Sharing Progress: Cottage students strengthen English skills one exit ticket at a time

Cottage Elementary School fifth-grader Mohammad was eager to return from his English Language Development (ELD) session to his classroom and show his teacher how he improved in writing today.

For today’s ELD session, Mohammad and his classmates were encouraged to act as weather anchors. After a group discussion, Mohammad was ready to return to class, but there was one last task to complete: the exit ticket.

The exit ticket, or ticket out the door, is a form of checking for understanding at the end of a class. In this case, students in ELD are tasked to complete a written response that is aligned with their lesson that day, share it with their ELD teacher, and it is collected by their classroom teacher upon their return to class. 

“When I show my exit ticket to my teacher, it makes me proud that I can do this and I can overcome anything,” shared Mohammad.

In alignment with the E.L. Achieve curriculum, ELD teacher Molly Messner has incorporated exit tickets as a way to share progress with classroom teachers at Cottage. Through E.L. Achieve, students are placed in groups based on their English proficiency level (beginner, intermediate and advanced) and receive targeted instruction that accelerates their progress and road to reclassification.  

Messner shared that her goal in implementing exit tickets was to build a connection between ELD and the classroom, aiding both teachers in getting immediate feedback on their students’ progress.

“Just [the classroom teacher] knowing that their beginning level student wrote a sentence today or their advanced level student wrote a sentence with superlatives today, that shows them that things are happening here, and it creates a value for that time that they’re missing the student,” emphasized Messner. 

Each exit ticket has been crafted to meet the proficiency level of each group. For beginners, they are typically requested to write a word or a simple sentence or make a drawing. At the intermediate level, students are tasked with writing two sentences that include adjectives and past tense verbs. Meanwhile, students in the advanced level are given more creative freedom when writing sentences.

Fifth-grade teacher Roderick Bravo shared the importance of collaborating with ELD teachers to best support students. He recognized the progress that students, including Mohammad, have accomplished in their writing with additional practice through the exit ticket.  

“Not only is he applying the content that he’s learning in ELD, but he’s also applying some of the writing strategies that we use in our formal writing lessons in the classroom. I see both of them working hand in hand together," said Bravo.

Bravo highlighted that the overlap between classroom instruction and the E.L. Achieve curriculum allows students to apply knowledge gathered from both. For instance, students are exposed to informative and expository writing in the fifth grade, and with their skill set built in both settings, they are capable of taking on bigger projects that require more descriptive words. 

“A lot of the terminology that they are using and picking up from their ELD class, they’re applying it similarly to their writing assignments in the classroom,” shared Bravo.

Mohammad has become proud of his vocabulary because of the learning opportunities he has access to. 

“I’m struggling with writing, I’m trying to improve in writing and trying to get better and better every single day by trying my hardest," he shared. 

With students and staff sharing the goal of reclassification, the conversations become more frequent to celebrate growth and address gaps. Students witness the partnership between their ELD teacher and classroom teacher to best support them, such as discussing i-Ready scores or providing them with examples of the responses on the level one through four scale of the ELPAC, which encourages them to excel. 

“By the time they’ve gotten to the exit ticket, we have already caught it,” stated Messner. “I shared with them that I’m seeing good writing, but on the ELPAC, they expect great writing.”

With the next ELPAC assessment beginning in February, students like Mohammad are putting their skills to work each day. 

As Cottage continues to prioritize language development and collaboration, students head back to class not just with a completed exit ticket, but with growing confidence in their abilities and pride in their progress.