Frank Elementary students who are English Language Learners have increased the complexity of their writing in their final products.

We are committed to creating a school built on equity, one where all students can achieve at the highest level. We work to ensure all students have access to rigorous tasks and the skills and scaffolds they need to find success.

At least 25% of students at Frank Elementary School are identified as students with limited English proficiency each year. Our focus has been to create final products which give our students the opportunity to demonstrate higher levels of complexity in their writing within our expeditions and final products. Our ELL students are able to produce work that has the same level of quality as the work of their peers when given appropriate supports. Our school has English as a Second Language (ESL) specialists that either support students in small groups outside of the classroom or incorporate lessons within the classroom. Students work on the same final product but teachers differentiate supports as needed. (Graphic organizers, Frayer Model, sentence frames, etc., Core Practice 20) This is particularly helpful with English Learners because they are processing from one language to the next. In certain circumstances, the organizer would first be written in their native language (L1) and then translated into their second language, (L2) which for us is English.

Of the multiple assessments that are used to determine student growth, the ACCESS test measures growth in four domains; listening, speaking, reading, and writing. This claim will focus on the writing growth our English Learners have made over time. In 2015-2016, the ACCESS test became more rigorous. Students needed to use more academic language and apply higher order thinking to their writing in order to obtain a high score. The work that students do within their expeditions helps them to make connections across academic disciplines. This translates into their transfer of understanding, which is then evidenced through their score on the writing portion of the ACCESS test. Below are some graphs which summarize the writing growth of our ELL students over time.

Below are some examples of final product writing over time. We have placed an ELL student's writing next to the writing of a student whose first language is English.

2013-2014 Above is a representation of writing in a second grade ABC Great Lakes book. Although most writing this year did not demonstrate many of the attributes associated with complexity, there is a definite difference between the ELL student on the left and the native English student on the right. The student's work on the left had sentences that lacked structure and did not connect to the larger concept of the formation of the Great Lakes. Our teachers began to explicitly teach the steps of the writing process: pre-writing, drafting, revising and editing. Differentiating for our English learners became the norm so that all of our students could be successful. Providing visuals, relia, sentence frames, graphic organizers, scaffolding and EL protocols to build background knowledge became a regular part of our writing instruction.

2014-2015 Above are two examples from a first grade Farm to Table book. What you notice is the final product on the left is an ELL student who choose to focus on coloring and embedding writing into the picture. The student demonstrated the concept through a picture instead of in writing. The student is also spelling words only phonetically. The native English student on the right was able to transfer their understanding of the milking process, create an illustration and put a complete thought into writing.

2015-2016 Many final products this year began to use technology. Above are two Kenosha community brochures that went through multiple drafts and the peer critique process before they were complete. We begin to see more writing process strategies show in both the ELL student on the left and the native English student on the right. The ELL student is still missing some conjunctions and using run-on sentences, but is closer to creating work with similar complexity as the native English student.

2016-2017 Above are examples of our fifth graders explorers book. The writing demonstrated from the ELL student on the left shows significant progress with more accuracy, more attention to detail and some higher order thinking. It is becoming closer to the work created by the native English student on the right. Students are now creating sentences that have appropriate structure. The writing from both students has been critiqued and revised in order to create their best work.

2017-2018 In the fourth grade dairy brochures above, it is difficult to tell the difference between the writing of an ELL student on the left and a native English student on the right. The writing from both students demonstrates original, creative thinking and connections to larger concepts. Both students went through multiple drafts, the peer critique process and have revised their work several times while attending to detail, accuracy and overall craftsmanship.