Term

Spring 2019

Capstone

Capstone Project

Degree Name

MAEd

Facilitator(s)

Patty Born Selly

Content Expert

Sara Nelson

Abstract

There are countless articles about the Achievement Gap, but few offer concrete solutions. While the teaching force is “whitening,” the percentage of students of color is increasing. A small group of researchers have offered two new pedagogies as a way to help students of color and low-income students succeed: culturally responsive teaching and warm demander pedagogy. While there is literature on these two theories of pedagogy, there are few unit plans. This author created a 3rd grade reading unit entitled Readers Workshop Activist Book Review Unit using culturally responsive teaching, warm demander pedagogy and Wiggin’s and McTighe’s “backwards design” curriculum writing method. Students learned about famous activists in history from read alouds of children’s picture books, current activist movements and practiced nonviolent protest techniques. This project seeks to answer the author’s research question: How can I help to close the achievement gap in my classroom by using warm demander pedagogy and culturally responsive teaching? Students were highly engaged in these Readers Workshop Activist Book Review and were energized by practicing protest techniques. There were time limitations on the implementation of this curriculum. The research in this project suggests that teachers can help close the Achievement Gap by creating a social curriculum with warm demander pedagogy and an academic curriculum with culturally responsive teaching.

Project Type

Curriculum

Keywords

Curriculum, Multicultural Education, Social Justice, Culturally Responsive Pedagogy

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text

dc_publisher

DigitalCommons@Hamline

dc_format

application/pdf

dc_source

School of Education Student Capstone Projects

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