Browsing by Subject "Middle school"
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Item Co-teaching: a look-back, a look-ahead, and the look-fors(MinneTESOL - Minnesota Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, 2014) Honigsfeld, Andrea; Dove, Maria G.Item Cutting to the Common Core: analyzing informational text(MinneTESOL - Minnesota Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, 2014) Kinsella, KateItem Expectations, socialization and safe spaces: an exploration of the experiences of middle school students with disabilities(2014-05) Johnson, Lisa AnnHistorically, disability has been understood as a strictly individualized medical experience and considered a deficit. The person with a disability needed to be treated or rehabilitated by professionals. Recently, the social model of disability has offered a different perspective, one that situates disability within a social context. The "problem" of disability does not reside within an individual but instead within the social structures, policies and environment that create unnecessary barriers for a person. These barriers certainly can be found in our schools, and this study explored how one rural middle school, recognized regionally as "doing great things for students with disabilities," responded to the social and academic needs of its special education population. This year-long ethnographic study began in the summer of 2011 when I began meeting with school personnel to learn the norms of the special education program. During the school year, I was present four to five full days per week. Data collection methods included participation observation in formal spaces (classrooms) and informal spaces (cafeteria, hallways, recess and field trips), individual and small group interviews and document collection and analysis. While many students and staff made this study possible, my focal participants included 18 students in grades five through eight, four parents, many teachers and aides and two school administrators. I focused on three areas of interest. The first was related to the school's use of formal curriculum for educating "about the other" (Kumashiro, 2002) that took the form of a disability unit. Students "put on" disabilities during simulations, completed research and gave speeches related to the medical nature of disability. This succeeded in reaffirming traditional stereotypes of disability as a strictly medical problem or personal tragedy. A second focus was on the ways expectations for students with disabilities were communicated through the students' access to meaningful, high quality instruction and in the ways staff talked to and about students with disabilities. In many instances, students experienced "dumbed down" instruction, if they received instruction at all, that did not meet their individual needs. In other situations, students were talked about in violent ways that indicated some teachers' perceptions that students with disabilities were not capable of a meaningful existence. A final area of focus explored the unlikely safe space that occurred in a detention classroom. Students gathered, by choice, to support one another and figure out what it meant to be marginalized in this school. This work responds to a call for research done by researchers who are themselves disabled with children and teens who are disabled and has implications for how we think about and teach students with disabilities in our schools.Item Listen(MinneTESOL - Minnesota Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, 2015) Smith, JackieItem A mixed methods investigation of flow experience in the middle level instrumental music classroom(2014-08) Clementson, Casey JillABSTRACT:A Mixed Methods Investigation of Flow Experience in the Middle Level Instrumental Music Classroom Casey J. Clementson - University of Minnesota Flow theory (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) has potential to frame research on the quality of a student's experience in the classroom. The purpose of this mixed method study was to explore selected factors that may impact a student's frequency of flow experiences in a middle school band and how these flow experiences may relate to achievement and enjoyment. A convergent parallel mixed methods design was employed in which quantitative and qualitative data were collected concurrently, analyzed separately, and then merged. Quantitative data were collected in the form of repeated surveys of students in four classrooms; the qualitative method of inquiry was a case study of an eighth grade band. Results of a hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) analysis indicated that the factors of type of activity, self-determination, and a match between teacher and student perception of a student's self-efficacy were significant predictors of the balance between challenge and skill, or the flow channel. Results from the qualitative data analysis suggested that the teacher and students bring their own values, beliefs, and needs to create an overall band culture. The intent of the band culture is to create intrinsically motivated musicians. A continuum of flow opportunity was theorized; students move back and forth along the continuum based on their individual development. Merged data indicated convergence and divergence between the quantitative and qualitative data. Further research to explore developmentally appropriate and meaningful measures of flow for middle school students is recommended, along with expanding the sample when studying flow experiences (with quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods designs).Item Presenting academic language to mainstream teachers(MinneTESOL - Minnesota Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, 2014) Mabbott, Ann SaxItem The relationship between student engagement and standardized test scores of middle school students: does student engagement increase academic achievement?(2012-09) Scheidler, Matthew JamesThe public education system in the United States is under increasing pressure to provide an equitable, effective, and relevant education for all students. In the United States, nearly one of every three students who begin high school does not graduate from high school, resulting in an earning gap of approximately $10,000 annually between students who graduate from high school and those who drop out of high school (Alliance for Excellent Education, 2009). The potential of millions of students, as well as society at large, is threatened by the fact that more than 50% of minority students drop out of high school before they graduate, limiting their access to opportunity for the rest of their lives (Orfield, 2009). The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between student engagement (behavioral, cognitive, and emotional) and the standardized test scores of eighth grade students in three Wakta middle schools. A quantitative survey was used to access 8th graders` perception of their behavioral, cognitive, and emotional engagement. The engagement data was correlated to standardized test scores and demographic data for each student. Further analysis revealed increased engagement has a direct correlation to increased academic achievement. An academic achievement gap between minority students and white students exists in nearly every school district in the United States, and the Wakta school district is not immune to this educational and social reality. If our citizenry does not have the critical thinking, problem solving, or communication skills to compete in the globalized economy, jobs that would have been available to Americans will be outsourced to people who do have the requisite skills (Wagner, 2008).Item A tale of two grades: an evaluation of Grading for Learning, a middle school grading reform(2013-11) Pekel, Katie InezThis developmental evaluation used multiple methods to evaluate the implementation of a grading reform initiated by two math teachers in a large traditional middle school in greater Minnesota. The reform, titled "Grading for Learning," was developed based on a review of scholarly research and a collaboration of an interdisciplinary group of teachers and the principal. The approach required assigning two grades: a knowledge grade, which was based primarily on student assessments, and a life skills grade, which was based on a rubric that assigned scores for effort, behavior and timeliness. The evaluation studied the perceptions of students and staff regarding the separation of the two grades, if they found the changes in practice useful and if the reform in grading promoted greater alignment between:a.Subjective teacher evaluation of student knowledge as measured by the knowledge grade and an objective measure of student knowledge as indicated by scores on a standardized achievement test b.Teacher evaluation of student knowledge as measured by the knowledge grade and teacher evaluation of student effort as measured by the life skills effort grade c. Teacher perception of student effort as measured by the life skills effort grade and student perception of effort as measured by a survey.The evaluation concluded that staff and students generally perceived the separation of a single grade into the knowledge grade and life skills grade positively. Students and staff reported that the changes in grading were useful for many reasons, although most notably because they had a clear understanding of what students knew about a particular subject as reported by the knowledge grade. Finally, changes in practices of calculating the knowledge grade increased the correlation of the knowledge grade and state standardized test scores. There was also moderate correlation between knowledge grades and life skills grades.Item Teachers learning together to enact culturally relevant pedagogy for English learners: a call to reclaim PLCs(MinneTESOL - Minnesota Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, 2014) Benegas, MichelleItem Youth Engagement and the Impacts of Socially Just Classroom Curriculum in the Time of COVID-19(2021-12) Bolthouse, Ivy I.