Honors Program

Midway Honors, Honors in Teacher Education

Date of Award

5-2020

Thesis Professor(s)

LaShay Jennings

Thesis Professor Department

Curriculum and Instruction

Abstract

From the minute a student walks into her first day of kindergarten, she is learning to read and write. Reading and writing are reciprocal in nature, using the same composing processes (Roe, Smith, & Kolodziej, 2019). Interchangeable thinking skills are essential for both reading and writing, such as analyzing, identifying, inferencing, evaluating, and comparing (Roe, Smith, & Koldziej, 2019). Published research over time suggested that instruction focused on teaching students the craft and mechanics of writing significantly contributed to the overall improvement across the spectrum of literacy development (Cutler, 2015;Raphael, 2019; Wright, 2016). However, studies also suggested that teachers of all grade levels tend to vary in their approach to teaching writing (Newmark, B., Speck, D., Amesbury, E., Lough, C., Belgutay, J., Lowe, J., … Hepburn, H, 2018). This study was focused on understanding how two elementary level teachers interpreted writing curriculum and carried out instruction in their respective classrooms. Qualitative methodological procedures were employed through interviewing both educators and observing their writing instruction. The collected data was analyzed through inductive thematic analysis and findings included: 1) both teachers believed that writing instruction matters; 2) both teachers followed the curriculum as they learned in teacher professional development; 3) writing instruction varied according to primary versus elementary contexts.

Publisher

East Tennessee State University

Document Type

Honors Thesis - Open Access

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Copyright

Copyright by the authors.

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