Wayne Ward

The goal of this project was to create and test an intelligent tutoring system called English Learner Vocabulary Acquisition (ELVA) that increases the vocabulary knowledge, text comprehension and English language proficiency of Spanish-speaking English Learners (ELs) in second grade. The project focused on academic words that are necessary to describe, explain and discuss science phenomena and social studies issues relevant to second grade content that is included in the Common Core State St...

Many students in the United States are not proficient in science and do not demonstrate competence in challenging science content. Many schools and districts are moving toward inquiry-based science curricula that allow students the opportunity to use inquiry, experimentation, and analysis to actively construct ideas. However, even with inquiry-based science curricula, there are students who do not master science content. The current project will test the efficacy of a computer-based intellig...

In the 2002 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), only 2 percent of U.S. students attained advanced levels of mathematics or science achievement by grade 12 (EdWeb, 2005). A significant factor contributing to this poor performance is the inability of students to understand and learn from science text. While many students may appear to learn to read and understand text by third grade, evidence shows that as texts become more challenging in fourth grade, many students cannot rea...