Professional Learning Communities: Using written curriculum to design effective instruction

1. Professional Learning Communities:Using written curriculum to design effective instruction The professional learning community model is a grand design - a powerful way of working together that profoundly affects the practices of schooling. But initiating and sustaining the concept requires hard work (Dufour, 2004)

2. Recasting PLC’s “Create and maintain an environment that fosters collaboration, honest talk, and a commitment to the growth and development of individual members and to the group as a whole” (Lieberman and Miller, 2011) Key conditions are: norms of collaboration; focus on students and their academic performance; access to a wide range of learning resources for individuals and the group; mutual accountability for student growth and success (Talbert, 2010) “An inclusive group of people, motivated by a shared vision, who support and work with each other, finding ways, inside and outside their immediate community, to enquire on their practice and together learn new and better approaches that will enhance all pupils’ learning” (Stoll and Louis, 2010)

3. PLCs and Teacher Improvement

4. PLCs and School Improvement Horn & Little, 2010

5. PLCs and Written Curriculum “Merely creating small structures for PLCs does not lead to changes in instructional practice” (Christman and Supovitz, 2005)

7. Curriculum Documents Unpacked • Stage 1: • Standards Unpacked, Essential Questions, Enduring Understandings • Stage 2: • Exemplar Assessments (Formative and Summative) • Stage 3: • Learning Plan • Aligned Resources • Stage 2 & 3 are still under development. They will be added as our writing teams complete the work. m

8. CCS Curriculum Documents m

9. Written Curriculum

10. Connection

11. PLC Framework m

12. What does this look like?

13. The Work and Learning of PLCs

14. If this is what we want, how do we get there? Structural changes • Committee • Compliance • Documents Roles and Responsibilities • Facilitators • Facilitators Guide Compliance

15. j

16. Training for PLC Facilitators • Webinars during the week of August 19 • August 22: 9:00am to 11:00am • August 22: 2:00pm to 4:00pm • August 23: 9:00am to 11:00am • August 23: 2:00pm to 4:00pm m

17. What’s Next

19. PLC Facilitator’s framework m

20. The framework… IS NOT DESIGNED TO… be a checklist PLCs must complete. dictate every topic of conversation a PLC has. be handed to teachers without a trained facilitator. • IS DESIGNED TO… • help facilitate conversations among PLCs. • help guarantee PLCs are talking about the “right” things. • help administrators guide PLC conversations. • help troubleshoot curricular conversations. • help measure the health of PLCs. m

21. Additional training on the framework and process • August Administrator meetings • Principal • Assistant Principal for Instruction • Assistant Principal • Facilitator Training during the week of August 19 • All administrators • All facilitators • Any interested teachers m

22. Roles and Responsibilities This recasting of PLCs requires a redefinition of various roles and responsibilities: Administrators Facilitators Teachers c

23. Compliance Measures District: (1) Provide feedback on every unit via Google Doc (2) Suggest resources for each unit via Google Doc (3) Complete the PLC Performance Rubric (Oct/May) School: (1) Agendas/Minutes (2) Data Analysis Document (3) School Administrator provides feedback on at least 1 CFA per PLC b

24. Next Steps In the next session, Michael will present the materials you will use to train your PLCs for the first week’s work. In addition, you will have time to prepare a plan for this professional development. j