Date Approved

6-30-1999

Embargo Period

7-22-2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.S. in Teaching

Department

Interdisciplinary and Inclusive Education

College

College of Education

Advisor

Robinson, Randall

Subject(s)

English language--Orthography and spelling--Study and teaching (Elementary); Fourth grade (Education)

Disciplines

Elementary Education and Teaching

Abstract

This research was designed to study the effect of cooperative learning instructional strategies as compared to traditional spelling instruction on fourth grade achievement in spelling. Comparisons were made between the spelling achievement of thirteen fourth grade students when they were taught by cooperative learning strategies and the spelling achievement of these same fourth grade students when they were taught by traditional spelling instructional methods. The cooperative learning instructional methods used were a combination of Classwide Peer Tutoring and Student Teams-Achievement Division (STAD). To control for certain variables a second treatment of traditional spelling instructional methods was implemented after the cooperative learning spelling instruction.

A variation of the one-group, pretest-posttest, pre-experimental design was used for this study. A series of t-tests for nonindependent samples were used to analyze the difference in the achievement of the students after using the differing treatments. Statistical analysis was performed at the p=.05 significance level. This study indicated a significant difference in the scores of the students in favor of using cooperative learning spelling instruction over traditional spelling instruction. This study supported the results of previous studies that have also shown a favorable significant difference when using cooperative learning to teach spelling as well as other subjects.

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