Thursday, September 3, 2015

Professional Learning Communities

Professional Learning Communities

What?
A Professional Learning Community (PLC) is educators committed to working collaboratively in ongoing processes of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve. PLCs operate under the assumption that the key to improved learning for students is continuous, job-embedded learning for educators.
                         —adapted from Learning by Doing

Why?
1.   Teachers set higher expectations for student achievement,
2.   Students can count on the help of their teachers and peers in achieving ambitious learning goals,
3.   The quality of classroom pedagogy is considerably higher, and

4.   Achievement levels are significantly higher” (Louis & Marks, 1998).

How?
We meet to discuss 4 questions which are listed on the protocol.
  1. What is it we expect our students to learn?
  2. How will we know when they have learned it?
  3. How will we respond when some students do not learn?
  4. How will we respond when some students already know it?

When? 
Grade level PLC's will meet on Tuesday's during your 45 minute prep period. 

Who?
We have different PLC teams at Hudson Prairie
Grade level PLC are your grade level or department teams.
Vertical PLC's are mixed groups that look at more global issues and is a a great way to gain multiple perspectives.


This Tuesday is our first grade level PLC!
The SMART/ Leadership Team has designated some of the meeting times but the rest are for you to customize based on your needs, SLO, etc.  
Here is the schedule!

Tuesday Sept. 8-
  1. Please review the difference from a PLC and a team meeting.  PLC vs. Team Meeting
  2. Develop Norms using these supporting documents:   Developing Norms   HP Norms
  3. Using Spring F & P Data to create initial groups for guided reading. Guided Reading Group Set Up
  4. Paper copies are in your grade level rep's mailbox.   

Tuesday Sept. 15- Gather baseline data to personalize instruction and show growth for ALL students
What data would you like to dive deeper into?  
What does your teaching need?

Tuesday Sept. 22- Continue ELA/ IUI Planning

Tuesday Sept. 29- Your choice

Please comment on ideas on how you could use your PLC to support student learning.


3 comments:

  1. A possible PLC could be used exploring the Elementary Professional site. Topics could include how to set pages on chrome so it is readly available, checking out grade level folders to familiarize ourselves with its organization, using links on the curriculum guides , "pop-out" icon, etc.

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    Replies
    1. I have the PLC on Tuesday designated to continued planning and exploring the website.

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  2. Lori, I agree...the beauty of being able to access grade levels above and below to target the needs of our diversely skilled classes makes this a perfect PLC. I think our grade level workshop day was a perfect introduction to the "beast" now, it is learning to navigate it easily and making it work for us.

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