Ann Colton, MetLife Fellow
Ann Colton is a Kindergarten teacher in a northern Virginia Elementary school. Before teaching children, she taught English classes for adults; also in Northern Virginia.
Ann earned her Bachelor or Arts in English from Brigham Young University.
She received her teaching certificate from George Mason University.
Previous Research Includes:
Research Title: Use of a Sound-Field System to Support Language Development in a Culturally Diverse Kindergarten Classroom Research Year: 2009 Research Classification: Student Support/Enrichment Research Summary: Our research question was “How does the use of a sound-field system impact oral language production in an inclusive kindergarten classroom?” Before we installed the sound-field system in this inclusive kindergarten classroom, we asked each child to draw and tell a story about something that he or she did or something that happened to him or her. We recorded each child’s oral presentation and documented the number of complete sentences contained in the story. The sound-field system was then installed in the classroom to facilitate instruction with the reduction of ambient noise. After several months, we repeated the procedure. We found that after being in a classroom with a sound-field system, students’ sentences increased in length from 5.8 to 6.13 words. In the spring students spoke with both simple and compound sentences, while in the fall they had only used short, simple sentences. Students improved their use of regular past tense verbs. The use of single word utterances and phrases decreased as well. In the fall students frequently repeated words or phrases, but in the spring this was not observed. We believe these gains are facilitated by the sound-field system, as well as expected maturation and typical development.
