Jessie Hulst
Always learning. Always teaching.
Gallery of Student Work
In our classroom, we engage in a variety of activities that involve developing the 4 language domains of reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Below you will find samples of student work in these areas along with a bit more information about the activity, its learning goals, and what it demonstrates about our classroom and about myself as a teacher.
To hear the aduio files, click the chalk drawing pictures.
Reading & Writing
In our class, we read with purpose, not just for speed or fluency. We dive deeply into texts with background building activities, multiple readings, discussions, and extension projects. This clip shows one way we emphasize the meaning of text: using vocal expression! This student had been practicing using varied vocal expressions while reading and recording himself. He could then pick his best reading sample to share.
Many of the students who come to EL groups are significantly behind grade-level expectations. This audio clip is a 5th grade student who began learning English last year. Providing appropriately leveled texts is crucial for him to access reading materials and grow as a reader. Recording himself allows him to compare his reading with a model and also allows me to give feedback and support. This is one way to make silent reading time valuable for newcomer students.
Our writing assignments and projects are purposeful, which makes them engaging. Examples include writing postcards, composing emails, making brochures, and submitting proposals to the principal. Pictured here is kindergarten writing. Students wrote to describe how we grew bean plants in our classroom. They also recorded observations by drawing and labeling the plants to show their change over time.
As with other language domains, it's important to provide scaffolds for students as they learn to write. Sentence stems,word banks, and partner discussions or verbal rehearsal prior to writing are some supports we use in our classroom. Here, after vocal rehearsal with a partner, a student used sentence stems to share an opinion about her favorite of two texts. Writing about reading is one way to engage more deeply with texts, too.
Some class writing projects take place over an extended amount of time and require students to use all 4 language domains. For example, 3rd graders created informational books about an animal. We practiced reading to gather information, paraphrasing, organizing research, writing with text features, and revising to get to this point! These extended projects engage students in deep learning. They then proudly read their best pages to their peers.
In our room, I work to help students see writing as a process. This means students can expect to revise, edit, and reformat their writing using self-editing, peer responses, and teacher feedback. My hope is that students thereby enact processes used by successful writers. This piece of writing is a second draft the student had worked hard on. Students could choose organizers to scaffold their writing.
Students write in a variety of formats. Sometimes this looks like note-taking during an investigation. At other times, as pictured, this looks like creating a presentation or paper. Other forms include journaling, reading responses, or instructions. Writing is the most difficult domain for most ELLs. A variety of practice opportunities is crucial. Changing the form of writing keeps students excited and mirrors authentic writing opportunities.
Listening & Speaking
In our classroom, we use accountable talk, sentence frames, word banks, visuals, and more to support our conversations about texts. This allows students at multiple points in their English-language learning to participate in discussions and to engage deeply with texts and topics. This audio clip is a young student using a sentence frame during distance learning.
When practicing different types and purposes of speaking, students use rubrics to evaluate themselves and to give meaningful feedback to peers, as pictured in these feedback forms. These clear expectations support student conversations and prepare them for other speaking situations. Plus, since speaking often develops before writing, strong speaking skills prepare ELLs for writing.
Another way to support student speaking is to build vocabulary. With students who have some formal education in another language, this can look like word translations. A group of 5th graders helped me create this list of translated words for their social studies class. They used their knowledge of the words in their home languages to incorporate the words in discussion. This gives them access to classroom content while valuing home language. .
Once students have tools to support their successful use of verbal language, we do projects such as the one pictured here. In this country research presentation, students use formal speech to share their hard work on a country they have been reading and learning about for weeks. They practice public speaking, use new vocabulary, and answer peer questions, all skills they can apply elsewhere.
