personal learning communities

PLC NCMSC

March 18th, 2012

Purpose:

How can we strengthen our capacity to work together in

professional learning to become successful at creating learning

environments that provide high levels of learning for all students?

Essential Questions• What does a PLC meeting look like?

• How can a continuous improvement cycle lead a professional learning community?

• How can data analysis drive instruction on a regular basis?

• How can I start a PLC at my school?

What does a PLC look like?

Professional Learning Communities – Doug Reeves

The experts:Richard and Rebecca DuFourDoug Reeves

What does a PLC look like? • Teams are formed of teachers who are responsible

for the same curricular subject area of student learning.

• Teams meet for 45 minutes a week.

• Each PLC meeting must be summarized including next steps and who was in attendance.

• All PLC meetings must have a designated facilitator.

• All PLC meetings must be monitored by an administrator (through visits and/or review of minutes/action plans).

What does a PLC look like?• What do we want our students to know, understand and be

able to do?– Deconstructing/Unpacking Standards, Examining Student

Work Assignments

• How will we know when they have learned it?– Examining Data Protocols and Common Assessments – Examining Student Work Assignments

• How will we respond when some students have not learned and how will we respond when some students have learned? – Teacher Interventions– Team Interventions– School Interventions

“Learning by Doing”. Dufour, Dufour, Eaker, Many. Solution Tree.2006

Norms & Ground Rules

• Ground rules are a statement of how we hope we will all behave.

Launching and Sustaining PLCs by Marnie Thompson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

• Norms are the behaviors we actually enact, the expectations that we actually hold each other to.

For example…

– Your group may have a ground rule that states that PLC time is not to be used for grading papers

– But if people grade papers in the meeting and no one intervenes, then the norm of your group is that it is okay to grade papers during a PLC meeting

Ground rules and NormsTeams should formally evaluate their

effectiveness at least twice a year.

Are we adhering to our norms?

Do we need to establish a new norm to address a problem reoccurring on our team?

Are we working interdependently to achieve our team goal?

*Article Resource – Norms put the ‘Golden Rule’ into practice for groups

1. Teams Set Ground Rules and Develop Norms

2. Set Goals to Guide Work -Team decides area of focus from data, curriculum standards or identifies an opportunity for improvement that they will work on together.

3. A team action plan is created to address the opportunities for improvement agreed upon by the team

4. Teachers work on agreed upon strategies in classes or take next steps between meetings.

5. Team meetings are centered around one of the following:

Clarifying essential student learning (Standards)

Analyzing evidence of student learning (Assessment)

Examining student work assignments for rigor and alignment (Alignment & Rigor)

Instructional practices to impact student learning (Intervention)

6. Next Meeting: Debrief the strategy, share data, what worked, what did not work, focus on the next steps and continue the cycle.

• This document sets the stage for all PLC meetings within a school.

• Meetings should be addressing something on the cycle at all times.

• It is a cycle and never-ending.

• The cycle can be entered at any place.

Continuous Improvement Cycle

Develop StrategiesDevelop

Strategies

Analyze the Impact

Data Cycle

Analyze the Impact

Data Cycle

Implement StrategiesImplement Strategies

Apply New KnowledgeApply New Knowledge

Continuous Improvement Cycle

- Set Goals

- Prioritize Learning Targets

- Develop pre/post assessment

- Instructional Sequencing

- Administer pre-assessment

- Instruction

- Administer Common Assessment

1. Collect & Chart Data

2. Analyze Data3. Review Goals4. Instructional Strategies5. Results Indicators6. Monitor & Evaluate Results

- What worked?

- Set next steps for students

- Interventions

Develop StrategiesDevelop

Strategies

Analyze the

ImpactData Cycle

Analyze the

ImpactData Cycle

Implement

Strategies

Implement

Strategies

Apply New

Knowledge

Apply New

Knowledge

Continuous Improvement

Cycle

- Set Goals

- Prioritize Learning Targets

- Develop pre/post assessment

- Instructional Sequencing

- Administer pre-assessment

- Instruction

- Administer CACommon Assessment

1. Collect & Chart Data

2. Analyze Data3. Review Goals4. Instructional Strategies5. Results Indicators6. Monitor & Evaluate Results

- What worked?

- Set next steps for students

- Interventions

Develop Strategies

Set Goals – This is when your team will ask those inquiry questions and set attainable goals for you and your students.

Prioritize Learning Targets – Which learning targets are the ones students must learn?

Develop Pre / Post Assessment – Teachers use prioritized learning targets to create a short pre / post assessment.

Instructional Sequencing – The PLC determines the instructional sequence of the learning targets.

