read and interpret a variety of traditional print, multimodal, and digital texts. The teacher was an experienced elementary school teacher and a second-year participant in the MLs project. I used design-based research (Brown, 1992; Collins, 1992) and case study methods (Stake, 1995) to investigate the design, enactment, and improvement of focal texts and tasks. I used conjecture mapping (Sandoval, 2014) to identify salient and theoretically compelling features of the design of the instructional intervention, focused on literacy integration, and to map how features of the designed curriculum and the teacher’s enactment worked together to produce specific outcomes. Data sources for this study included field notes and videos of classroom observations, interviews with focal students and their teacher, artifacts, and the designed curriculum materials. Focal students were selected to represent a range of reading achievement and to reflect the demographics of the class. Findings indicated that: (a) the pairing of texts and tasks in the context of project-based science instruction created meaningful purposes for students to read and interpret multimodal informational texts; (b) the design and enactment of texts and tasks engaged students in using text in service of disciplinary knowledge-building and practice, creating opportunities for – and supporting – students’ science and literacy learning; and (c) texts served as tools for creating and sustaining coherence in PBL. I also identified missed opportunities within the design and enactment of the curriculum, which may have constrained students’ opportunities to learn in the context of project-based science instruction. These findings can inform revisions to the design of the MLs curriculum, and have implications for future curriculum design, the availability and use of informational text in elementary-grade classrooms, and educational policy.PHDEducational StudiesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/144100/1/mfitzge_1.pd

Outside of School Activities that May Foster Emergent Literacy Abilities of First Graders

As I have shown through the finding of my research, reading, writing, listening, speaking, viewing, and visually representing begin at an early age and involves parents and other family members as well as the children themselves. I have learned through my study that each child partakes in literacy in his or her own way. Aspects of gender, race, and socio-economic status did not play a large role in the students\u27 involvement in literacy activities outside of the classroom. The literacy experiences do often vary, depending on these factors, but each child in my classroom participated in literacy in one way or another. I did notice, however, that oftentimes it was the parent who helped promote or demote literacy outside of school. In addition, students often participated in events outside of the classroom that directly connected to experiences that occurred inside of the classroom. The findings of this study show that it is never too early to start instilling the love of literacy outside of school. A child\u27s attitude toward literacy is affected by the way reading, writing, listening, viewing, writing, and visually representing are presented to him/her. In order for a child to succeed in school, literacy needs to be a meaningful, rich experience in which he or she can participate daily

Media Ecologies

In this chapter, we frame the media ecologies that contextualize the youth practices we describe in later chapters. By drawing from case studies that are delimited by locality, institutions, networked sites, and interest groups (see appendices), we have been able to map the contours of the varied social, technical, and cultural contexts that structure youth media engagement. This chapter introduces three genres of participation with new media that have emerged as overarching descriptive frameworks for understanding how youth new media practices are defi ned in relation and in opposition to one another. The genres of participation—hanging out, messing around, and geeking out—refl ect and are intertwined with young people’s practices, learning, and identity formation within these varied and dynamic media ecologies

The Advantages of Using Films to Enhance Student’s Reading Skills in the EFL Classroom

Having students who are exposed to different media and technology resources, from audio to printed material students lack the motivation for learning in conventional way. For this reason, teaching English, finding ways and materials to make the learning experiences for EFL students more engaging and interesting has become more challenging than ever. This is the main reason why English language teachers always keep searching for more motivating teaching sources. Although most of course books have CD‘s and DVD enclosed, these turn out to be less authentic and not very engaging for students. In order to bring the variety into the classroom many teachers use films in EFL teaching. Films are usually seen as a media that attracts students’ attention, present language in a more natural (interactive) way that found in course-books. What is more important films offer a visual context aids which help students understand and improve their reading skills. This paper analyzes the effects of using films in the EFL classroom. It reveals it effects on developing students reading and communication skill. Keywords: media, films, teaching English, reading skill, comprehension.