Research Spotlight: Joshua Wilson
December 15, 2022
To help educators better understand the advantages of common and novel methods for assessing student writing, UD associate professor Joshua Wilson and his co-authors examined the reliability of hand-scoring and automated evaluation software (AES) in assessing the writing of upper-elementary students with different writing abilities. Using multivariate generalizability theory and …
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CEHD Research Spotlight: Stephanie Del Tufo and Ye Shen
June 1, 2022
In a recent study, University of Delaware education doctoral candidate Ye Shen and assistant professor Stephanie Del Tufo examined the effect of parent-child reading on the emergent literacy—or developing reading skills—of heritage language learners (bilingual children who speak a language other than English at home but receive instruction in English …
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Literacy Lessons
April 29, 2022
Teachers and prospective teachers often want to include topics about equity and social justice in their classrooms — and are expected to do so under national education standards — but adding new material to their already crowded instructional schedules can be daunting. Now, however, a project developed at the University …
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Child’s Play
August 13, 2021
When you are a child, you are not really a child — at least not all the time. You are also a dinosaur. A wizard. A hot air balloon operator crash-landing into a dodo bird colony off the coast of Madagascar. In other words, playtime is fun. And imaginative. And, …
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Bilingual Special Education
August 12, 2021
Melissa Lewis is an elementary education major with concentrations in English as a second language and special education. Lewis also is pursuing a minor in Spanish. She is from Newark, Delaware, and she plans to continue this research throughout the 2021-2022 academic year. She expects to graduate from the University …
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Story Time During the Pandemic
October 26, 2020
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray Go throw your TV set away And in its place you can install a lovely bookshelf on the wall. — Roald Dahl in his classic children’s book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Though published in 1964, Dahl’s words continue to reflect the attitudes …
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Seaford, Delaware: Fast Improvement in Delaware
December 9, 2019
School of Education professor and Professional Development Center for Educators Director Sharon Walpole is featured on the latest episode of the ExtraOrdinary Districts podcast. She discusses her open-access literacy curriculum Bookworms K-5 Reading and Writing. Closing the achievement gap between school districts depends on several factors, many of which are …
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New study shows early reading in any language helps children learn to read English
September 24, 2019
A new study co-authored by the University of Delaware’s Steven Amendum has found that children who had strong early reading skills in their native Spanish language when they entered kindergarten experienced greater growth in their ability to read English from kindergarten through fourth grade. Importantly, when the researchers factored in …
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Learning To Be “Bookworms”
August 8, 2019
Not that long ago, some of Delaware’s lowest-performing schools could be found in the neighboring school districts of Seaford and Laurel, both of which serve rural, high-poverty communities in the southwestern corner of the state. In 2014, Seaford ranked last in English Language Arts (ELA) and Math, according to assessments by …
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Reading to Children
April 29, 2019
In the eyes of a child who is learning how to read, touchscreen tablets and “smart” technology are no substitute for a living, breathing adult. At least, that’s according to new research by University of Delaware doctoral student Daniela Avelar. The cognitive benefits a child experiences when reading with an …
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From Students to Scholars
March 27, 2019
As an assistant professor in the University of Delaware’s School of Education (SOE), Joshua Wilson frequently employs undergraduate assistants to provide support for grant-funded research projects. For some projects — as with a recent $400,000 research grant from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) — Wilson may need to assemble …
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Faculty Awarded $3.3 million Dept. of Education Grant
February 15, 2019
Research grant will fund professional development to benefit English learners Steve Amendum and colleagues from Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are seeking to develop a comprehensive teacher professional development (PD) program aimed at increasing collaboration between classroom and English-as-a-Second Language (ESL) teachers to benefit young Latinx English …
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