This dissertation contains two manuscripts, both related to the development and use of culturally relevant and sustainable informational texts. The first manuscript is written as a research article reporting on the creation and use of culturally relevant informational texts with young children in Botswana. The manuscript describes the study’s rationale and background, methods of implementation and analysis, findings and implications, limitations, and significance. The second manuscript is written as an article for a practitioner journal, focusing on how to create and use culturally relevant informational texts in the classroom. Both manuscripts draw from the same study of standard two (second year of formal schooling, when children are ages seven to eight) children in Botswana. The study had two research questions: (1) What are culturally relevant informative/explanatory and procedural text topics for standard two students in the northwest region of Botswana? and (2) What changes, if any, occur in standard two students’ emergent reading and writing of informative/explanatory and procedural texts after participating in reading and writing lessons using culturally relevant texts of each genre and in a control group?The study had three phases. In phase one, parent surveys were administered and collected to determine culturally relevant informational text topics. During phase two, survey results were used to create 15 texts (ten informative/explanatory and five procedural) used in 20 lesson plans. Phase three involved the implementation of the developed lessons as an intervention over a six-week period. Forty-four children from a town and rural school were randomly assigned within setting to experimental or control conditions (22 per group). All participating children completed pre- and post-assessments to ascertain their abilities to read and writing procedural and informative/explanatory texts through writing samples and emergent readings.Analyses of surveys from phase one of the project involved tallying and ranking the responses to determine relevant and important topics; 15 topics were selected for the development of texts. To examine the impact of the intervention based on pre- and post-assessments from phase three, I used Wilcoxon signed-rank tests to compare pre- and post-assessments by condition on three types of scores: a stage of writing development score, a holistic score for each genre, and a total trait/feature score for each genre. Results indicate statistically significant increases in post-assessment scores for children in the experimental group for four out of five writing measures: stage of writing development, holistic score for informative/explanatory writing, total trait/feature score for procedural writing, and total trait/feature score for informative/explanatory writing, but no statistically significant effects on emergent reading measures. Children in the control group did not show statistically significant increases in their post-assessment scores for writing or reading.This dissertation research answers calls to meet literacy needs in developing nations, such as by providing access to high quality reading materials, teaching reading and writing together, and instilling a spirit of evaluation in research and school contexts (Hoffman, 2009). It contributes to the field by providing evidence that informational texts on culturally relevant topics can be used to leverage increases in student achievement, even after a brief intervention of twenty 15-20 minute lessons in a six-week period. It also suggests practical implications for determining culturally relevant informational text topics and the creation and use of texts with young children.
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