Develop StrategiesDevelop

Strategies

Analyze the

ImpactData Cycle

Analyze the

ImpactData Cycle

Implement

Strategies

Implement

Strategies

Apply New

Knowledge

Apply New

Knowledge

Continuous Improvement

Cycle

- Set Goals

- Prioritize Learning Targets

- Develop pre/post assessment

- Instructional Sequencing

- Administer pre-assessment

- Instruction

- Administer CACommon Assessment

1. Collect & Chart Data

2. Analyze Data3. Review Goals4. Instructional Strategies5. Results Indicators6. Monitor & Evaluate Results

- What worked?

- Set next steps for students

- Interventions

Implement Strategies• Administer the Pre-Assessment – Teachers will

administer and score the pre-assessment.– Does the data from the pre-assessment tell you that the

lessons you are preparing are the lessons students need?

• Instruction – The teacher teaches and the students learn.

• Administer and score the Common Assessment – During instruction, the teachers will “check” for understanding with the common assessment created by the PLC.

Develop StrategiesDevelop

Strategies

Analyze the

ImpactData Cycle

Analyze the

ImpactData Cycle

Implement

Strategies

Implement

Strategies

Apply New

Knowledge

Apply New

Knowledge

Continuous Improvement

Cycle

- Set Goals

- Prioritize Learning Targets

- Develop pre/post assessment

- Instructional Sequencing

- Administer pre-assessment

- Instruction

- Administer CACommon Assessment

1. Collect & Chart Data

2. Analyze Data3. Review Goals4. Instructional Strategies5. Results Indicators6. Monitor & Evaluate Results

- What worked?

- Set next steps for students

- Interventions

Analyze the Impact

Step 1: Collect and Chart DataStep 2: Analyze the DataStep 3: Review GoalsStep 4: Instructional StrategiesStep 5: Results IndicatorsStep 6: Monitor and Evaluate Results

Develop StrategiesDevelop

Strategies

Analyze the

ImpactData Cycle

Analyze the

ImpactData Cycle

Implement

Strategies

Implement

Strategies

Apply New

Knowledge

Apply New

Knowledge

Continuous Improvement

Cycle

- Set Goals

- Prioritize Learning Targets

- Develop pre/post assessment

- Instructional Sequencing

- Administer pre-assessment

- Instruction

- Administer CACommon Assessment

1. Collect & Chart Data

2. Analyze Data3. Review Goals4. Instructional Strategies5. Results Indicators6. Monitor & Evaluate Results

- What worked?

- Set next steps for students

- Interventions

Apply New Knowledge

• What Worked? – This is when the PLC team members discuss what worked and what didn’t work according to the data.

• Next Steps for Students – What will be the next steps for students who did not reach proficiency? For those who did?

• Interventions – The PLC team agrees on interventions to assist those students who are not proficient.

Current Reality

Does this process resemble what happens throughout the year in your school?

How can data analysis drive instruction?

• Shanon to add slides or add some

How can I start a PLC at my school?

• Administrative support

• Teacher willingness

• Basic picture of the PLC process

• Meeting notes / Action plans

• Time to meet

Start with a book study…

PLC Basic Picture• What do we want our students to know, understand and be able

to do?– Deconstructing/Unpacking Standards, Examining Student

Work Assignments

• How will we know when they have learned it?– Examining Data Protocols and Common Assessments – Examining Student Work Assignments

• How will we respond when some students have not learned and how will we respond when some students have learned? – Teacher Interventions– Team Interventions– School Interventions

1. Teams Set Ground Rules and Develop Norms

2. Set Goals to Guide Work -Team decides area of focus from data, curriculum standards or identifies an opportunity for improvement that they will work on together.

3. A team action plan is created to address the opportunities for improvement agreed upon by the team

4. Teachers work on agreed upon strategies in classes or take next steps between meetings.

5. Team meetings are centered around one of the following:

Clarifying essential student learning (Standards)

Analyzing evidence of student learning (Assessment)

Examining student work assignments for rigor and alignment (Alignment & Rigor)

Instructional practices to impact student learning (Intervention)

6. Next Meeting: Debrief the strategy, share data, what worked, what did not work, focus on the next steps and continue the cycle.

PLC Meeting Agenda / Action Record TEAM NORMS (To be reviewed at each meeting)

TEAM NAME: Date: Roles (should alternate throughout the year): Facilitator: Time Keeper: Recorder:

Purpose/Goal(s) for this meeting:

Meeting Topics: 1. 2. 3.

Desired Outcomes: 1. 2.3.

MEETING MINUTES (TO BE COMPLETED BY THE RECORDER): Team Members Present Team Members Absent

Discussion / Decision Action Summary:

Action Steps For Facilitators: 1.

2.

Action Steps for PLC Support:1. 2.

Agenda items for next meeting: 1. 2.

Artifacts attached from this meeting: 1. 2.

Date of Next Meeting:

Resources

• Learning by Doing – DuFour• All Things PLC website -

http://www.allthingsplc.info/

Questions

• Thank you for your attention.

Contact information:Cathy Barlow – cabarlow@caldwellschools.comShanon White – swhite@ccaldwellschools.com