CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE

AN EXAMINATION OF CONTENT AREA READING AND ACADEMIC

VOCABULARY WITH FOURTH GRADE STRUGGLING READERS

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

For the degree of Master of Arts in Education,
Elementary Education

By

Rebecca Day Enns

December 2012

Thesis of Rebecca Day Enns is approved:

_____________________________________
Renee Ziolkowska, Ed. D.

__________________
Date

_____________________________________

__________________

Joyce H. Burstein, Ed. D

Date

_____________________________________

__________________

Dr. Connie L. White, Chair

Date

California State University, Northridge

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Acknowledgments
I would like to take this space to thank everyone who helped me complete my
thesis and Master degree. There are a lot of you, as it has taken a total of four years from
start to finish.
First, to my committee members:
Dr. Connie White, Dr. Joyce Burstein, and Dr. Renee Ziolkowska
Thank you for the tireless hours you spend reading, re-reading, and making corrections /
suggestions to my multiple drafts. You have been inspirational. To my chair, Dr. White, I
could not have done this without you, and such a great accomplishment will not soon be
forgotten in my lifetime. Thank you for your friendship, guidance, and support. You are a
wonderful educator!
Next, to my friends & co-workers:
Carrie Boyd, Kelly Bader, Lindsay Sadowski, Erin Juodvalkis, Laura & Miguel
Espinoza, Kristin Atkins, Anne Widney, Matt & Angelica Nelson, Jennifer Spence,
Alison ONeil, Amanda Montemayor, Casey Evans, Christine Tavares, Jessica Hansen &
all the others who asked nicely and listened patiently while I tried to sum up what this
study was all about and how it would be meaningful. Thank you for being there for me!
Finally, to my family:
Mom & Dad & Karen & Ray: Thank you for your support both financially and
emotionally. Thank you for never giving up hope that I would complete this degree. Love
you!
Amelia, Britton, & Thea Shurley: Thank you for inquiring, sending research, and
being willing to discuss and read drafts. Your support has meant the world to me.
Canyon Martens: Thank you for always answering your phone and for letting me
drone on about the study, the requirements, and how many hoops there were to jump
through. Thank you for always supporting and loving me through it all.
Andrew Enns: Thank you for being the type of husband who let me skip making
dinner, walking the dog, cleaning the house, and a multitude of other things so that I
could concentrate on graduate work.
To my new baby boy, Caydence, I dedicate this work to you. May you also pursue
your dreams and see them through to completion.

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Table of Contents

Signature Page

ii

Acknowledgements

iii

Abstract

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

16

Chapter 3

35

Chapter 4

56

Chapter 5

67

References

86

Appendix A

92

Appendix B

95

Appendix C

98

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ABSTRACT

AN EXAMINATION OF CONTENT AREA READING AND ACADEMIC

VOCABULARY WITH FOURTH GRADE STRUGGLING READERS

By
Rebecca Day Enns
Master of Arts in Education, Elementary Education

This study is an examination of fourth grade struggling readers in my 2010-2011 class.

Of my 28 students that year, eight of them were labeled as either low-performing readers
or English Language Learners (ELL). My purpose in this study was to try and discover
why my fourth grade students were struggling to read expository texts. I also examined
why these so-called struggling readers were entering the fourth grade already below
grade-level in their reading skills. In this study, digital medias and literacies were
introduced. The findings of this study suggest that students who struggle to read
informational texts at the beginning of fourth grade can improve by the close of the
school year when technology, digital literacies, and student interests are used to support
learning.

Chapter One
My teaching story
I started my teaching career in 2005, teaching fourth grade in the Neupall School
District and I have kept my job and grade level for the past seven years. As a beginning
teacher, I just wanted to survive and make my tenure so I taught everything by the book,
from the book, or based on someone elses direction. By this I mean, I taught directed
lessons from the reading series and used only the stories and literacy tactics provided for
me in that program. I did not do a lot of thinking or planning outside of the Houghton
Mifflin reading series. I now know that I was not a very effective reading teacher in my
early years as an elementary school teacher.
After a few years, I became more comfortable as a teacher and I decided to
branch out and start teaching reading the way I thought it should be taught. By this I
mean that I no longer used every story from the book, and began exploring outside
literacy. I found stories that I felt related to my students and their needs as readers and as
people. I started teaching more poetry and figurative language, areas where most of my
students struggled, and I tried to make reading and writing more fun in my classroom.
However, I still felt unprepared as a reading teacher. Around this time I also entered the
Masters program for reading at California State University, Northridge.
Through the Masters classes I was challenged to think about teaching reading
and writing in new ways. I realized that as a teacher I wasnt meeting the needs of my
students. Throughout my career I had been focused on meeting the measure of my
students success rather than their needs as learners. For example, in the last several years
of teaching, I have not been able to maintain a proficient language arts score for all of my
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students. When I use the word proficient, I am referring to an 80% or above on the
Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) assessment, which my district weighs very
heavily in terms of student/school progress. I am expected to report an 80% or higher for
all of my students in all subject areas, but with a particular emphasis on math and
language arts. I know that the California state test scores are only one measure, but it is a
deciding factor for many of my students. This score can affect where they are placed and
it can determine which future program they will attend.
In my district, these scores can also affect me as a teacher; my professional
planning and yearly teaching goals are based on student STAR scores from the previous
year. My areas of teaching weaknesses are addressed and targeted and professional
developments are even planned around these results. The STAR testing was the
assessment I had been using to evaluate my students success. I traveled through my
Masters program I realized that there were other learning needs that my students needed
to have addressed besides just how well they did on the STAR test.
In the fall of 2010, I entered the last year of my Masters classes and with a sense
of urgency. I needed to find a way to better meet the reading needs of my students, so I
decided to undergo the endeavor of writing a thesis in the hopes that through my study
and research I would come up with some ideas that would benefit my students as well as
improve my teaching skills.
Some of my favorite professors mentored me to think about the ideas and topics
that meant the most to me as a student and as a teacher. I realized I needed to focus on
meeting the needs of my students especially in the areas of reading and writing with

expository texts. This was an area I found my students always struggled with year after
year despite the fact that my district has a detailed district writing program to support me
as a teacher. To clarify, my district uses writing to teach a large portion of their reading
program.
Despite having a well organized district writing program to train and help teachers
teach writing and reading better, some of my students were still unable to recognize main
ideas in expository text or problem solve difficult vocabulary words that came up in the
text and were unfamiliar to them. I realized I needed to do more with these students than
just teach them how to write a summary of expository; I needed to break down the way
to read and comprehend an expository text, as well as find a way to interest these students
in topics of expository that would seem uninteresting to them upon first glance.
During my last year of on campus classes, I began to seek out opportunities to do
projects or papers that would help me find research to support my pursuit for new and
better teaching tools of expository text.
Teaching observations
Throughout my six years of teaching I observed that students were entering my
classroom with proficient reading grades and were immediately falling behind. By falling
behind, I mean that some of my students each year were not able to read and comprehend
expository text as easily or quickly as other students in my class. I noticed that many of
my students had more difficulties reading expository information than narrative stories.
This small group of students would not be able to move as quickly through the social
studies and science curriculum as the rest of the class. I also observed that this group of
3

students would do poorly on tests. It was as if these students knew how to read, but they
didnt really understand what they were reading about. I could tell many of my students
were struggling especially in the areas of science and social studies, where the reading is
dense and completely informational.
For example, one of the concepts taught in fourth grade science at the start of the
school year is the rock cycle. Within this one concept, students must learn about the three
types of rocks: igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary. Students must be able to define
the different attributes of these rocks as well as describe how these rocks are formed and
how they travel the rock cycle to help form one another in the process. Students must
also have background knowledge on minerals and how minerals combine to form certain
types of rocks. All of this information is just one introductory section of the fourth grade
science curriculum on rocks. From my classroom observations I have found that students
who are unfamiliar with expository information, who cannot decipher new academic
vocabulary, or who may be overwhelmed by the sheer density of information within the
reading will not do as well as other students who are not struggling to read or
comprehend the material.
As I discovered this trend, I felt a sense of urgency to help my students. I wanted
to find better ways to address their reading struggles and to be a teacher who was able to
really help them understand and love expository text, since that is the dominant type of
text they will encounter from elementary school until adulthood. I asked the questions,
why do my fourth grade students struggle with reading and how can I help students in my
fourth grade classroom who struggle with reading? These questions eventually became
the focus of my thesis study.
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As I continued to research about fourth grade students I stumbled upon a concept

called the fourth grade slump. Chall referenced this term in 1996, in his Stages of
Reading Development, stating that children in fourth grade undergo a shift from learning
to read to reading to learn. Furthermore, other researchers like, Sancore and Palumbo
(2009), affirmed for many students, a critical transition occurs when they enter fourth
grade (p.67). Finally, according to Gee (2008), the fourth grade slump is the educational
phrase used to describe children who appear to be reading well in primary grades, but
cannot read for learning purposes by fourth grade. Now, that I had a name for the
syndrome I had observed as a fourth grade teacher; I felt more empowered. I knew that I
was observing a problem that other teachers and researchers had also experienced. I was
further encouraged by my understanding of the slump when I came across research by
Spencer and Guillaume (2006) that reinforced the idea that content area reading requires
a knowledge of specific vocabulary, and without proper knowledge of these contentspecific vocabularies children will struggle to comprehend. It seemed to me that my
current struggle was not just a problem I was facing, but one that many teachers and
researchers had faced for years.
My students
In the 2010-2011 school year, I had 28 fourth grade students with various
academic needs. I had 14 girls and 14 boys, eight of these students struggled with
reading grade level appropriate texts. These eight students were identified at the start of
the school year and placed in an intervention reading pull-out program to help
supplement classroom instruction. My classroom is located within Silver Road
Elementary School in the city of Saint Clara. We are located about 30 miles north of Los
5

Angeles, California. The area around the school is named Silver Road and is known for
serving upper middle class families. However; the neighborhood has undergone
significant changes that have been brought on by the downturn in the economy. Many of
my students have had to transition to both parents working and working multiple jobs
with longer hours. They may have also been exposed to divorce due to economic stress,
or even the loss of a home due to the loss of parental jobs. Some of my students families
have even opened up their homes to renters or extended family members to save money
and sustain their home payments.
This change in the neighborhood and in family dynamics, in my observations, has
had some influence over my students struggles with reading. One of my theories behind
this trend is that because parents are more concerned with finding employment and are
feeling more stressed about providing for their families, less time is being devoted to
doing things like reading and talking with their children. These two activities are
imperative in building student background knowledge and vocabulary. Since a large
portion of my school population comes from the Korean, Chinese, and Indian
backgrounds, students who are normally grouped into the English Language Learner
population, or ELL population, the time parents are able to spend discussing reading and
English vocabulary words is invaluable. I feel that the economic changes have affected
the students and families I have in my classroom, and that the access my struggling
readers have to academic vocabulary has become more limited than in years of economic
success.
In the 2010-2011 school year, I had six students who were considered ELLs, and
were classified from the intermediate range through the advanced range on the California
6

English Language Development Test (CELDT) scale. I had one student designated
Resource who attended reading resource services four days a week and speech services
twice a week. I also had one student labeled as Attention Deficit Disorder, or ADD, who
could be high functioning (meaning this student would be able to perform classroom
tasks and engage in learning) when medication was administered.
Some of my ELL students, my Resource student with identified learning
disabilities, and my ADD student were among the small group of students who struggled
with reading comprehension, and were included in the intervention pull-out reading
program. There was also one boy, and one girl who were included in my lowest reading
group and were considered struggling readers although they were not classified by any
labels. These two students were also included in the intervention program. This reading
group became the inner focus of the study.
This group, my struggling readers, consisted of seven girls and one boy. One
reason I selected this group was because of their testing performance. These students
ranged from basic to proficient in the area of comprehension on the 2009-2010
Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) tests. In California, the STAR tests are used
to monitor student growth from year to year and also to determine placement of students
for intervention programs. Another reason I chose these students as a focus group was
because I had observed that they all had significant difficulties with comprehension of
expository text. These observations included lower reading test scores, difficulty
answering written comprehension questions about the reading text, and lack of ability to
communicate in both verbal and written forms the main idea of what had been read.

To me, these observations seemed strikingly similar to the research I had

discovered about the fourth grade slump. Although I used all of my students in this study,
I was particularly interested in how my struggling readers would perform within the
parameters of the study and whether or not the tactics used to address the fourth grade
slump would be sufficient enough to impact their struggles with reading expository text.
In the next section of this chapter I will briefly review three theories about
learning to read, how these theories can directly lead to the fourth grade slump, and how
the lack of exposure to expository texts in the primary years of life can all lead to the
makeup of a struggling fourth grade reader. I believe these theories are the root of my
problem. I feel these theories must be understood in order to further pursue ways to help
my struggling readers and to provide a bridge to reading expository texts with success.
Learning to read: Exploring Theory 1
The first idea I will explore is teaching of reading practices. This will help me
discover ways to better support my struggling readers. Gee (2004) argues there are three
processes of learning to read: instructed, natural and cultural. Instructed reading is also
known as direct instruction. Instructed reading comes from the traditional model
referred to as the industrial model or sometimes the basal reading model (Goodman,
Watson, & Burke, 2005). In this model, the reader must build skills in order to achieve
reading mastery. Each level of reading is dependent upon the mastery of the level before
it; therefore, direct instruction on each skill is needed in order for students to graduate in
the reading process. The instructed reading process requires students to master phonemic

awareness, phonics, oral fluency, and finally comprehension. Each stage is supposed to
guarantee the next. Its a virtual assembly line (Gee, 2004, p.4).
The natural reading process is the idea that all humans beings, excluding those
with learning disabilities, should be able to read in their native language (Cazden, 1972).
In the natural process of reading the view is taken that no matter how reading is taught
most children will learn to read.
The cultural process of learning to read deals with the idea that learning to read is
a necessity, and it should be taught by masters. The process involves masters creating
an environment rich in support for learners. Learners observe masters at work. Masters
model behavior accompanied by talk that helps learners know what to pay attention to
(Gee, 2004, p.6). This freedom to explore reading on their own and watch masterful
reading experts is what I believe Gee argues for when he suggests that the cultural
learning process and environment would be the best for students.
How this relates to the problem
These three processes of learning to read can and have dramatically affected how
students in my fourth grade classroom read. In addition, the way a child has been
introduced to life experiences or in contrast, the lack of background knowledge a child
has when entering fourth grade can affect how well he/she is able to connect and
comprehend text. From my teacher observations, I have tentatively concluded that my
small group of struggling readers, focused on in this case study, has in fact missed
building the prior knowledge that is needed to grasp the main ideas behind expository
texts.
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The fourth grade slump: Exploring Theory 2

The fourth grade slump is the next theory I will explore in my upcoming
chapters in hopes of discovering ways to support my students who struggle with reading
expository texts. The reason, according to Gee, that the fourth grade slump appears has
to do with the way reading is taught in schools. Research collected by Johnson &
Christensen (2004), suggests that schools have adopted the instructionalist theory, or the
idea that the teacher should be the main resource in the classroom while students should
be passive. Children who must learn reading primarily as an instructed process in school
are at an acute disadvantage (Gee, 2004, p.7). These students are not given the tools,
environment, or cultural learning process they need in order to really learn how to read.
These children are learning the systems of reading, but not the meaning of reading.
Students need to build background knowledge based on life experience to draw
conclusions from expository text. The fourth grade slump is made up of kids who can
read in the sense of decoding and are able to assign superficial literal meaning to texts,
but cant read in the sense of understanding, in any deep way, informational texts
written in fairly complex language ( Gee, 2004, p.9).
How this relates to the problem
These reading deficits become noticeable in fourth grade because reading in
fourth grade changes. Once a student reaches upper elementary school, notably, fourth
grade, they are required to not only read familiar text fluently such as narrative stories,
but they are also required to read unfamiliar informational text.

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In the most recent years of my teaching, in accordance with the economic

downturn, as previously mentioned, I have also observed that some students are suffering
in their reading development because of the lack of resources and support available at
home.
Underexposure to expository texts: Exploring Theory 3
The last theory I will explore in my upcoming chapters is about expository texts
and my students lack of access to them. I will look at why some of my students struggle
to read expository texts, and why it is that prior to fourth grade the reading programs used
in elementary schools are made up of mostly narrative stories.
How this relates to the problem
Narrative stories encourage readers to participate with the text through character
connection and setting descriptions. Informational, expository text, however, does not
have the same draw for readers because the content is more academic, includes more
unfamiliar vocabulary, and is usually less interactive for readers than traditional stories.
Students are expected to know and have mastered academic vocabulary terms in order to
read and understand expository texts in fourth grade.
My struggling readers
So far I have given a brief overview of what will be discussed in this study. In
order to enhance comprehension of my study, it is necessary to elaborate on my focus
group of struggling readers. As previously mentioned the group included seven girls and
1 boy. The group was made up of three low-scoring (STAR) students, who will be

11

referred to as Robert, Claire and Sonya; one RSP student, Jamie; one ADD student I
will refer to as Sandra and three ELL students I will refer to as, Angel, Edna, and
Alison. This group of students had been identified for me by my school administration
prior to the start of the 2010-2011 school year. I also did baseline assessments for all my
students at the beginning of the school year and found that my assessments also identified
these struggling readers as students who needed extra support with reading
comprehension. In particular, I found that these students needs specifically more support
with expository text comprehension. Therefore I did agree with my administration that I
should focus on teaching specific comprehension skills to these struggling readers.
My school district plan for these students was to involve them in morning
intervention classes, where the group would receive additional reading instruction,
specifically on expository text. This intervention program was set up as a pull-out
program, meaning that these students were taken out of my classroom to receive their
additional reading support. This pull-out program took place three days a week for 35
minutes each of the designated days.
Trends
Some trends I observed about this group of readers were that they all displayed a
lack of confidence in reading. More specifically, Robert, Claire, and Sonya were among
the students who struggled most in their reading comprehension. I found this interesting
because these students were from involved families, who seemed able to support their
children at home. More concerning was that these three students came from Englishspeaking homes and were not labeled for any medical or learning disabilities. I was

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curious to find out why these three students, Robert, Claire, and Sonya, struggled and
why it seemed they struggled more so than the other students in this group despite the
fact that it seemed other students in the group had more overwhelming circumstances to
overcome on their path to reading success.
Another trend I observed was that all of the students in my focus group had
developed limited reading fluency. This means when I asked the students to read aloud,
they sounded like qualified comprehensive readers. The words would flow beautifully
from their mouths, but when it came time to explain what they had read in a brief
summary, it was nearly impossible to get these students to come up with the main ideas
of what they had just read. This trend, of reading but not being able to comprehend what
they had read, was more noticeable when we tried to comprehend expository texts than
when we read narrative texts. Further, Jamie, Angel, Edna, and Alison seemed to have
the most difficulty with identifying the main ideas. To me this observation made sense
because, as ELL and RSP students, these readers would have had less exposure to
expository texts than other readers their age over the course of their primary education.
This is because these students would have been instructed chiefly on narrative texts in
their primary reading program. The primary grades would have focused on narrative texts
and understanding the main ideas within these types of texts because these educators
know that if their struggling students cannot comprehend the main ideas within stories, it
is highly unlikely they will find the main idea of an information text with ease. Also,
narrative stories are more prevalent on our district assessments as well as on the STAR
subtests during the primary grades.

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According to Duke, Pressley, and Hilden (2004), these types of poor readers
had shown no signs of difficulty in primary grades with fluency or comprehension, but
when these readers hit fourth grade suddenly they have weak comprehension skills.
A final trend I had observed was that all of my identified struggling readers, save
for Jamie and Sandra, who I have already mentioned had other learning disabilities were
very capable in math. This observation and others in other subject areas led me to
conclude that these struggling readers really did have comprehension problems and
were not simply poor test takers.
My intervention plan
My own teaching intervention plan at the start of the school year was to meet with
my struggling readers in small group instruction 3 times a week for about 30 minutes
each day. In this small group time we would practice reading and comprehending
expository text using the district writing and reading program. Students learned how to
make predictions, use repeating nouns to draw conclusions during pre-reading, and how
to mark up the text with main ideas of each paragraph as they read in order to help with
comprehension after reading. These skills were the same skills the students practiced
during their pull-out intervention time. My intervention plan was modeled directly after
the school intervention plan and was supposed to give students a second exposure to the
skills that had learned in reading intervention. As a classroom teacher, I had very little
say about how to run this reading group and was not encouraged to stray from the school
wide intervention plan.

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How this relates to the problem

Despite the fact that these students were able to do all the tasks I taught them
while reading expository texts, by the middle of the school year, I still observed a
significant difference in the way this group of students were able to comprehend and
make connections to science or social studies material, compared to the other students in
my classroom.
After reviewing the research and theories behind why students in my classroom
may struggle to read informational texts well, I decided that in order to help my students
who come to my class predetermined as struggling readers that I would need to explore
a new way of teaching reading. I decided to target expository text because I had found
through observations of my students that this was the area of reading that proved to be
most difficult.
The road map
In the upcoming chapters I will clarify my plan for addressing the needs of my
struggling readers. In chapter 2, I will address the research about the current teaching
methods for reading, the suggested cultural learning process/ environment for teaching
reading, academic vocabulary, and how to motivate students through digital literacy/tools
of technology. In chapter 3, I will explain my plan of action and how I attempted to
address the needs of my struggling readers. In chapter 4, I will discuss the results of the
study and the outcomes/effects it had on student reading performance. In chapter 5, I will
discuss my conclusions regarding my research questions.

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Chapter Two
Overview
Throughout my teaching career I have asked the questions, how can I help
students in my fourth grade classroom who struggle with reading, and why do my fourth
grade students struggle with reading? These questions have plagued me as I have tried
to instill a love of reading and writing in all my students. I have often wondered why
some fourth graders enter the classroom as proficient readers who can read and analyze
narrative as well as expository texts and why others cannot. Specifically in this study, I
will address my concerns surrounding my fourth grade students expository text
comprehension.
In this chapter, I will review literature that will explore the idea of struggling
readers and proficient readers and why both types of students are able to enter my
classroom under current school practice. I will also explore literature discussing the way
reading is being taught in schools and the new suggested reading methods purposed by
researchers (Gee, 2004, Gee 2008, Taffe, et.al, 2009, Alverman & Eakle, 2003) that
could possibly give insight to why some readers struggle and others do not. Further,
literature on expository text, academic vocabulary, and student motivations will also be
reviewed. This literature review will attempt to explain how some of my fourth grade
students have become labeled, struggling readers, and how I can, as their teacher, better
address their reading needs so they can become more successful readers of expository
text.

16

Good readers vs. struggling readers

According to researchers Duke, Pressley & Hilden (2004) good readers are very
active and know what to expect in informational texts (p.502). They claim readers
who do not struggle to comprehend expository text can use their prior knowledge to help
make predictions, and later confirm or deny those predictions. The researchers also
discuss a good readers ability to make inferences and relate it to the text. Buly and
Valencia (2001), relate that poor readers of expository texts are students who do not have
a wide knowledge base for identifying unfamiliar words within a text. Further, Catts and
Hogan (2002) who have researched word recognition and fluency, have found that
students who struggle with reading are often easy to pick out by fourth grade because of
their poor comprehension skills.
Given this research, I now understood there were significant differences between
struggling readers and proficient readers who entered my fourth grade classroom. Next, I
needed to further pursue why only some of my students struggled with expository
reading. I also needed to know how to target these particular students with my teaching
methods in order to help them with reading informational text. My next step was to
research the particular causes for this good reader/ poor reader phenomenon. I needed to
know what had caused some of my fourth grade students to be able to read and
comprehend expository text successfully, and what had caused others not to. My hunch
was that this outcome had something to do with the way reading was being taught before
entering my fourth grade classroom and their prior knowledge surrounding embedded
vocabulary, as Buly and Valencia (2001) had mentioned in their study on struggling
readers.
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Traditional reading practices: the cause

One of the possible reasons why so many fourth grade students struggle with
reading expository texts, may be related to the way reading is being taught in schools.
Since 2001, and the implementation of No Child Left Behind or NCLB, schools in
America have focused on traditional literacy. Traditional literacy means that students are
accountable for learning the reading system rather than experiencing it and making
connections with it (Evans, 2005). According to Smyth (2008), the reality about No Child
Left Behind is that it causes teachers to teach to the test. In his study, Smyth found that
high pressure tests such as state mandated testing, forces teaching instruction to change
from lifelong exploration-based teaching to repetitive drill practice. This intense
movement away from exploration learning and toward drills, memorization, and rote
learning seems to have affected the way students read and the relationship they develop
with reading.
For the past eleven years in most schools around the country students have been
instructed to learn the reading basics under the NCLB plan. The basics I have referred to
consist of the three cueing systems of reading: graphophonics, syntax, and semantics
(Vacca &Vacca, 2008). Used in an exploratory learning environment, where all three of
these systems work together, a student can construct knowledge and become a
comprehensive reader. According to Goodman, Watson, & Burke (2005),
The holistic or whole language model of reading instruction reflects transitional,
psycholinguistic, and sociolinguistic views of the reading processall systems
are used simultaneouslyto construct meaning, the reader integrates his or her

18

reading strategies with the language systems within the social-cultural context.
But, when used in isolation, these three cueing systems can create poor recall and
affect the way a child is able to read and comprehend (p.179).
According to Vacca & Vacca (2008), To be literate in content area classrooms,
students must learn how to use reading to explore and construct meaning in the company
of authors, other learners, and teachers (p.11). So, according to the research, if students
are taught the basics in isolation, or as Goodman, Watson, & Burke (2005) put it,
teaching reading from parts to wholes through a sequential hierarchy of skills, where
each skill is taught, reinforced, mastered, and tested before the next skill is presented
(p.178), then students will not become literate in the sense of becoming a comprehensive
readers and they will not be able to construct meaning from what they have read. These
students may develop fluency, but still be non - readers. (Goodman, Watson & Burke,
2005). This parts to whole strategy is how the NCLB program has encouraged teachers
to teach reading, meaning students are building on one skill at a time. If these reading
skills are not mastered, students are not allowed to move on in the reading program, thus
allowing them to fall farther and farther behind their peers. According to Gee (2008), the
school system needs to make serious revisions in order to avoid creating the fourth grade
slump, where students transition to content area reading for the first time.
Sadly, many schools across America and especially in California have adopted the
skills model (Goodman, Watson, & Burke, 2005, p.178) for teaching reading and have
relied on synthetic literature, which is produced for schools, based on the idea that
reading skills need to be built upon. Within this skills model teaching, the basic skills
are supposed to be taught and mastered in succession, to produce a savvy reader;
19

however; as Vacca & Vacca (2005) argue, skilled readers do not use a single strategy to
comprehend textthey search for and construct meaning from text (p.14). This means
that even though both models of reading essentially use the same three cueing systems,
the way in which the systems are being used to teach reading are very different and have
very different effects on student reading performance. The basics of the reading
process are being taught, but it seems not in a manner which will help students become
proficient comprehensive readers.
These reading basics are supposed to come together in fourth grade, where new
types of texts called, expository texts, are introduced. These expository texts are more
challenging, offering only information, and often requires students to make deeper
inferences than they have had to before with narrative texts. For example, students in my
fourth grade class are asked to read about the Spanish conquistadors and their travels on
large vessels called, Galleons, during the early 1500s. Just this short introduction to the
social studies curriculum could be overwhelming and confusing to many fourth grade
students because of the dense vocabulary and lack of prior knowledge about the topic.
Many students are turned off by reading in fourth grade; because its no longer fun. Caffe
and Wilson (2004), state that expository reading and writing uses skills that are very
taxing for students, especially those with language problems.
The fourth grade slump: the effect
Over the last seven years of my teaching career I have observed the
disappointments of NCLB. I believe that there has to be a better way to teach young
children how to read and comprehend what they are reading at the same time, so that

20

when students enter fourth grade they are not bombarded by challenging new materials
which leaves them unprepared and creates gaps in their learning process. Sanacore and
Palumbo (2009) refer to these gaps again as the fourth grade slump. They explain that the
fourth grade slump is a combination of lower test scores, and a wide gap in students
vocabulary comprehension.
The fourth grade slump is made up of kids who can read in the sense of
decoding and are able to assign superficial literal meaning to texts, but cant
read in the sense of understanding, in any deep way, informational texts written
in fairly complex language

( Gee, 2004, p.15).

What Gee suggests here is that students entering fourth grade under the current
boundaries of NCLB can read, but they cannot read for a learning purpose.
Reading for a purpose mostly occurs when reading expository text and means
students who cannot do this have developed some fluency so they sound like proficient
readers, but really have no idea of what they are reading and how it relates to their lives.
According to Allington (2009), fluency is, the ability to read in phrases with expression
and comprehension (p.50). Students in elementary school can pretty much pass for
successful readers with reasonable fluency until fourth grade. This is because once a
student reaches upper elementary school, notably, fourth grade, they are required to not
only read familiar text fluently such as narrative stories, but they are also required to read
unfamiliar informational text, called expository text. For example, in one of my
observations prior to the start of this study, Robert and Claire were paired together to read
a piece called, Hot and Cold. It was an expository piece about the effects heat and cold

21

have on the body. As I listened to the pair read, I noticed that although both students
sounded fluent or able to read with ease and expression, neither one were actually
comprehending what they had read. This proved devastating when the pair tried to
answer comprehension questions about the piece once they were finished reading. In
particular, the pair had difficulty identifying the meaning of vocabulary words they had
read within the text. When I asked them to define the word, evaporation, for example, the
two students were unable to come up with a meaning, despite the fact the word had been
used in the text several times. This observation along with many others I had done
throughout the year proved to me that my struggling readers could not read expository
texts with comprehension.
According to Sanacore and Palumbo (2009),
Informational text is substantially different from storybook text which dominates
primary school settings (p.70). The researchers argue that the goal of reading for
information in an expository text is a high expectation for elementary students,
especially for students who are lacking in reading experiences, and these
students would benefit from instruction that helps use informational text
effectively (p.71).
Lack of Academic Vocabulary: factor 1
According to Gee (2008), the main reason reading becomes difficult in fourth
grade is because of vocabulary. Students are expected to know and have mastered
academic vocabulary terms and their word parts in order to read and understand
expository texts in fourth grade. It is true that expository texts include unfamiliar and
22

difficult vocabulary, which many students find to be stumbling blocks. Vacca & Vacca
(2005) state, vocabulary knowledge is strongly related to text comprehension (p.17).
Gee also suggests that learning unfamiliar words and the ability to infer patterns from
information is vital to the foundation of learning (2008). If students cannot understand
these difficult words within the reading, they are bound to miss out on important
information, which can affect their overall comprehension. If their comprehension is
affected then inevitably their overall reading performance is also directly affected.
Vacca & Vacca(2005) state, moreover, if they struggle to decode words
accurately, various reading errors will, if significant, cause cognitive confusion and limit
readers abilities to bring meaning and conceptual understanding to the words in the text
(p.13-14). Taffe, Blachowicz, and Fisher (2009) argue that vocabulary knowledge or lack
of knowledge can potentially determine a students ability to achieve academic success.
In addition, synthesized studies by Stahl &Fairbank (1986), as well as August, Carlo,
Dressler & Snow (2005), all reference the idea that vocabulary knowledge is deeply
connected to reading comprehension and overall academic success of students.
Suggestions for addressing student vocabulary needs
Gee (2008) proposes that teachers should address vocabulary as an academic
language, so that students are motivated to learn about content areas via interaction.
Students could be encouraged to take on identities as scientists of a certain sort, to see
and think about themselves and their taken-for- granted everyday world in new
ways.(p.21) Vocabulary seems to be often pushed out of the teaching day because it
requires explicit intense instruction and something all teachers lack, time. But regardless
of the amount of time it takes, if teachers want to see improvement in reading

23

comprehension, then according to Taffe, Blachowicz, and Fisher (2009), teachers need to
find time to teach vocabulary. What Gee and Taffe, et al., are suggesting here, I believe,
is that children need to be taught vocabulary differently, in essence, schools needs to be
teaching expository reading differently, if any changes are going to be made in closing
the reading gap, which is causing the fourth grade slump.
Obstacles to overcome regarding vocabulary
I have also observed that students who do not struggle with fourth grade content
reading have had early exposure to language, vocabulary, and text structure which are the
means to mastering reading and avoiding the fourth grade slump. This contact with
academic language has no doubt come from these students homes. According to Park
(2008), early home literacy activities add to childrens reading performances, and a
childs success in reading increases as their parents financial stability increases. This
means that students born into more economically secure homes will most likely become
better readers. Further, it is recognized that children who are born into English speaking
households will also become better readers of English.
Fourth-grade performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress
(NAEP) reading test shows a 22-29 point scale score advantage for children living
in homes where a language other than English was never used compared with
children who lived in homes where a language other than English was always
used (August, Carlo, Dressler, & Snow, 2005, p.50).
It appears that some students have the odds stacked against them, while others have the
advantages to become the best readers.

24

Lack of motivation: factor 2

According to research done by Gee and his colleagues, long term success in
school requires the acquisition of academic language (Gee, 2008, p.19). The research
seems clear that if students do not learn the academic language they will never be able
to read expository text with full comprehension. The first area of expository text that I
have discussed in the previous section, and often creates problems with comprehension
especially in struggling readers, is the amount of unfamiliar vocabulary that is usually
included in the text. In this section, I will discuss how student motivation also plays a
part in whether or not comprehension of expository text is achieved.
Shaffer (2007) has conducted research studies that show children need to
experience and play with academic language in order to really learn it. It is clear that
learning vocabulary and language is a social practice (Gee, 2004). I believe what these
researchers are stating is that children need to enjoy learning language as much as they
enjoy playing games. In other words, students need to be motivated to learn new
vocabulary. They also need to experience this learning through a game-like
environment where they can experience the unfamiliar vocabulary for themselves in a
hands-on fashion. One way to establish this game-like environment where students are
free to play with vocabulary is to create a cultural learning classroom. Gee (2004)
relates the cultural process of learning to how children today learn to play video games.
Children are not usually instructed on how to play video games, they just figure them out
by watching another player play the game, and then they practice because they find it fun.
Most humans are not, in fact very good at learning via overt instruction. For
example, most young people would resist learning to play video games via lots of

25

overt instruction- and for good reason: instruction is a much less efficient process
than learning to play video games via a cultural process (Gee, 2004, p.7).
Gee argues children should be given time to watch master readers, and that information
should be given as needed, in an environment full of tools and resources so that children
can experience reading and figure it out for themselves, just as they would eventually
figure out video games. This type of learning environment suggested by Gee would easily
lend itself to motivating student learning, especially with expository texts.
According to Shaffer (2007), whose research studies have shown that children
need to experience and play with academic language in order to really learn it, it seems
obvious that the cultural learning process plays a key part in motivating students to really
read for comprehensive purposes, where they are able to make inferential meanings that
connect to their own lives. According to Clark (2003) and Goldberg (2001) humans need
to play with language at a distance. This distance, according to the researchers, creates
a space where learners can feel motivated and less scared of failure. When applying this
concept to student learning, tools of technology lend the right type of distance for
students to feel comfortable, but also motivated.
According to Hobbs (2011),digital tools are used to promote critical thinking,
creativity, and communication and collaboration skills (p.15). This type of exploratory
thinking and the ability that technology tools can give students to embrace and put on
new identities as readers is what I believe the research shows students need in order to
make up for the gaps that cause the fourth grade slump.
Marsh (2006) argues that childrens knowledge of technology and their
experience with it is highly underrated by schools and underdeveloped. What I believe

26

this researcher is referring back to is the cultural style of learning. Students today need to
be able to investigate, explore, and really experience language so that they can make their
own connections to the texts they read. This idea of using technology tools also places
more of the power to learn in the students hands. They are able to judge their progress
and decide how they need to proceed.
Further, it is noted by Gee (2004), that learning vocabulary and language is a
social practice. Making tools of technology accessible for students to try out new
vocabulary creates a distance for learning while at the same time gaining an interaction
with other students who may be participating online at the same time, thus allowing a
struggling reader a safe and motivating space to really make up ground in learning
vocabulary that was previously out of reach for them. Gees research here additionally
promotes the claim that cultural learning and interaction with the reading content as well
as comprehension of academic vocabulary are necessary if any true learning is taking
place.
Lack of exposure to expository texts: factor 3
In the last two sections I have discussed how academic vocabulary and lack of
student motivation may be factors in overall student comprehension of expository texts.
In this section, I will discuss how the lack of experience with expository texts may also
play a role in why fourth grade students entering my classroom have difficulties with
comprehension.
Sanacore and Palumbo (2009) argue, that regrettably, as children enter upper
elementary school grades they are expected to comprehend large amounts of expository
text and related vocabulary across the curriculum (p.68) even though these same

27

children were, immersed in mostly narrative texts in the primary grades (p.68). I take
this to mean that students are expected to be able to transfer their reading knowledge of
narrative texts to expository texts seamlessly. This research suggests that if students have
a lack of transfer, or are not able to use their narrative reading skills to read expository
texts, they are inevitably going to fall behind in fourth grade.
Allington (2009) states that struggling readers in fourth grade have already lost,
hundreds of hours (p.101) and have read millions of less words (p.101) when
compared to their achieving classmates (p.101).
It seems then that some of my students will be more successful than others at
acquiring the specialty languages, like academic vocabulary, because they come from
homes where this type of language and text was introduced early on in their development.
According to Klassen- Endrizzi (2004), parents need to be valued as a childs first and
most influential learning partner (p.325). This means that teachers should really look to
parents of successful students for help and for clues of how to support struggling
students.
Other students, who come from homes with little exposure to these types of
academic types of language and text, but perhaps an emphasis on some other culturally
important language aspect, will struggle once they enter fourth grade because so much of
the reading is inundated with academic vocabulary. According to Gee (2008), the school
system needs to make serious revisions in order to avoid creating the fourth grade slump,
where students transition to content area reading for the first time. the middle
childhood period- the ages 6 to 11- is absolutely crucial. It is during this time that
children are making the transition from learning to read to reading to learn and, we now
28

hope, reading to discover (p.11). Therefore, without the exposure to expository text and
the academic language that accompanies it, students coming from lower- socioeconomic
neighborhoods, or neighborhoods in transition - like the one around my school, may
approach learning goals differently, possibly with different skill sets, and are more likely
to be labeled as struggling readers and fall into the depths of the fourth grade slump.
Creating a cultural learning environment: part 1 of the solution
In the previous sections of this chapter I have addressed the possible reasons
students in my class become labeled as struggling readers. Now, I will discuss possible
solutions that I can pursue as a teacher to better address the learning needs of my
students.
Alvermann and Eakle (2003) state:
the condition known as traditional school culture is making struggling readers
in an effort to raise the bar by implementing high standards schools may be
promoting certain normative ways of reading texts that are disabling some of the
very students they are trying to help (p.19).
From this I conclude that the researchers suggest that the ways schools are teaching
reading in the content areas can actually be debilitating, rather than accommodating,
especially for students coming from homes that have not placed an emphasis on
expository texts or the vocabulary which is embedded within in it. Furthermore, schools
themselves have not tried to even the playing field to support these poor readers, (Duke,
Pressley, &Hilden, 2004), but have turned their backs (Alvermann & Eakle, 2003)
embracing an instructed process of reading rather than a cultural one. The type of
29

learning environment that is suggested is best summed up by researchers Vacca and

Vacca, whom in their 2008 book suggest that integrating electronic texts into the
classroom and into content area reading will help with accessing student interest, enhance
student interaction, build student knowledge of how to research and gather information,
as well as create a learning environment that extends student understanding (p.421).
One possible way I could create a cultural learning environment, as suggested by
the research, is to begin using tools of technology, digital literacy, and interactive online
learning spaces, which my students already find motivating. According to Alvermann and
Eakle (2003), the changing and multiple literacies these new media and interactive
communication technologies evoke can be used to support an extended view of both
reading and the so-called struggling reader (p.19).
Technology without a doubt can supply the cultural learning that students
desperately need along with the motivation they greatly crave. This is because technology
can add tools to the classroom that makes digital literacies accessible. According to Gee
(2008) digital media offers an extraordinary range of potential learning enhancement
(p.24). The use of technology allows for social interactions between students and media
that seem less academic and more liberated, giving students the perception that learning
vocabulary can be fun. To me this research is evidence of the changes that need to occur
in my classroom. Making learning about expository texts fun is the key to winning over
students and creating a cultural learning process that will motivate them for years to come
in their own reading pursuits.

30

Technology and its tools seem to be the answer to how I should motivate my
students while at the same time creating a cultural learning environment. Creating this
environment will help expose my students to engagement in reading, and it may help
shrink the gap they experience with academic vocabulary. Academic vocabulary
comprehension is necessary in order for them to experience successful reading of
expository texts. Gee (2008) argues that the best way to close the gap is to use digital
technology because it already appeals to children and is an easy way to, level the
playing field for learners whose families have not introduced them to a wealth of images,
actions, dialogue, interactions, and experiences connected to academic domains (p.24).
Further, research studies done by Proctor, Dalton, and Grisham (2007), as well as studies
done by Labbo, Love, and Ryan (2007), discovered that English language learners made
more gains with vocabulary when digital technology was used in reading lessons and
activities. It is up to me to find a way to cohesively merge content and technology tools
so that my students can experience that same engagement at school.
Creating student engagement: part 2 of the solution
In the previous sections of this chapter, I have tried to discuss factors that may be
contributing to the problems my students face as fourth grade readers of expository text.
In this section, I will attempt to tie together the importance of a cultural learning
environment and student engagement as possible solutions to helping my students
become more successful and confident readers.
In this next section of the chapter I will discuss how learning to create a cultural
learning environment, while using technology as a tool for accessing student learning that

31

would not have been made in my traditional classroom changed my teaching perspective.
I also discuss how I was gaining ideas from the research that were leading me to teach
vocabulary differently. According to Taffe, Blachowicz, and Fisher (2009), Vocabulary
knowledge or the lack thereof, impacts social interaction, participation in classroom
academic routines, and learning in the content areas (p.320). I was discovering as I
researched that it would be especially important that I link vocabulary and the tools of
technology in order to better access my students cultural learning abilities and
interactions with content area reading. Vacca and Vacca (2008) state that content area
reading should be taught so that students build their confidence. Student confidence, I
had learned over the years of teaching, came from success and a feeling of
accomplishment. One way to build confidence is by allowing student learning to be done
collaboratively. Gee (2004) describes learning as a social act where the interactions
between students pave the way for student generated understandings and applications.
Applying a social aspect to vocabulary lessons may be a possible solution to building
student engagement and helping my struggling readers.
Another way to build upon student engagement to increase reading success with
expository texts is to use what students value and are motivated by. In this study,
multimodal teaching, using digital media and literacy to motivate student learning and
change the way students see expository text reading, would be the motivation. It is also
important that as students become more familiar with technological tools that teachers
embrace them and use the new pathways as teaching tools. According to Ajayi (2009),
multimodal teaching is meant to offer students a place to make their own understandings.
Further, the important thing is that students make connections, or link, their
32

understandings to newly gained knowledge through new literacies and the use of
multimodality practices (Hassett & Curwood, 2009).
Observations
I had gleaned from the literature I reviewed thus far that there are differences
between struggling readers and proficient readers. I had learned that some of these
differences came from the reading exposures students had received prior to fourth grade.
Additionally, I gathered that vocabulary as well as student engagement played major
roles in a students ability to comprehend expository text. Overall, I had discovered that
it would be necessary for my teaching approach to include a cultural learning
environment in which my students would have the chance to interact with expository
reading in a hands-on digital format.
I wanted to give my students the opportunity in this study to process the texts
differently Kist, 2005, p.5) from one another and make connections of their own.
After reviewing the current research, I began to create my research study. My idea
was to attempt to address the gaps my students experienced with expository reading by
interweaving technology into my lessons. I decided that using technology outlets would
be the best way to create a cultural learning environment in my classroom because it
would create the game like atmosphere that researchers Gee, Shaffer, and Wilson had
mentioned in their research about academic vocabulary. I had noticed through
observations that my struggling group of readers was unable to make connections to
expository text, informational text, because they lacked the background knowledge and
experiences that would help them truly engage in the texts. In the next chapter I will

33

discuss the study and further explain how using the research discussed in this chapter tie
into my attempts to address the learning needs of my struggling readers.

34

Chapter Three: Methodology

In this study, I have asked, how can I help students in my fourth grade classroom
who struggle with reading? After examination of the research and literature available on
this topic, I hypothesized that integrating digital media and digital literacies with
academic vocabulary instruction would help my struggling fourth grade readers have
more success with social studies curriculum. I had decided to use history, specifically, the
California gold rush of 1848 as the focus of the expository lessons because it would lend
itself nicely to all the areas that my struggling readers were having difficulties with.
Specifically, these problems as identified in chapter one were that students in my
classroom had not really learned how to read for learning purposes or had deficits in their
reading comprehension. These students were expected to read and comprehend
challenging new materials as they entered fourth grade. Further, these same struggling
readers, who had limited exposure to expository texts throughout their childhoods entered
my classroom with underdeveloped academic vocabularies. Due to their lack of
experiences with academic vocabulary these students also displayed difficulty
understanding informational content.
To compound these problems, many of the struggling readers included in this
study also had built up a lack of interest in expository texts throughout the course of their
school years, thus creating yet another obstacle to overcome; their motivation to read and
care about informational texts. I was able to observe my students disinterest in
expository texts whenever we worked with these texts. My students always moaned and
groaned about how much they disliked reading information text. Usually they begged to
read narrative stories instead. It was a challenge to find ways to motivate my students and
35

I had to search for texts that discussed specific topics of interest that I knew would be
exciting for them.
Step one in my study was to create a cultural learning environment in my fourth
grade classroom. I felt this was the most important step to begin with because it would
allow me to change the way I would teach about the California gold rush. I also felt that
if the students in my class realized that I was making an effort to meet their needs they
would be more responsive to the lessons I would be presenting. I started this process of
changing my classroom into a cultural learning atmosphere by using digital media and
digital literacies to explore the informational text surrounding the gold rush. I tried to
limit the time students read directly from the textbook or forms of synthetic literature,
(Goodman, Watson, & Burke, 2005, p.178) such as basal readers, that I would have used
for teaching purposes in lessons past. I did this so students could see a big difference
between the types of lessons we had done previously and this new approach to reading
expository texts. I felt if I used computers as well as the internet and interactive internet
sources it would help my students to make better connections to the social studies
curriculum. I targeted expository text because I had found through observations of my
students that this was the area of reading that proved to be most difficult.
Therefore, I designed my study to exclude textbooks and embrace digital
literacies available on the internet. I also relied heavily on sources that appealed to my
students such as video clips and interactive websites. These resources helped my students
experience the information about the gold rush through their senses of sight, sound, and
touch which appealed to some of my struggling students biggest strengths as readers.
According to Gee (2008) it is important to tie language more to images, actions, goals,
36

experiences, and dialogue as a way to teach deep comprehension of texts (p.20). Further,
the use of digital literacies and the integration of technology and its tools allowed my
students to interact with each other in a social manner, which is usually limited when
simply teaching directly from the textbook.
Next, I executed making these changes to my teaching and within my classroom
so I would be able to help my struggling fourth grade readers. According to Alvermann
and Eakle (2003), Unfortunately, there is evidence that many classroom practicesspecifically, reading textbooks and completing teacher-directed classroom reading
assignments- are the least favorite and non-motivating reading activities for adolescents
(p.22).
The first thing I did was to prepare my resources so that I would have plenty of
digital literacy sources and interactive websites to pull from once I began my teaching
cycle on the gold rush. Some of the websites I used were the history channel videos and
PBS online videos to introduce the big ideas of the gold rush unit. An example of one
PBS video I used to give an introduction to the gold rush can be viewed at:
http://video.pbs.org/video/2098990591. (Retrieved May 2010). In this video clip, the first
strike of gold by James Marshall is explained through historic storytelling. Real
photographs and memorabilia such as mining tools are presented along with a narration
explaining the events leading up to the first gold discovery in California.
Finally, I wanted my students to be motivated and feel connections to the texts
they were studying in history. Allington (2009) defends this idea, as he discusses
effective use of classroom instruction. He argues that classroom instruction should be

37

used to engage students and motivate them to do productive academic work (p.50).
One way I aimed to capture my students attention was by using lots of technology. I
wanted to use things like reading information online, web searches, and interactive gold
rush games. Students were also asked to do partner and group collaboration work, as well
as independent exploration time. From the beginning of the project, students were
informed that a culminating project would be their final evaluation, not a test. I used the
idea of the culminating project as a motivator throughout the learning process, so students
would have something to keep in mind and look forward to throughout the teaching phase
of the study.
Putting the plan into action
In order to begin putting my study together and start the teaching process, I
needed to know where to begin. So, to grasp a better understanding of my students
familiarity with digital media, technology tools, and digital literacies I began with a
pretest. In my school district this is common protocol. A pretest is the baseline that a
teacher can use to make judgments about their students knowledge and use it to guide
instruction. To pretest student knowledge on technology, including digital media and
literacies, I simply held a very informal question / answer session with my students, so it
really ended up being more of an informal survey, which I used to collect information.
I asked my students how many of them had created home videos and were able to edit
them at home. Only 7 of my 28 students were able to confirm any activities with video
making and/or editing. I also asked my students how many of them enjoyed working on
the computer or using the computer to complete a class assignment. All of my 28 students

38

agreed that working on the computer was one of their favorite ways to complete a class
project. When I asked my students to explain why they felt this way about using
computers, many of them responded because it makes things fun or I feel more
creative when I am able to use the computer. In retrospect, this survey would probably
have been more accurate if I had students individually assessed so that no students were
able to be influenced by their peers.
From this survey, I concluded that my students definitely had a cultural learning
connection with technology and the tools that were offered via computers. Hobbs (2011)
describes the term digital citizens as the way students and children today connect with
digital tools. This digital citizenship reflects the wide scope of knowledge and skills
demanded by our increasingly mediated society (p.14) that students must be able to
manipulate in order to thrive and maintain success.
After the informal pretest, I also distributed three written pretests (see appendix
A) on gold rush vocabulary. I decided to pretest on vocabulary of the gold rush because
the research I reviewed informed me that one of the biggest problems with reading
expository text is decoding and understanding the unfamiliar vocabulary. Gee (2004)
categorizes learning to read academic content as difficult because of the specialty
language that must be comprehended in order to fully gain understanding from the area of
study. The vocabulary my students would need to fully understand the gold rush and its
effects on California seemed potentially confusing and I hypothesized that they could
cause stumbling blocks to my students as we started our unit on the gold rush. According
to Sanacore and Palumbo (2009), students need more focused instruction in vocabulary
development (p.71). After taking the initial pretests on the 12 most popular vocabulary
39

terms (see appendix A) that would be taught and learned through the unit, I found that
none of my 28 students had proficient knowledge of the historic terms. This gave me the perfect
platform to begin my history unit.

Through my analysis of the pretests I found that of my 28 students, only two

students were able to correctly identify 6 of the 8 words on the word identification
pretest. The other 26 students were not able to proficiently identify the academic
definition of the vocabulary words. When I refer to the term proficiently, I am using the
rating scale which my district uses, meaning that a student can perform at an 80 percent
or higher level consistently. So, when I state that my students were not able to
proficiently identify academic vocabulary, I mean that my students were not able to
recognize those vocabulary terms at a consistent 80%, in other words, most students fell
well below the expected range of vocabulary identification outcomes. On the matching
pretest, only one student was able to correctly identify seven out of the 12 vocabulary
words through matching the word to their definition, showing signs of proficiency.
After I analyzed the pretests and knew that my students had very little background
knowledge on the gold rush and its vocabulary terms, I decided to introduce the most
important ideas and terms through online video clips. According to Prangsma, Boxtel,
and Kanselaar (2008), many historical concepts are abstract for students, and Much of
history can be visualized through different types of representations (p.118). Using the
videos was my way of addressing my struggling readers and their need for visual
reinforcement with abstract concepts within the social studies unit.
In order to decide which videos and other visual aids would best support the
curriculum I wanted to teach and offer multimodal connections, I set about determining
40

the most important ideas by breaking the gold rush into themes. Sloat (2005) states, it is
important for teachers to think about not only how to activate students background
knowledge prior to reading new texts but also how to supply such knowledge for students
who may be unfamiliar with the topic discussed in a particular text (p.680). I decided
that the themes would help me pick appropriate video presentations to activate my
struggling readers prior knowledge and develop background knowledge, so they would
be more willing and able to connect with the information being presented on the gold
rush. The themes would also allow me to look for patterns and trends in the curriculum
that I could use to better explain the vocabulary as well as the main ideas.
The four themes I decided were the most important and could be lent to the
cultural learning environment I wanted to create were: 1. How California was changed by
the gold rush 2. Why the gold rush helped California become a state 3. The impact of the
gold rush on Californias people, culture, landscape economy and 4. Supply vs. Demand.
I then researched the web and found video clips and inter-active learning sites
such as P.B.S., the History Channel, and Brain-Pop that could introduce each theme of
the gold rush in an engaging way. when offered a curriculum that is responsive to
the interests and abilities they bring to school, and pays attention to who they are as
individuals, young people will sustain their engagement in learning (Serafini, Bean, &
Readence, 2004, p.485). Further, The more motivated students are to read a particular
text, the more likely they are to attempt to understand the texts meaning (Guthrie &
Humenick, 2004, p.681). This means that students need to be motivated to read and learn
about challenging ideas, many of which are presented in expository texts, such as the
history of the gold rush that I was hoping to engage my own students in learning about.

41

The best way to motivate students, according to Sloat (2005), is to bring the
knowledge they need to learn together into two or more textual forms. This could be done
by incorporating narrative and expository texts, as Sloat suggests, or by incorporating
traditional and multimodal literacies as I have suggested in my plan for this research
project. By incorporating digital literacies and tools of technology into my social studies
content lessons, I predicted that as Sloat suggested, my students would be more
motivated to learn about otherwise uninteresting topics, like the California gold rush.
The next step was to start organizing my lessons in a meaningful way to address
each of the themes, vocabulary, and to keep my students engaged. I planned to address
two themes each week while maintaining a cultural learning environment. Vacca and
Vacca ( 2005) support teacher promotion of digital learning environments with
multimodal literacy lessons and technology saying, As teachers, we need to support and
encourage social interactions in electronic environments and have our students take the
lead in making discoveries and sharing knowledge (p.423). I started teaching the unit by
slowly integrating the first gold strike into the life of Mexican California. Since we had
just completed learning about how California was under rule of Mexico I felt it was
important to give some background information about how James Marshall, an American
citizen, had come to be living in California at all. I did this introduction through story
telling with visual aids projected on my SMART board so that students would have some
idea of how California quickly became overwhelmed with new visitors once word of the
gold strike was communicated. I started with the two themes of impact and supply and
demand. These themes seemed to lend themselves the most easily to the introduction of
the gold rush, the forty-niners, and the most important trend: change.

42

In order to address the first themes, the class created a timeline of historic events
we had learned about so far in history. We quickly made this on the whiteboard and
reviewed what we knew about California up to this point. On our timeline we labeled
when Mexico took control of California and reviewed the governments open trade policy
as well as the governments generosity with land grants that attracted many people,
including James Marshall and John Sutter, to settle there in Mexican controlled
California. We discussed how Mexicos government had an impact on people and
because of their willingness to give land to their citizens the population grew. As the
population grew, people like John Sutter created businesses and hired workers like James
Marshall. All of this led to James Marshall eventually finding gold, which further
impacted California by attracting large amounts of people from all over the world. As we
discussed the facts just mentioned, the class created a flow map to help process the
timeline and the theme of impact.

The second theme, supply and demand was initially taught through cartoons,
interactive websites and multimodal response. I used historical political cartoons drawn
during the gold rush to explain the idea of supply and demand to my class initially. These
sources were included in the class textbook, so I simply used the images and not the text
to help students understand the messages being presented within the cartoons. I would

43

start by projecting an image of a cartoon and then ask my students to simply look at it,
making observations. I would then have students turn to a partner and share what they
had observed. Then we would take a few minutes to share out as a class. While looking at
the cartoons, I would ask the class to think about why the illustrator included the images
they did and why they were important. Students shared observations and I pointed out
significant symbols that the illustrator used to communicate the theme of supply and
demand. These cartoons were included because they reflected the twenty-first century
literacies of the cultural learning environment I was trying to create within my classroom.
Using the cartoons, rather than literature to analyze the theme of supply and demand
allowed my struggling readers to make a visual connection and interact as readers in a
new way.
After our study of political cartoons, I asked students to break into pairs and
assigned them a few interactive websites to explore, which also dealt with the theme of
supply and demand. Once students had a better idea of what supply and demand meant
during the gold rush, I asked students to create their own political cartoons that would
reflect modern day supply and demand. At first students struggled to connect this theme
to modern times, but as we brainstormed aloud and on the whiteboard the class came up
with several examples, such as gasoline and its rising prices, the economy and loss of
jobs, and even coupons/ sales and purchases.
Students were given a variety of resources to create their political cartoons
including crayons, markers, magazines, internet pictures, felt, buttons, and paint. The
political cartoons that the students created were their own multimodal project that
allowed them to connect to the theme of supply and demand in a new way. By bringing

44

the theme into modern day context, many of my students were able to make a clearer
connection to what happened during the gold rush. Interest is not just a value of a text
but rather it is the interaction between the text and the readers motivation and
background knowledge of the text topic (Allington, 2009, p.86). By allowing my
students to interact as Allington suggests with the theme of supply and demand via a
multimodal cartoon project, I observed them becoming more motivated to learn about the
gold rush and make further future connections with the material. See the
Macmillan/McGraw- Hill website for some examples of the political cartoons we used in
class: http://macmillanmh.com/ss/ca/eng/g4/u3/g4u3_develop.html (Retrieved May 2010)
Also, each week the students were broken up into groups to explore four
vocabulary words from the gold rush unit. These groups were responsible for teaching the
rest of the class their words and coming up with a presentation that used technology.
Students were not encouraged to use dictionaries to discover their vocabulary word
meanings, but they were encouraged to use context clue sentences and to research online
sites such as the History Channel, to discover a meaning for their vocabulary words.
Students then had to form their own student-friendly definitions of their groups
vocabulary words and come up with a visual and/or audio symbol to represent their
meaning in their presentation. The rest of the class was responsible for taking their own
student-friendly notes during these presentations. These notes were not formal. Students
could include pictures, symbols, ideas that connected to the vocabulary word, or any
other form of written notes that the students thought would help them later remember and
understand the gold rush vocabulary. Students were encouraged to use multimodal notes.
All I did was provide each student with a place for note taking and encouraged my class

45

to use the space in any way they liked to help them remember the vocabulary words
being presented.
According to Serafini (2010), multimodal forms of texts, such as the individual
pictorial notes my students created to remember the gold rush vocabulary, offer different
forms of meaning making. These multimodal notes of drawings, collages, and finger
paintings, allowed my students to interact with the information they were learning
differently than if they had been simply reading from a textbook. This type of multimodal
literacy required my students to analyze and interact with the vocabulary in a more
interactive way. According to Ajayi (2009), multimodal teaching is meant to offer
students a place to make their own understandings. Students making their own
connections to the vocabulary and being able to recall it throughout the unit was a main
goal of this study because I believed vocabulary knowledge would better support my
struggling readers. Gee (2004) categorizes learning to read academic content as difficult
because of the specialty language that must be comprehended in order to fully gain
understanding from the area of study. In focusing on the academic language or
vocabulary of the gold rush in this way, my hope was that my struggling readers would
be able to better connect with the concepts and themes of the unit of study.
The teaching phase
During the teaching phase of the unit, I tried to incorporate the cultural learning
process that Gee (2004) discussed. I spent half of the week, about two to three lessons
per week, directly teaching vocabulary. In order to do this I used a video clip for each
teaching portion and pictures or images to help reinforce the vocabulary being taught.

46

Here is a sample of one of the video clips used during the teaching phase:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxekRM5-uMU&feature=related
(Retrieved May 2010)

This incorporation of digital media helped create a cultural learning process

because the interaction with visuals and interactive media stimulated my students and
allowed them to make connections to their own lives. Digital technologies allow us to
build worlds full of the sorts of content we have associated with books, but allows young
people to enter these worlds and experience directly the connections between words and
other symbols in the world (Gee, 2008, p.16). The video clips offered a space for my
students to enter the world of the gold rush and develop their own experience within
that space of history that would have normally been closed to them.
After exploring the videos and visual aids, I then allowed students time to
interact with the information given to them, asking them to research online a miner or
mining tool that had been presented in the lesson. We would then come back together as
a class and share out the knowledge collected, while creating a visual on the SMART
board that further reinforced their data collection. These visuals were usually collages of
pictures and words collected by the students during their exploration process. According
to Stein and Prewett (2009), some of the most important things that media education
teaches, are the ability to engage in critical thinking and effective communication or
self-expression (p.135). Through the use of the computers, social interaction, and
multimodal literacy teaching, my students were able to collaboratively create a learning
tool, which helped them connect with the vocabulary of the gold rush.

47

The other half of the week, roughly two to three lessons, I would regularly use a
storytelling technique which summarized the major themes and incorporated vocabulary,
while presenting a series of pictures that gave details about the most important facts being
presented. Students would then interact with the images themselves or in pairs to recreate the story, using the vocabulary presented during the lesson. According to Gill
(2009), Information is conveyed in both text and illustrations; in addition, the visual
elements often enhance the reading experience in more subtle ways (p.262). The
students spend time manipulating the visual pictures, each group, pair, or individual had
their own set of pictures to help them recall the historical story I had presented and would
summarize the most important events in their own words. These pictures help enhance
my students experience with reading because the activities enticed them to interact with
the information presented and create their own connections with it. According to Wilson
(2008) making connections between demonstrations would also help students to find the
main ideas (p.154). As students worked through the major themes of the gold rush in
this format, my hope was that my struggling readers would be able to make connections
as well as draw upon the main ideas of this time period in history. Further, researchers
Bomer, Zach, David, and Ok (2010) explain that multimodality practices are about
relating and creating through exploration. It is about approaching literacy in a new way
and navigating texts differently.
Finally, to further engage students, I hinted at the interactive project that would
be started during the second half of the teaching phase, otherwise known as the
independent learning phase. (See appendix B) The project was designed to allow students
to choose characters, backgrounds, music, and write their own scripts all online. The

48

interactive project would allow students to take the knowledge learned in class through
their explorations of the themes and vocabulary and put them into an originally created
video format that would show me how well they conceptually had understood and had
learned the concepts / vocabulary of the gold rush. According to Vacca and Vacca
(2008), in a multimedia environment students are more likely to draw conclusions
through the use of sound, graphics, photographs, video, and other non-print media
which can create a learning environment far beyond the limitations of printed texts
(p.422).
My hope with introducing this interactive video project was to spark student
interest and create another space for student connection that could only take place within
a cultural learning environment. This meant including multimodal literacies and digital
media that would far outweigh any connections made during a traditional content area
reading lesson. Gee (2008) argues that digital media allows students a broader stage to
defend and reveal their learning than traditional assessments do. I had planned on using
the video presentations as one form of final assessment to support my ELL and struggling
readers, as well as allow all my students the best type of learning environment to express
their understandings. Furthermore, Risko and Walker-Dalhouse (2010) suggest that ELL
students should be assessed and encouraged to express themselves through multimodal
products because it taps into their prior knowledge and strengths. Through the bridge of
multimodal teaching, ELL students should have a better opportunity to explore
unconventional forms of reading, deciphering, and composition (Ajayi, 2009).
The introduction of this project seemed to really motivate all my students
because they knew they would have to incorporate the themes and vocabulary learned
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into their individual videos, thus stimulating student learning during the teaching phase
via anticipation of the independent learning phase.
The independent phase
During this phase of the unit, students were actively participating in the
interactive video project. The phase started with an introduction of the project outline and
goals. We discussed how the project could be completed and I showed the class the
website we would be using: www.xtranormal.com,( Retrieved 2009) along with a sample
video I had created. I also used the sample videos available on the home page to give
students ideas about what they could do and use to express their understandings via the
video project.
The interactive gold rush project helped guide the students to incorporate the new
gold rush vocabulary we had discussed in class with application. By applying their newly
learned vocabulary terms into an engaging learning experience, students were able to
create their own product, which in this case was an animated video. The objective of this
project was for students to work with a partner to create an interactive gold rush project
in which they explained and used as many of the new gold rush vocabulary terms as
possible. The goal was to produce a product that made learning about the gold rush fun
and engaging, while at the same time teaching the most important points related to a
specific gold rush theme. Students had a choice of several different project designs,
including a personal video, an animated video, or interactive game. Students were aware
that all final presentations needed to be presented using technology, and had to include
the most important ideas of their specific themes as well as at least ten vocabulary terms.

50

Students worked in assigned pairs. I decided to assign the pairs because I wanted
to support my struggling readers by pairing them with a student who would potentially be
able to help them clarify questions. It was my hope as well that these supportive students
would help their partners make deeper connections by sharing with them their insights
and multimodal notes that they had taken during the learning phase.
The pairs needed to decide upon one of the four major themes that were reviewed
in class to concentrate on for their project. Then they had to center their project on ten of
the new vocabulary words we had learned in class. Finally, the pairs created a video
product with their own characters, backgrounds, music interludes, and scripts.
Interestingly enough, even though there were several choices offered (see project details,
Appendix B) all of my students chose to create an animated video as their multimodal
project. Students were able to review their notes taken during presentations and review
the log of websites, visuals, etc. we had created after each share out session during our
class discussions from the previous weeks. These were made available to the entire class
through our school network files, and each student could access the discussions, notes,
and video clips at any time to review. Students were also required to plan a story board
of their video presentation before being approved for the actual creation and work of the
video project. See the introductory student sample below:

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People from all over the world took Clipper ships to California in the 1850s to mine for gold .
Gold had been discovered at Sutters Mill, in 1849 by a man named James Marshall. Miners
used all kinds of tools, but the most popular was called a pan. When miners panned for gold ,
they needed to be near a water source, usually a river.

In this example, the vocabulary words are highlighted in red, this is just one
example of the type of storyboarding that my students used to help them generate and
define ideas for their multimodal projects. A few students also chose to create their
storyboard with hand drawings instead of using the computer and computer-based
images.
According to Bomer, et al. (2010) New practices in literacy are not really
about new digital devices: tools are not the point. New literatices are new ways of doing
things, new ways of creating and working with text (p.9) I want to be clear as I continue
to describe my study, that technology used for the student projects was not the point of
this study. The point of this study was and continues to be focused on helping struggling
fourth grade readers. Technology may be a tool to answer this question, but it is not the
whole answer.
The idea behind using technologies and digital literacies in this study has been to
create a cultural learning process, as coined by Gee (2004). When a cultural learning
environment is created, the process of learning changes, and by setting this format up in
my class via the use of digital media and tools of technology my goal has been to change
the way my struggling readers were learning about content area reading, or expository
text. As Gee (2004) discusses, giving children a space where they are invited to identify
with content areas such as science and history can ultimately determine the way a child
sees and experiences that content for the rest of their lives. By allowing my students the
52

space and ability to research and become miners, entrepreneurs, and other people of the
gold rush virtually, via their video projects, my students were building bridges (Gee,
2004) to their own connections with history and to the time period of the gold rush. My
hope is that as they created these virtual identities (Gee, 2004) in their video projects
my students would also grow their own real world identity (Gee, 2004) allowing them
to make future connections with history and expository text.
Students were encouraged to take on personal identities of specific miners,
trackers, or entrepreneurs like Jedediah Smith or President Polk and use these historical
figures as a basis for their video characters. Other students took on the identities as travel
agents or historians giving you information about the best routes to California, or past
highlights of Californias history.
The students had a two week timeline to work on their videos. Prior to getting on
the computer, however, students needed to review the social studies materials I had
already presented in class as well as the material and notes taken on their fellow
classmates presentations. This review helped students to create a comic book sketch of
their video ideas. The comic book sketch needed to be approved before students logged
onto the computers to create their videos, so that I could monitor how well the students
understood the themes and vocabulary words. It also gave students another way to
interact with the social studies information with a multimodal response. Schallert (1980)
stated, Pictures help the reader learn and comprehend a text when they illustrate
information central to the text, when they represent new content that is important to the
overall message, and when they depict structural relationships mentioned in the text (p.
513514).
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The comic book sketches were a way to check for understanding as well as
involve struggling readers in the comprehension of the expository history text they were
accountable to understand. It was my hope that using the sketches prior to using the
computer would further support my struggling readers. As Green states (2005) struggling
readers and EL readers need extra language support. Technology, especially computers,
can play an integral part in providing EL students with valuable language experiences
(p.56). It was my hope by combining both the visual sketches and the use of the computer
that my struggling readers and ELL students would have a deeper conceptual grasp of the
gold rush and information presented in class.
Finally, all my students also had to sit through a short demonstration on how to
use the website site and how to maneuver the video program online prior to getting online
themselves. Once their comic strip ideas were approved, I allowed the students to begin
creating their videos.
In order to help all of my students and manage their time on the computers, I
reserved one of the two computer labs on campus for every work period over the two
week timeline. The lab we used most often had 15 working computers, so I was able to
monitor all of my student groups working at the same time. I was also able to quickly
help solve any technical problems my students encountered. Throughout our time in the
computer lab, I took time to quickly review any students concerns via short mini lessons
on the SMART board in the computer lab. This made the students feel confident and able
to use the technology easily on their own.

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The final product

Each pair of students created a short interactive video ranging from one to three
minutes in length that explained one of the four themes we had learned about during the
gold rush unit. The video required students to show knowledge of the gold rush and use
at least ten of the vocabulary words we had learned during our study. Students were able
to design their characters, backgrounds, and sound effects by choosing from a
predetermined menu offered by the website.
In their videos, students were also required to include main ideas they had
learned in order to show their knowledge of the gold rush. For example, if a student pair
decided they wanted to make their video about the theme supply and demand, they would
also have to include main ideas that matched with their theme, such as most miners made
little money during the gold rush. This main idea shows that students understood that
because there was a lot of miners mining for gold during the late 1840s that the demand
for gold was high, but the demand for other services was even higher. That means the
miners may have actually lost money during the gold rush because inflation made outside
services in even higher demand than gold. The students had to grasp that because the
supply of gold was relatively steady, the demand for it was low. These are the types of
themes and main ideas which showed me that students were able to process and explore
expository texts. These types of themes were seen throughout the student generated video
projects.

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Chapter Four: Results

Overall, the students in my 2010-2011 class were very successful with their
conceptual learning of the gold rush history and its vocabulary. In this study, I asked, how
can I help students in my fourth grade classroom who struggle with reading? I eventually
focused on content area reading, which I have found is usually the more difficult type of
reading for my fourth grade students. So my question really ended up being how can I
help students in my fourth grade classroom who struggle with content area reading? I
feel that the results of this study show that my fourth grade students were able to
successfully learn and make connections to the gold rush. This was an era of California
history that seemed ancient and disconnected from their modern lives, but because of the
technology integration, digital literacies, multimodal project, and use of cultural teaching
methods that I used throughout the process, I felt I was able to bridge the gap between the
seemingly ancient and modern.
In order to get an idea of how well students were able to grasp the vocabulary
taught through the gold rush unit, I implemented a written final assessment (see
Appendix C) to supplement the multimodal video presentation results. I felt this testing
supplementation would be an interesting comparison between written and multimodal
assessment data, the multimodal assessment data being the animated video project. In the
written assessment, I asked students to match the twelve most commonly used gold rush
tools to their correct definitions in a matching assessment. The assessment gave students
the vocabulary words (gold rush tools) on one side of the column and the opposite
column gave students an assortment of definitions to match with the vocabulary word.
This assessment gave the students some context to work from because the definitions
56

were written out on the test, but the students may have not recognized the definitions
exactly because there were no pictures on the test, and the students had relied on mostly
visuals as well as their own notes taken during the teaching phase to learn these tools and
their definitions.
In retrospect, I think that adding a picture of each tool to the written test probably
would have given a more accurate reading of how much vocabulary the students had
really learned. Also, I feel if the end of the school year had not been rapidly approaching,
perhaps my students would have been able to focus a little more on the assessment. The
assessment had to be given the last day of school, and looking back, it would have been
wiser, if there had been time, to have given the assessment earlier in the school year.
On the written exam, 17 out 27 students were able to match at least 80% of the
words with their correct definitions, which categorized these students as proficient. In this
proficient group of students, two of the identified struggling readers were able to
correctly match the vocabulary words with scores of 8/12 and 10/12 on their tests. These
two students were Robert and Claire. Another three students of this proficient group had
been previously identified as ELL students, and were able to recognize the mining tools
with scores of 10/12, 10/12, and 12/12. None of these ELL students had been included in
the original struggling readers focus group. The other 12 proficient students were
categorized as G.A.T.E., (otherwise known as Gifted and Talented Education), or
otherwise high achieving students. It is clear from the overall achievement of this
proficient group of students that the teaching approach, using vocabulary with
technology, and approaching lessons from a more student-friendly perspective was very

57

beneficial. About 63% of my students were successful when matching the vocabulary on
their final written assessment.
Only ten students in my class were unable to match the definitions at 80% or
higher proficiency, however; nine out of the ten students were able to match at least 50%
of the words with their correct definition. Of these ten students, in this non-proficient
vocabulary assessment group, 5 of them had been in the struggling reader group and
were identified and defined at the beginning of the study. The other five students in this
group were identified at the beginning of the study as ELL students. This means that I
was only able to move two out of my seven struggling readers into a proficient reading
group based on this written assessment data. For students who were rated as nonproficient, I am unsure of how effective the integration of digital texts was for their
overall learning outcome on standardized formal assessments because my assessment
failed to include the multimodal aspects that these students had relied on during the
teaching phase.
Another factor I also need to consider when analyzing the assessment results is
the amount of time that some of these non-proficient students were able to really
interact with the vocabulary and cultural learning process. For example, six of the
students who did not pass the final assessment, identified above as, non-proficient were
included in second reading groups, and were pulled out of the classroom for additional
reading instruction, during some of the social studies whole group lessons. This may
have affected how much time and interaction these students were able to have with the
vocabulary, technology, and the culminating video project. This may have also
contributed to their overall success in proving their ability to learn the gold rush
58

vocabulary as demonstrated on their final assessment. About 37% of my students were

not able to match the vocabulary on the written final assessment. Of this percentage, all
six students who were pulled out for extra reading help, but were not present during the
social studies lessons, were unable to proficiently identify the gold rush vocabulary. This
written assessment data shows that most of my struggling readers did not benefit from the
cultural learning environment and the tactics used to try and improve their
comprehension of expository reading materials. However, due to the lack of time these
students were able to spend in the classroom, and a failure to include visuals on the test, I
feel that their assessment data is not a perfect reflection of their reading abilities. Further,
only academic definitions were included on the final assessment. This may have confused
students who were only able to generate student-friendly definitions during their
multimodal note taking. Although these written assessment results show that only about
half of my students were able to proficiently identify and match the gold rush vocabulary
in isolation, the written assessment was only one format used to observe growth in this
study.
The main format of observation and measure of growth for my purposes was the
multimodal video project. In using this project, I was able to measure my students
understandings of the vocabulary in a more conceptual way. Students were able to prove
their knowledge and growth in learning as they labored to include the gold rush
vocabulary into their video dialogues with their own words in their own voices. This
assessment lent itself much more to the reality of learning. Students were either able to
show that they understood the vocabulary, by putting the words into context in their
dialogue.
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The website, www.xtranormal.com , allowed the students in my class to create

their own personalized videos, once I had set up a class account. In their presentations,
students were required to link one of the four major themes of the gold rush to one or two
of the main ideas of the gold rush presented in class, while at the same time infusing
vocabulary they had learned during the teaching phase.
See students samples: Retrieved June 2010.
http://.xtranormal.com/wwwprofile/6456726/?listtype=INPROGRESS
In terms of evaluating the video project as an assessment, I did not use any
formal rubric, but rather evaluated how well students were able to use the vocabulary
words in context, how well they were able to explain the chosen theme of the gold rush,
and their general ability to craft the presentation. According to Wyatt-Smith and Kimber
(2009) Defining criteria or rubrics by which to evaluate student multimodal performance
is, at best, an attempt to pin down a dynamic, potentially magical performance to a static
moment in time (at least momentarily) ( p.87).
In lieu of a rubric, I measured success by looking at the elements of a multimodal
project. I wanted to be able to see student connections to the information, as well as their
created space, which represented their knowledge of their cultural learning process. I did
not want to see regurgitation of the history textbook or anything that seemed generic. A
student team that would receive full credit for their video project would have used the
vocabulary words in their written dialogue correctly, with context clues, and would have
explained throughout their dialogue the theme of their choice. For example, here is a
student sample of dialogue which reflects a full credit score:

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Hey, Manny, we're finally at the gold rush, a time when people came to California for gold
Yeah John, it's gonna be awesome, we're forty-niners, people who came to California in eighteen-forty-nine
Hey, remember that swamp we saw?
What is a swamp John?
A swamp is marshy area of land.
Did you hear what happened at Sutter's Fort?
Yeah, Marshall found gold
Do you want to go digging for gold ?
Sure, I have my horn spoon right here.
Alright, but what is a horn spoon?
A horn spoon is a tool used in cracks to dig out gold .
We also have to buy a pan, cradle and rocker.
What? I'm confused Ive never heard of those things
Did you forget everything that you learned in school?
Well... maybe
Gees man, well a pan is a tool the miners used to separate the gold that was in the pan from the dirt. A rocker is a
tool used that you rock to separate soil from gold and a cradle is basically the same thing but bigger.
Let's go see if an entrepreneur has those
Wait.... isn't an entrepreneur a person who takes the law into his own hands?
NO, that is a vigilante. A entrepreneur is a person who sells things for the money. Consumers are the people who buy
the merchandise.
I saw a sign that said no hydraulic mining, what's that
it is when people hose down mountain sides for gold
Alright, lets start digging, John.
Lets start here
We're obviously invading his territory, or LAND!!!! Hah i do remember school stuff.
Let's stake a claim, Manny. Manny?
Ooh, I want that gun.
The supply of things we need are very low so the demand is very high, we can't waste our money on guns.
I want to go back to the other guy's claim
No!We made a compromise, or agreement, to stay out of his claim
Okay, fine. let's start digging in our own claim, where there isn't many people.
We struck it rich!!!!!!!!
Wow look at everybody crowding into the gold fields!
Hey! The mayor just made an announcement, California is now a state because of the importance of the gold rush and

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the increase in population

Awesome! we should stay!
Okay!!!
THE END
story written by Ethan and Elizabeth
A special thanks to our teachers and the awesome website we used
Thanks for watching.

Under these terms of multimodal assessment evaluation, the students in my class

excelled. Every pair of students was able to efficiently explain their chosen theme, use
their chosen vocabulary in context with correct meaning without awkward dialogue or
sentence structure. I was also impressed with the students abilities to fashion such
intriguing videos. They did not seem like they were just trying to meet a quota of
information, rather the students true voices, humor, and comprehension were able to
come through in their videos, which was more than I had hoped for when I started this
project. 100 percent of my students were able to implement the gold rush vocabulary with
correct context in their final video project. The students were also able to explain gold
rush themes taught in class in detail in their own words and/or with support of their video
project.
One of the struggles I had when evaluating my students multimodal projects as
assessments was to remain fair. In general, I looked for student connection and the
cultural learning Gee (2008) mentions to guide my assumptions of whether my class
gained knowledge from their video projects or not. I felt that the project was laid out in a
format to be assessed with multimodality in mind, which made it easier to use as an
assessment. Rishko and Walker-Dalhouse (2010) state, when engaged in collaborative
assessments, students learn new strategies and adjust their approach to literacy tasks,
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especially when [multimodal] assessments are used for providing feedback and guidance
(p.421). Because my students were able to work in partners, both the assignment and
assessment were set up and reviewed with multimodal lenses. I feel my students were
able to benefit from the interactive gold rush project.
In reference to assessment, Barone and Wright (2008) discuss that both traditional
assessment and multimodal assessment are flawed. Neither of these assessments
quantifies students engagement as they learn (p.302). I think looking at assessment in
this way really opens up a debate about how effective our current traditional assessments
are when trying to measure the cultural learning process, and how effective multimodal
assessments are at measuring progress as defined by the current state criteria. In
defense of multimodal assessment and teaching, Thompson (2008) states multimodal
learning encourages teachers to think about how to involve adolescents in looking at
multiple forms of text to examine what it means to their identities and beliefs about the
world (p.144).
My students were able to transfer knowledge from history and traditional text via
exploring digital literature, interactive videos, using a multimodal project and its tools, to
their own conceptual understandings. They were no longer believing or trying to
regurgitate facts just for the basis of memorization or for passing a test. My students were
able to synthesize their knowledge and use it to create their own understandings through
the construction of their video projects. For example, most student groups were able to
use appositives to describe the gold rush tools. One group in particular, wrote their
dialogue showing that not only did they understand the vocabulary, but they were

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learning conceptually, because they were able to place it in their own words. (See the
dialogue example above)
The written data shows that over half of my students, 17 out of 27, were able to
make real connections with the gold rush vocabulary and recall it on a test after working
with the words in their digital video presentation projects. I feel that if technology and
digital texts had not been used to teach about the gold rush and its specific vocabulary,
that the average success rate on the written assessment would be much lower, or nonexistent. I observed throughout my study that my students were disconnected to history
because they could not experience it for themselves. Bringing in the elements of
technology like the video reenactments, and online learning situations where students
were able to explore aspects of the gold rush for themselves was, I believe, vital to my
students success.
Therefore, my lesson design in this phase of the teaching process seemed to be
helpful, at least in terms of creating a space for students to explore and connect with the
history material as well as the vocabulary in new and different ways. In particular,
Claire, was able to make great gains in her vocabulary retention using this method of
instruction. After learning the first six vocabulary words, presented in the first two
themes, Claire was able to recall 5 out 6 words and retell the historical story presented in
class nearly perfectly. Robert was also able to retain 4 out of the 5 vocabulary words and
explain the basic concepts presented in the storytelling portion of the lesson. This
storytelling continued as I introduced the next two themes, and students continued to
work with visual aids and pictures to help them make connections to the history being
presented. Students continued to explore websites, interact with each other socially to
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construct meaning of the information being presented, make their personal notes, and
create cartoons/ collages to explain their individual findings and connections to the
vocabulary and content being presented. As my group of struggling readers continued to
become more comfortable with the format in which information was being presented, and
as they became more confident sharing out their ideas and findings from individual web
searches, I slowly began to see an increase in their confidence as readers and thinkers.
Robert and Claire stood out from the small group of struggling readers because
these two students were becoming more engaged with every lesson shown through their
vocalization of the taught vocabulary in both their oral and written communications. For
example, both Robert and Claire decided to participate in a class challenge to write a
short expository summary in their personal journal which had to use all of the vocabulary
words taught during the unit. Both summaries demonstrated that Robert and Claire had
understood the main ideas presented with the themes of the gold rush as well as the
vocabulary. Here is a small excerpt from Claires summary. The vocabulary is
highlighted in red:
Today in class we learned about mining tools like we have been for the last few
weeks. We had to pretend that we were miners back in 1850 and we were supposed to
pick the tools we thought would most help us in our quest to find gold . I decided to take
a pan because we learned they were easy to pack and light to carry as well as very
valuable in the gold fields. I also decided to take pick and shovel. Although these tools
were not as portable as the pan, they were invaluable to miners because they could be
used at rivers and in the mountains.

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As I reflect on this studys outcomes, I can see that with the diversity of students
today and the amount of intervention pull-out programs that are being implemented, more
accommodations and exposures to the technology would have been helpful for my
struggling readers and ELL students. As always, there is room to grow and changes to be
made. I think the most important thing I have learned from these results is that meeting
students where they are as readers is just the beginning. It is up to me as their teacher to
engage them and expose them to learning processes that are modern, challenging, and
playful with language. Wilson (2008), reminds me that the process of teaching and using
multimodal texts with students will take time, and that it is necessary to teach students
how to use multimodal texts and assessments.
I have learned through my observations that when my students feel like they are
playing a game, or making connections for the first time to a subject or language they
previously ranked as tedious, that is where the true learning begins. I believe that this
true learning took place in my study because students were able to put on alternate
identities and discover the world of the 1849 gold rush through modern lenses. Students
were able to really grasp the hardships of the miners, the greed of the entrepreneurs, and
the thrill behind the search for gold all because of digital texts, interactive video clips,
and the integration of technology, making a pathway for multimodal learning.

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Chapter Five: Conclusion

Throughout this study, I asked the questions, how can I help students in my fourth
grade classroom who struggle with content area reading, and why do my fourth grade
students struggle with reading?
The first question, how can I help students in my fourth grade classroom who
struggle with content area reading, I believe has been summed up throughout my study
and can be expressed only through one word: change. I have learned that if I am going to
really help my students become better readers I have to change as a teacher. My teaching,
my lesson plans as well as my delivery need to change in order for my students to really
be helped. I have experienced success through the process of altering my regular social
studies lessons. Now that I know greater improvement can be made with vocabulary
comprehension; especially in regards to reading comprehension of expository text, I must
pursue the changes that need to be made.
More of my students were able to connect with the social studies content because
of the integration of digital texts, multimodal learning, and technological elements like
video clips/ websites. This was done as the lessons in this study moved away from
traditional text and towards incorporating digital texts and multimodal literacy practices.
Hassett and Curwood (2009) state, new technologies transform literacy practices, but
new literacy practices transform the way we use the tools before us in ongoing momentto moment social context (p.272).
I have realized through the analysis of my findings that my teaching needs to
reflect the changes I made during this study in order to help my future students who
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struggle with content area reading. No longer can I tailor my lessons to fit inside the
standard box, I need to embrace this mantra you are who you teach and you teach who
you are (Meyer, 1996, p.1) because I love reading and I want to share that love with my
students. I want my students to remember me as one of those teachers who really meant
something, made an impact, encouraged them, and really understood their needs.
Changing my teaching practice and my understanding of reading instruction is the only
way I see of helping my struggling readers. I realize now that my past approach to
teaching reading, especially content area reading has been too dry; too instructed. Hassett
and Curwood (2009) remind me, teachers must do more than simply use current theories
of reading to engage with new forms of texts- they must understand how multimodal
texts engender new roles for the reader, as well as new roles for the teacher (p.270).
I have learned that fourth grade students need to be engaged, especially with
history and science, so that the content can begin to relate to their own lives and can
become concrete rather than abstract. This became possible for my students by allowing
them to explore the gold rush vocabulary, themes, and events via internet, online videos
and research, as well as giving them room to create their own interactive video which
showcased their understandings and connections.
This change from teacher centered instructional reading lessons to student
friendly ones and hands-on multimodal project based learning made all the difference in
this study. According to Stein and Prewett (2009), social studies lessons need to be taught
with media because of the exposure different digital medias offer about historical figures,
places, events, and the interactions that young students can achieve via the use of
technology. These researchers claim that students are better able to appreciate history
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because they have been able to make their own connections and form their own opinions
of the past using new medias. Note the clear difference in student performance in the
before and after samples shown below. The student was able to identify and match most
of the academic vocabulary taught during the social studies after using digital media and
texts as teaching tools

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70

71

On a broader scale, after researching and performing my own data collection on

my students, I believe that my school/district need to make changes of their own in order
to really serve the students and help them become better readers. Of course, my results
and my study cannot be extended to match every situation with struggling fourth grade
readers, but I do think that schools today are too caught up in test scores and teaching to
the test. These test scores only reflect the learning that students have been trained to do,
not the learning and success that they have potential to experience by coming to their
own learning conclusions through multimodal learning.
The reality I have found to be true is that my students will only do well on tests or
projects if they really buy into it. They may do well on standardized tests one year when
they have been unsuccessful in the past because they know the material well, have
memorized the facts, or because of all the drill they have done to prepare; but I deeply
believe that at some point these same successful students will return to their previous
state of failure as they undergo tests in the future. I think this is because these students
were never really taught how to make the reading material on standardized tests
accessible for them. At least, in my own experience as a fourth grade teacher, I have seen
successful testing scores from incoming third grade students drop, not because I was a
poor teacher that year, but because my students struggled to access the reading material
on the fourth grade assessment. Of course, I have only come to this conclusion after years
of observation, much of which lead me to the framing questions of this thesis. My true
failure has been to not notice these struggling readers earlier in my career.
Obviously, my goal has not been to help my struggling readers so that they can
perform better on state testing. In contrast, my goal has been to help my struggling
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readers make more reading connections. I believe that a bi-product of this plan would be
better testing performance, but the overall reward would be student connection to
expository texts and less student frustration when reading.
My main goal when targeting my struggling readers from hereafter is to teach my
students how to find pleasure in anything they read. In order to do this, my students need
to be taught how to make reading fun for them. Of course they need to know the basics of
how to read, but I would argue that they need to know how to analyze and explore
reading, so that they can form an opinion as well. Their own opinions form interest and
their interests guide them to further exploration.
This is where I have found the cultural learning environment and the reading
process blend together. Students need to find ways to read materials they would normally
find boring for pleasure but teachers also need to find ways to explore student pleasures
and interests within their reading lessons. By creating a reading environment that is
sensitive to their needs as learners I have found that I can tap into the strengths of my
struggling readers. This has allowed them a space to interact with academic vocabulary in
a way they have never been able to before.
Thankfully, there are several school programs and new ideas being brought forth
in the education world that will help encourage the cultural learning and student-driven
connections to text. One of these is the Buck organization, which promotes project-based
learning. Currently, my school district is beginning to partner with local community
members and colleges to create project-based learning units for fourth grade science. This
exciting program is essentially guiding students to project-based assessment and leaning

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more into the world of multimodal texts and learning. It is with great joy that I see my
district beginning to break away from written standardized tests, in order to bring forth a
new relationship with student reading, learning, technology, and assessment. There is still
a long way to go, but at least some changes are on the horizon.
The way I was able to develop a cultural learning environment and create a place
of learning that was student-friendly and geared towards my students interests in my
own classroom was through the incorporation digital texts, technology, digital media
programs/ software, and through application. Gee (2008) argues that we [teachers] must
prepare our students for the 21st century with new skills-they must be capable, creative,
innovative problem-solvers-along with the traditional core skills (p.4). This relates back
to research done by Goodman, Watson, and Burke (2005) where the basic skills of
reading, or as Gee (2008) refers to them, the traditional core skills, are taught
simultaneously so readers are able to create meaning. This means that the holistic
model (Goodman, Watson, & Burke, 2005) needs to be used in schools, teaching
reading skills in a socio-cultural context while at the same time incorporating new
literacies, such as digital media.
I have learned through my study that a cultural learning environment is integral
to reaching my students; without it no interest can be built and no real individual opinions
will be formed by students. Technology and its tools, such as digital texts, helped me
teach in a cultural way. I was able to create a cultural learning environment that Gee
(2004) refers to as

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learners working in a smart environment filled with tools and technology, and
artifacts storing knowledge and skills they can draw on when they do not
personally have such knowledge and skills. Information is given just in time
when it can be put to use and on demand when learners feel they need it and
can follow it (p.13).
In this way of cultural learning, my students were able to explore aspects of the gold
rush in their own time, making sense of information extended to them as it became useful
to them, all while working towards their culminating video project. My students were
able to build interest in something that may have seemed ancient to them (the gold rush)
because they were able to explore the topic through their own journey. Digital texts make
this accessible to all students. Each student could read and explore the very same digital
text differently because each student was able to read it in his or her own way by
exploring links, etc. This created immediate interest for my students because often the
use of technology for students is very limited on my campus.
I found throughout my study that I need to be more open to using technology and
allowing my students time to use technology to inspire their own learning. Ignoring new
communications technology could well increase the polarization of in-school and out-ofschool literacy practices, widening the gap between the school curriculum and the pupils
who are taught (Merchant, 2005, p.64). Without an adjustment to my teaching, I have
concluded that my students will continue to fall farther behind in reading, especially in
content area reading, thus adding to the already wide fourth grade slump.

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Addressing the second question, why do fourth grade students struggle to read, is
still highly debatable in the world of education. Some research shows that poor quality
teachers and unfortunate teaching practices are the cause (Kajder, 2005). Other research
explains that teaching approach is part of the problem, ( Goodman, Watson, & Burke,
2005) but that the real cause is that school literacy programs have not changed or adapted
to the ever-changing student population and the modern world of technology that students
are daily immersed in (Gee, 2004).
Furthermore, the learning environment that a student is surrounded by or
throughout childhood, and the amount of exposure he or she may have to academic
vocabulary (Chall, 1996) can also affect how well a student will read when he/she enters
fourth grade.
For me, I feel the problem lies somewhere amongst these theories. In my
classroom, my incoming fourth graders do show some gaps in their learning, forcing me
to conclude that there are some poor teaching practices being implemented in primary
grades. These students have always been taught using textbooks and traditional literacy
programs. These students also have had very little exposure to digital texts, multimodal
learning, or technology, which could quite possibly help fill in some of their learning
gaps. So, from my observations, I feel that both the reading program and teaching
approach play a part in why my fourth grade students struggle with reading. Gee (2008)
supports my own notion, saying, our students are not learning the skills they need for
tomorrows world in todays schools (p.9).

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Addressing the question of why some fourth grade students struggle to read has
proved to be more challenging than I had originally believed it would be. I can see now
that childhood environment is a key factor in determining school success. When
academic language is introduced at home, students tend to be more comfortable with it
when they have to read it at school ( Gee, 2004). So, students who have not had that same
language exposure seem to be further behind when they enter fourth grade.
Another potential problem is that most schools and upper grade teachers are
trained to work with students who are adept readers. Instead of facing the enlarged
needs of the future, our nation has turned many of our schools into test-prep academies
focused on assessing standardized skill sets in a world that demands higher-level skills
and the ability to innovate (Gee, 2008, p.9) I believe that this emphasis on testing has
affected the way teaching occurs in the classroom. I feel too much attention has been
placed on testing progress has led teachers to forget about the individual student needs,
and the best practices for how to meet those needs. For my part at least, I have found that
I have been too consumed with testing. I need to change my teaching practices to reflect
the needs of my unique students.
In my past experience, I have felt that I must meet the teaching standards and
curriculum within a certain fashion. Stepping too far from the box, has created problems,
and brought up questions from my administrators. Although I do brave the questions and
try to be an innovative teacher who is willing to try different approaches in order to meet
the needs of all my students, it is tiring as well as time consuming to defend my teaching
practices with research. Even though my school district is highly updated with new
technology and is currently not using a scripted reading series, it still seems to me that the
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idea of cultural learning as a teaching process is still yet to be embraced. My school

district still relies heavily on data from written assessments and those assessments are all
standards based.
One of my hopes in changing my teaching practice during this study was to see
that progress can be measured in alternative ways. I believe one of these measurements
should be looking at how to meet the needs of my struggling readers in conjunction with
the 21st century skills (Gee, 2008) they need to know to be truly successful in life, not
just in school. Creating learning projects like the one I used in this study as a culminating
event can assess student knowledge within the cultural learning environment. This type
of assessment can be supported by the digital literacies students need to become fluent in
so they can survive and eventually surpass the fourth grade slump.
Neuman and Celano(2006) as well as Warschauer (2004, 2006) refer to these 21st
century skills as the digital gap, and explain that students who possess the proficiencies
in using technology to produce knowledge will have a higher success rate in life
because they will be able to navigate and manipulate new digital technologies to their
benefit. Further, Hobbs (2011) reports that in order to be ready for the future, young
students need to be able to analyze and appraise an extensive range of print and nonprint
texts in media forms old and new (p.15). For me, this means that my teaching should be
more aimed towards incorporating media and digital literacies rather than focusing on the
skills and drills related to state assessments.
According to Barone and Wright (2008), when technologies are introduced
earlier, in primary grades, students are prepared for its more extensive use when they

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enter fourth grade, thus making the claim that more of the digital and media
technologies need to be integrated into schools earlier. This research supports what Gee
(2008), Nueman and Celano (2006), and Warschauer (2004, 2006) have coined the
digital gap, or the idea that students are struggling to read both digitally and
traditionally, creating even more obstacles for schools to overcome if we stay on the
same pathways that have typically been embraced by education in the past. Hobbs (2011)
adds, but the transformational change will not come about simply by generating
documents or developing written standards (p.15). Here Hobbs argues that a larger more
permanent change needs to be realized in the educational system if digital media and
literacies are to be included, introduced, and well developed, so that our current learning
gaps do not further increase.
Furthermore, as Gee (2004) argues, learning to read is not done well when it is
taught as an instructed process. Yet, reading is still clearly taught through an instructed
process, as I have shown through my statements and evidence about my school district
and their beliefs about teaching within the box of standardized assessments.
After completing my study, I agree with Gee. I found that my students really
became engaged when working with technology and many of them claimed that the gold
rush video project was the best thing about fourth grade. This type of enthusiasm from
fourth grade students regarding history is very rare in my experience as a teacher.
Robert, for example, displayed confidence that I had not seen the entire school
year. He was able to verbally express his ideas to his partner for the video project in a
way I had not seen until his confidence was boosted by his understandings of the

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vocabulary. Robert first gained confidence when he realized his love of drawing and art
would be encouraged throughout the gold rush unit. Robert really enjoyed being able to
draw pictures of the gold rush tools and take his own notes in his journal. He was also a
very social child, so being able to work with his classmates to discuss and explore web
pages together was highly stimulating for Robert. Another thing that really motivated him
was the multimodal video project. Robert observed that the project didnt even seem like
work.
Robert was able to fully participate with the multimodal project because he had
conceptually learned the vocabulary needed to create the video correctly. I knew this
because of the observations I made as he worked with his partner on his video project,
from the way that he spoke about each tool and from the dialogue he created for his
project. From my observations, Robert would not have been able to participate as well if
he had not been immersed in a cultural learning environment throughout the early
teaching phases of the unit. His ability to make connections became more intense as he
was able to utilize his own strengths as a reader. His strengths of visual and auditory
abilities were given more attention in the cultural learning environment because of the
use of digital texts and multimodal expressive learning.
Hobbs (2011) states that digital medias and literacy comprehension is needed in
order to develop peoples capacity for engaging with information (p.15). I feel that my
students had so much success and felt connected to the content they were reading and
learning about, because the material had been presented in a cultural learning
environment without an emphasis on instructed teaching. This type of cultural learning,
exploring the Internet, etc. was exciting for my students because I believe they felt that
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their interests had finally been embraced, making the learning process more inclusive to
their needs. Guthrie and Humenick (2004) did studies that report student interest and
choice in reading reflects back highly on comprehension and memory of what students
have learned. This research supports the idea that if student interests are embraced via the
cultural learning classroom, then their memory of what they have learned will be more
powerful and have longer lasting effects on their comprehension. The effects on student
memory, due to the cultural learning environment, may be why two of my struggling
readers were able to move from the non-proficient group into the proficient group
during this study. Also, in retrospect, I think students like Robert would have perhaps
benefitted even more from this study if they were asked to create student-friendly and
academic definitions during the exploration stage. In this way, their own cultural
connection to the gold rush vocabulary would have been more directly tied to the
academic vocabulary. This direct connection may have allowed more of my struggling
readers to be successful with their final assessment.
Embracing my students interests, I have learned can make my job as their teacher
easier, opening up pathways for learning that I may never have risked on my own. Also,
being open to the cultural learning process can also make my teaching job easier because
I am no longer fighting against my students and their curiosities instead, I am using their
own motivations, in this case technology and digital literacy, to guide my students
through the learning process. This kind of teaching, cultural teaching, while embracing
student interest eliminates much of the friction I have experienced in the past between
myself and my students. The classroom instead becomes a place of mutual learning,
where both the teacher and the students are gaining knowledge. According to Goodman,
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Watson, and Burke (2005), What students (as well as teachers) believe about reading
powerfully affects learning and the teaching of reading (p.177). This means that if both
teachers and students regard reading as possible and create positive learning
environments for content area reading, then reading will become a positive pleasurable
event, rather than a negative discouraging one.
I have learned it is important to treat my students with the respect because they
have an array of interests through which they need to be validated. Hassett & Curwood
(2009) and Siegel ( 2006) state, children have always been multimodal(p.271) and
that by paying attention to how children have always expressed themselves, we can as
educators, be more aware of meaning making practices, especially with the incorporation
of new technologies. (Marsh, 2006).
In addition, I have learned, I can help my students and future students by
becoming more open as a teacher to their needs and by planning my reading lessons in
ways that incorporate their interests. After all, technology integration is just a tool, a
pathway to enhance learning, but the really important aspect I have found is how I
perform as a teacher. I believe that this is also why many of my fourth grade students still
struggle. I think these students feel that they have not been acknowledged as
knowledgeable beings and that their interests have not been accessed in the past and by
past teachers.
According to Goodman, Watson, and Burke (2005) the reading model used in the
classroom can affect how a student learns to read. If the reading model was not holistic,
integrating the language cueing systems and reading strategies, (p.179) then chances

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are that students were not taught to read in a cultural, but rather instructed classroom.
From my observations I have found many of my struggling readers were instructed in
primary classrooms where reading was not culturally taught.
All of these factors combined with compacted issues of low self-confidence in
reading, I believe were contributors to why my fourth grade students struggled with
reading when they entered my classroom. According to Sanacore and Palumbo (2009),
though some students transition smoothly to fourth grade, other students struggle with
content area material some students seem more negatively affected students with
negative attitudes towards reading, and students with low achievement in reading (p.67
& 69).
Other factors that most likely contributed to why some of my students struggled
were their language barriers. Some of my students had to overcome language difficulties
as they made a transition from their home language to their school language. These
students had been working to become skilled in English since their very early schooling
years, but were still not completely fluent. Ajayi (2009) states, using multi-literacies with
ELL students allows them more opportunity to connect with the language and the text.
Multimodal pedagogy goes beyond language to promote alternative ways of reading,
interpreting, and text composing (p.587). Once again this research supports the
multimodal/ cultural learning classroom and shows that without it students may struggle
to read at the demanding fourth grade level, especially my ELL students.
To sum up, there are many reasons why my students still struggle with reading
when they enter my fourth grade classroom. I have learned through my study that when I

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start a school year in August, I cannot dwell on why some of my students are labeled as
struggling readers. Instead, I need to focus on how to help this new group of fourth grade
students to be successful in my classroom as fourth grade content area readers.
I have also observed that most fourth grade children are interested in expository
topics. Sadly, due to the reading struggles many of my students face, they cannot always
fully participate in the exploration of these expository texts because of the dense
academic vocabulary. I have discovered through my observations that although
expository texts are difficult for my struggling readers, they are interesting because of
their multimodal aspects. Expository texts do not only require traditional reading skills
but rather are able to be navigated in many ways. I have found through my study, that
these expository texts can be even better navigated by struggling readers when they are
presented digitally. This is because the digital format allows a reader to move about the
text with more freedom. Each reader can explore the text as they discover it, using the
links that are offered to help them build a better understanding of the content for
themselves. These connections help create the cultural learning environment that can best
support each individual learner. This is why I believe that digital texts and multimodal
reading and teaching is the best way to help struggling readers have more success in the
classroom.
During this study, I asked the questions, how can I help students in my fourth
grade classroom who struggle with content area reading, and why do my fourth grade
students struggle with reading? I believe I have answered these questions through my
research and have found in order to help my students who struggle with reading a
dramatic change in my teaching needs to occur. I need to be opening up my students to
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new knowledge through a classroom environment that utilizes digital media to support
student learning. I have realized that there is little I can do about how my students come
to me, but there is a lot I can do once they are with me.
I am now ready to explore the concept of creating a cultural learning environment
inside my own classroom for all content areas. This will allow me to embrace my
students knowledge and their interests, as well as deliver lessons that will ignite student
interest and help them overcome barriers like academic vocabulary. Gees 2008 study
supports my call to action for change, we want to close both the reading gap and the
digital gap at one and the same time. And it is crucial that we close these gaps in ways
that create learners who are able to innovate and produce knowledge, not just recapitulate
standard answers on tests (p.23).
It is clear then, that in order to really answer my research questions, I must try to
ignore the reasons why students come to me as struggling readers, and do what I can to
make their fourth grade year as successful as possible, thus creating an opportunity for
my students to be successful throughout the remainder of their education. I have found
this can be done in my classroom by moving toward cultural and holistic teaching
practices while exposing students to academic language through digital media. These
practices engage student interest as well as guide them into using digital literacies and
technologies that will support their transformation into innovative digital age that is
awaiting them. Thus, a struggling reader entering my fourth grade classroom will exit as
a successful reader using the tools of the cultural learning environment to bridge the gap
between academic vocabulary and the expository texts that were once perplexing to them.

85

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Appendix A
Pretest # 1 of Academic Vocabulary
(Word Identification)

Please use each of the following vocabulary words in a complete sentence. Use context
clues, such as appositives, to help explain the meaning of each vocabulary word.

1. gold rush:
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
2. Territory:
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
3. Forty-Niner:
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
4. Cape :
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
5. Clipper:
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
6. Isthmus:
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
7. swamp:
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
8. claim:
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________

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Pretest # 2 Academic Vocabulary

(Matching: Some Context)

Please match each of the following vocabulary words with their correct meanings.

1. Pan

A. a person who takes the law into their own hands

2. Shovel

B. a tool miners used to crack open hard rocks

3. Cradle

C. a person or company that buys goods

4. Long Tom

D. the need or want for a type of good

5. Pick

E. the amount of goods for sale

6. Vigilante

F. a person who sets up their own business

7. Free Enterprise

G. the ability to buy, sell, or trade without restriction

8. Entrepreneur

H. a tool used by miners to scoop up dirt or soil

9. Consumer

I. a two layered gold sift that helped miners find gold

10. Supply

J. a hand-tool used in rivers which helped miners find gold

11. Demand

K. a system used in rivers that separated dirt from gold

12. Compromise

L. the equal give and take of two people or parties so that

an agreement can be reached

93

Pretest # 3 Academic Vocabulary: Reading Comprehension

(Context given within reading)
(A series reading comprehensions passage will be given that contain mining tools
and academic vocabulary)
Directions: Read the following passages and identify the meaning of the
following mining terms. Write the meaning you have gained from the text below
next to the word.
1. Rocker
2. Hydraulic Mining
3. Cradle
4. Long Tom
5. Pan
6. Horn spoon
7. Sluice
8. Arrastre

94

Appendix B

Name____________________________________________________#___________

Interactive gold rush Project

Due: June 10, 2011
Introduction:
Over the last 2 weeks of the school year, you will be learning about the California
gold rush and about the impact it had on shaping California as we know it today. You
will learn 23 new vocabulary words associated with the gold rush and be expected to use
most of these new terms in your final presentation. Your final presentation will be based
on one of the four major themes we discuss in class. You will be able to choose the theme
of your final presentation. Your final presentation can take on one of three forms:
personal video, animated video, or interactive game. All final presentations will need to
be presented using technology, and must include the most important ideas of your
specific theme as well as at least 10 vocabulary terms.
Objective:
You and a partner will create an interactive gold rush project in which you explain
and use as many of the new gold rush vocabulary terms as possible. Your goal is to
produce a product that makes learning about the gold rush fun and engaging, while at the
same time teaching the most important points related to your specific gold rush theme.

Project :
Step 1- Decide which type of project you and your partner want to create. ( 5pts.)
Type of Projects:
A) Personal Video: You will need to record & edit a video starring you and your
partner.
B) Animated Video: You will use a website with pre-designed characters ( you can
also design your own) and backgrounds to help you create a video.
C) Interactive Game: You will create an interactive game, similar to Jeopardy, using
power-point. Your game must teach about the theme and vocabulary of your
choice.
Step 2- Choose a theme. (5pts.)

95

D) How California was changed by the gold rush

E) Why the gold rush helped California become a state
F) The Impact of the gold rush on Californias people, culture, landscape, and
economy
G) The Supply and Demand during the gold rush and how it affected California
Step 3- Incorporate Vocabulary. ( 20pts.)

gold rush
* Cape
Territory
* Isthmus
demand
Forty- Niner * Swamp
Compromise
Hydraulic mining
Horn Spoon

* Pan
* Sluice

* Vigilante
* Free Enterprise

* Consumer
*supply/

* Cradle

* Entrepreneur

* rocker

Step 4- Decide on Main Ideas. ( 10 pts.) These must match up with your theme.
A)
B)
C)
D)

Most miners made little money during the gold rush

Entrepreneurs made the most money during the gold rush
The gold rush brought people from all over the world to California
The United States wanted California to be a part of the USA because of the gold
rush
E) The gold rush affected the way cities, laws, and governments were formed in
California
F) The gold rush allowed people to change and to live in different ways than they
had previously
G) The mining that occurred during the gold rush was damaging to California and to
many of its people.

Step 5- Plan it Out & Get Started ( 10pts.)

You are required to review the reading in your social studies book and get a
storyboard approved before beginning on your video process. Your plan should
include your choices for steps 1-5, and it should be a comic strip draft of what you
want to do for your project. Then once you are approved you will start working on
creating your video or game.

Step 6- Final Presentation (50pts.)

96

You and your partner must be ready to present your video or interactive game to
the class on or before June 10th. You must have followed the steps listed above and earn
at least 90 pts in order to successfully complete this project and get a chance to enter the
end of the year raffle held by Mrs. Enns.

97

Appendix C
Final Assessment
Academic Vocabulary
(Matching: Some Context)
Please match each of the following vocabulary words with their correct meanings.

1. Pan

A. a person who takes the law into their own hands

2. Shovel

B. a tool miners used to crack open hard rocks

3. Cradle

C. a person or company that buys goods

4. Long Tom

D. the need or want for a type of good

5. Pick

E. the amount of goods for sale

6. Vigilante

F. a person who sets up their own business

7. Free Enterprise

G. the ability to buy, sells, or trade without restriction

8. Entrepreneur

H. a tool used by miners to scoop up dirt or soil

9. Consumer

I. a two layered gold sift that helped miners find gold

10. Supply

J. a hand-tool used in rivers which helped miners find gold

11. Demand

K. a system used in rivers that separated dirt from gold

12. Compromise

L. the equal give and take of two people or parties so that

an agreement can be reached

98