Term
Spring 2020
Capstone
Thesis
Degree Name
MALED
Primary Advisor/Dissertation Chair
Julia Reimer
Secondary Advisor/Reader One
Cynthia Maldonado
Abstract
The research question addressed in this study was: How does the research recommend using mentor texts to support primary Spanish immersion students while engaged in independent writing activities? More specifically, the study examines students’ engagement with writing and use of punctuation, regular present verb tense and regular past verb tense. A qualitative action research method was used as this study took place in an educational setting. During a four month period this study examined how the implementation of mentor texts affected the writing and engagement of 21 second grade Spanish immersion students. Participants were asked to complete a pre-and postintervention drawing survey to express their feelings about writing and then were given a pre-intervention writing task in order to assess their writing prior to the implementation of mentor texts as a tool for writing instruction. Following the pre-intervention task, the teacher used three different mentor texts as an anchor for writing lessons where students then completed writing tasks using the mentor text as an example. A triangulation approach was adopted in order to gather data using several tools including, artifact analysis, surveys, and frequent student observations. Data revealed a mostly positive impact in correlation to the implementation of mentor texts both for students’ writing achievements and engagement. The study reveals that the positive outcome could largely come from the highly motivating texts and nature of mentor texts. Finally, this study concludes that mentor texts are an effective tool for writing instruction for students in a language immersion program.
Keywords
mentor texts, Spanish immersion, independent writing activities
Recommended Citation
Sheldon, Jessie, "Mentor Text Writing for Language Immersion Students" (2020). School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations. 4490.
https://digitalcommons.hamline.edu/hse_all/4490
dc_type
text
dc_publisher
DigitalCommons@Hamline
dc_format
application/pdf
dc_source
School of Education Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations